In 2011, Drive-By Truckers co-founder Patterson Hood was writing a book about a period of his life in the 1990s when "My car got stolen, our band's truck got stripped, and I fell in love. I fell out with my family (who I was very, very close to) and had my heart broken. I seriously pondered killing myself several times but instead wrote literally over 500 songs in a three-year period." The book stalled and then was partly and then totally (at least for now) replaced by new songs about that time. "The songs begin in the period that the book was set in, but don’t end there, as they really just were the impetus for writing about the life I am living now and contrasting it with the troubled times of two decades ago," Patterson says. I called it "Heat Lightning Rumbles in the Distance" and decided that spring to record it as a solo album. I could clearly hear in my head exactly how I wanted every song to sound and made a list of who I wanted to play on each one. It is in some ways the most personal album I’ve ever made.