The album's title stems from Isbell's childhood, with Isbell stating, "My dad used to work for a tool-and-die shop when I was a kid that was called Southeastern and that's how it originally occurred to me. I had moved from
Muscle Shoals to
Nashville – almost a year ago now — and it struck me that, at this point in my life, I don't have any interest in living in any other part of the country or the world, really." The album's tenth track, "Super 8," reflects on the humor that comes with sobriety, with Isbell saying: "There’s more to the human experience than the other songs on that album represent. Thematically, it’s important to represent the humor in addiction and recovery, and the humor that happens when you open yourself up and make yourself vulnerable to the people that you care about — and to your audience.” The track "Yvette", which deals with
sexual abuse, is a companion piece to the track, "Daisy Mae", on Isbell's previous studio album,
Here We Rest (2011). He notes, "I got to a point, I guess when I was probably thirty, or thirty-one years old, where it occurred to me almost everyone you meet was sexually abused as a kid, almost everybody, by someone. That never happened to me, believe it or not, but the percentages are just staggering, and writing a song about something that's that depressing I think it's good to discuss it. Some people like to discuss those things, maybe they don't want to start the conversation themselves, but sometimes those things help folks to relate and get those things out of their system a little bit." ==Commercial performance==