One of the most delightful tracks on the album, “The All Golden” addresses the narrator’s movement from the old South to a newer, more glamorous locale (it is similar in subject matter to “Palm Desert” from the same album, or the Parks-penned “Heroes and Villains” by the Beach Boys). Parks explains the genesis of its title:

The All Golden was a place that Will Carleton had written about in his famous book Farm Ballads. I found this book in my mother’s possessions, so I called my publishing company Found Farm Ballads. The work is not very good that Will Carleton did. He was not a very good poet, but some very good titles came out of that…

Parks has said that the song narrates from the perspective of his friend and fellow musician Steve Young. Like Parks, Young was a preternaturally progressive Southerner by birth who nonetheless found himself living the bohemian life in Los Angeles, and this song initially serves as a tribute to the austere lifestyle of a starving artist before morphing into a frenetic commentary on war and Southern identity.