Songfacts®:

• This song takes place in heaven, where a ascends upon his death. There, he meets Saint Peter, which the start of many a joke. In fact, it was a joke that inspired Ceili Rain leader Bob Halligan, Jr. to wrote this song.
  
  "That was a pulpit joke that my father-in-law heard in church one day," he said in a 2023 Songfacts interview. "The story is that the guy dies, he goes to heaven, Saint Peter meets him at the gate and says to him, 'Would you like to see the what we built out of all the lumber you sent up to us from the good works that you did? And the guy says, 'Great.' They go down the road and there's this great big house. 'Is that mine?' 'No, that's not yours.' The houses keep getting smaller and smaller and smaller until they come to this little tiny shack. Saint Peter pulls into the driveway, 'Here you are.' The guy says, 'Saint Peter, why is it so small?' And Saint Peter says, 'Well, that's all the lumber you sent.'
  
  I thought, that's got to be a song, so I sat down and made it happen."
• "That's All The Lumber You Sent" is part of Ceili Rain's debut album, Say Kay-lee. Bob Halligan, Jr. formed and fronted the band after a fruitful career as a songwriter. He started off writing for hard rock bands like Judas Priest ("Some Heads Are Gonna Roll") and Blue Öyster Cult ("Beat 'Em Up") before moving into more mainstream pop with cuts for Cher ("Could've Been You") and Jennifer Rush ("Love Get Ready"). He released a solo album in 1991 but it didn't get much heat and he soon abandoned that endeavor. In 1995 he formed Ceili Rain, and that one stuck. Bob was living in Nashville at the time but moved to Syracuse in 2003, where he found a different lineup for the band.
• Bob Halligan, Jr. wrote this song with his wife Linda and with Rick Cua, who was Ceili Rain's bass player.
• Kathy Mattea covered this song on her 2002 album Roses. In 1997, she covered a different Ceili Rain song, "Love Travels," which was the title track to her album.