Our Mother the Mountain

The basic tracks were cut in Los Angeles and the overdubs added in Nashville. James Burton played Dobro and guitar and Charlie McCoy played bass, guitar, harmonica, organ and recorder, with flute from Jules Jacob and string arrangements by Bergen White. Tecumseh Valley, first heard on the debut, was recut here because he was dissatisfied with that record's production. Milton Glaser designed the sleeve around a photograph by Allen Vogel.

The title of Margaret Brown's 2004 documentary Be Here to Love Me comes from the opening track. In that film Joe Ely says Townes gave him a copy of the album when Ely picked him up hitchhiking in 1971, and that he and Jimmie Dale Gilmore played it over and over for weeks. Mark Lager wrote in 2019 that this album and the self-titled one are the strongest of his career because every song on them is his own.