The album is a songbook record of music by the late singer, songwriter, and guitarist Elliott Smith. Featured musicians include singer/guitarist Daniel Rossen (Grizzly Bear); singer/mandolinist Chris Thile (Punch Brothers, Nickel Creek); bassists Felix Moseholm (Brad Mehldau Trio, Samara Joy) and John Davis (who also engineered and mixed the album); drummer Matt Chamberlain (Fiona Apple, Tori Amos, Randy Newman); and a chamber orchestra led by Dan Coleman, who also conducted on Mehldau's 2010 album 'Highway Rider'.

Ride into the Sun’s ten Elliott Smith songs are complemented by four Mehldau compositions that he says are “inspired by, and reflect, Smith’s oeuvre.” Also included are interpretations of Big Star’s “Thirteen,” which Smith also covered, and “Sunday” by Nick Drake, who Mehldau says, “I look at in some ways as sort of Smith’s visionary grandfather.”

Recalling how he first got to know Smith and his music, which has been a regular part of his repertoire for years, Mehldau said that after years living in New York, he moved to Los Angeles “and there was this wonderful scene of singer-songwriters that was congregating at a club called Largo. That included Elliott but it also included artists like Rufus Wainwright, Fiona Apple. And then other musicians who had been around for a while would come down every Friday night to sit in on a gig that was led by Jon Brion. I played behind Elliott on his own tunes with Jon. It felt to me like a kind of renaissance in songwriting that flourished for a number of years.”