Songfacts®:

• This is the title track from the ninth studio album (eleventh total) by American alternative country band Drive-By Truckers. The album was recorded over three blocks of sessions, which the band decided to split between their 2010 release The Big To-Do and Go-Go Boots. "We recorded nearly 40 songs last year and into this year and fairly early on divided it into two separate albums" explained DBT co-founder Patterson Hood. "The Big To-Do, released first, was the more straight forward 'Rock' album. Go-Go Boots is what I sometimes (semi-jokingly) refer to as our country, soul, and murder ballad album. Those elements definitely play into it, but it's a little more open ended than that."
• "Go-Go Boots" and "The Fireplace Poker" are a pair of related songs about a two-faced preacher who pays the price for having his wife killed. The songs are based on an idea Hood had for a film. "I'm a frustrated filmmaker when it really comes down to it," said Patterson Hood to Chris Talbott of The Associated Press. "If you look at our albums as movies without the movie, they actually make more sense than they do as albums. That didn't dawn on me till just about two albums or so ago — 'Wow, that's what's wrong with this picture.'"