Songfacts®:

• This was written by Emmylou Harris together with the Canadian folk music duo Kate and Anna McGarrigle. Kate is the mother of Rufus and Martha Wainwright. The threesome also wrote "Sailing Round The Room" together on the same album. The McGarrigle sisters are friends of Emmylou. She told The Sun June 6, 2008: "I just love them. I was a fan of their music first. I first brought them down to sing on Bluebird (1989) and our friendship started there. When it was time to write more songs, I thought well, I'll just go up to Montreal. If nothing else, we'll have some nice conversation and sugar pie. They always buy me sugar pie."
  
  Harris recorded a song about Kate called "Darlin' Kate" in 2011.
• This was inspired by a TV program about Country music pioneers The Carter Family. It tells the story of how Sara Carter fell in love with another man when she was already married to A.P. Carter. However she was kept apart from him and her letters to him were intercepted. Harris picked up the story in her interview with The Sun: "Then one night, the family were on the radio in Texas, broadcasting all over the country. And Sara did a dedication to her lover by name, 'I'm thinking tonight of my blue eyes.' The man got in his car and drove all night. They were united and never left each other. They were married until his death but she continued to work in The Carter Family."