From Jerry DeCicca's liner notes:

.Perdido Key is a low island that straddles the border of Floriad and Alabama. On one side is the Olde River, tranquil an near still. The other side is white sand and the Gulf of Mexico. In 2004, Hurrican Ivan wrecked hell on the beach. It tore up homes and sliced through businesses, like the Flora-Bama, the famous Gulf Shores roadhouse that hosts nightly honky-tonks and annual mullet tossing contests. Some of what was destroyed has been re-built, including the Flora-Bama. There just aren't as many bras hanging from the bar's rafters.

In June of 2007, Jeb Loy Nichols, Jake Housh, and I met up with Larry Jon Wilson in Perdido Key to do some recording. The Spanish named the island, meaning "lost key", when they settled there in the late 1600s. I'm not sure when Larry Jon found himself thre for the first time, but he knows tha lay of the land like a native. And though the ten days I spent there may not be "lost", they're certainly fuzzy.

Jake and I drove a rented Ford Taurus full of recording equipment south from Ohio. Jeb met us at the Pensacola airport from his home in Wales. Larry Jon had already arrived from Georgia. The first three days were spent in an over-priced motel in an Alabama town called Foley. There, we ate at Lambert's, a place that calls itself "The Only Home of Throwed Rolls". Here, if you want a biscuit with your meal, you best know how to catch.

Larry Jon had gigs scheduled our first three nights. The first was in a swank hotel bar, the second in a Pensacola television studio, and the third in the Silver Moon Café, a dark and tiny bar across the street from the Flora-Bama. A framed poster of Larry Jon from his Monument Records days hung on one of its wood paneled walls.

The Liver Moon and the Flora-Bama are owned by Joe Gilchrist, a good friend of Larry Jon's, a patron to hundreds of songwriters, and the town's un-official major. Joe arranged for us to stay in a condominium complex called the Mirabella. This is where the recording took place, ont the 15th floor, over-looking the Gulf.

Throughout the next 7 days, Larry Jon recorded about 20 songs. He stood with his back to the glass wall, surrounded by couches, his anvil of a voice knocking against the marble floor. A man-out-of-time, he told stories about hitch-hiking, hustling pool, being a father, gambling, drinking, women, and the friendships he shared with Townes Van Zandt and Mickey Newbury. As Jeb and I poked Larry Jon for stories, Jake was quick enough to roll the tape when the narratives turned into songs. Larry Jon never gave us any indication when things were about to begin. He would pick up his guitar, crack open a corner of memory, and play without concern that it was being captured.Often times, at the song's end, he seemed surprised by himself, like hw was channeling some feral piece of his past. Many of these songs he wrote, and the ones he didn't had been officially "Wilson-ized". Only the song "Shoulders" was performed twice; the rest of the album is all first and only takes.

Each day, Jake, Jeb, and I would wake up and wait for Larry Jon to call with a plan, but there never was one. Some days, we walked the beach all day wondering when we would see him, other days we gathered for 3 hour lunches at places called Shrimp Basked and Trigger's (Jeb never did get his deep-fried cheescake...).

Larry Jon took us to Perdido Keys' best "pitch-all-you-want" (translation: buffet) and taught us to arrive early to beat out all the "tush hogs" (translation: fat people). After meals, at the Flora-Bama, we drank Bushwackers, a frozen mix of Kaluha and rum. When the sessions did finally begin, they might yield a burst of 4 songs and other times just one. We were on Larry Jon's watch, and this meant that sometimes the sky behind him was full of blue and sometimes it was deep night.

Back in Ohio, Jake and I decided to ask my friend and band mate, Noel Sayre, to try out some violin on a fw songs. Recorded well into the night at the used record store where I work, Noel punctuated the pathos that's the meat of Larry Jon's guitar and voice and spirit.

This may not be the best way to make records. There was no order, no schedule, no plan. Nobody told Larry Jon what songs to sing (not that it would have mattered if we did). Nothing here is showbiz, there's no "production", no glitter. And so, these songs sound like music, like Life bith a big "L", like Larry Jon Wilson and no one else.

Jerry DeCicca, Ohio, 2007