Gibbard stayed in Big Sur to compose songs for his band's 2008 Grammy-nominated album, Narrow Stairs. For many years, Jay Farrar's songwriting has been inspired and influenced by Kerouac's compositional style. Gibbard and Farrar, having never previously met, discovered a mutual kinship in their passion for Kerouac's work while recording several songs for the documentary, produced by Kerouac Films. After the initial San Francisco recording session in July 2007, they decided to develop the project further to create an album using Kerouac's own words from the book as the lyrics.