Steve Earle was nineteen and had just hitchhiked from San Antonio to Nashville in 1974. Back then if you wanted to be where the best songwriters were you had to be in there.

Guy Clark had moved to Nashville and if you were from Texas, Guy Clark was king. A few years later, Steve would be playing bass guitar in Guy's band and flying high on what would become an indelible friendship of like-minded musicians who bonded in a kinship of stories told through song. Flash forward more than forty years to May 2016. Guy Clark had just succumbed to cancer after a long battle with lymphoma. Guy had lived with his disease and had continued to write songs until the day he died. He also painted, built instruments and owned a guitar shop in the Bay Area. According to Earle, "You hung around with him [Guy] and knew why they call what artists do disciplines. Because he was disciplined." The same can be said of Earle. In the fall of 2018, Steve and The Dukes went into House Of Blues studio in Nashville and recorded GUY in six days. "I wanted it to sound live...When you've got a catalog like Guy's and you're only doing sixteen tracks, you know each one is going to be strong."