Loudon Wainwright III's Years in the Making compiles 45 years of off-beaten tracks into over two hours of rare and unissued Loudoniana along with a few brand new songs ("Birthday Boy" and "Rosin the Bow") for good measure. It's a 2-CD audiobiography, full of orphaned album cuts, live recordings, radio appearances, home demos, and more. There are audio snapshots from his early folk efforts, with Kate McGarrigle, George Gerdes, and Steve Goodman, in which Loudon is singing traditional songs, covering Woody Guthrie and, of all people, Bob Dylan. There are his '70s and '80s forays into the rock & roll world, including Leiber and Stoller, Smokey Joe's Cafe and his own "I Wanna Be on MTV."

The album features appearances by Suzzy Roche, Bill Frisell, Van Dyke Parks, Chaim Tannenbaum, and David Mansfield, as well as by his sister Sloan, all of his children, Rufus, Martha, Lucy, and Lexie. The CDs are packaged in an elegant 60-page booklet. The wild creations of the brilliant New Yorker magazine cartoonist Ed Steed are featured on the front and back covers, everywhere throughout the comprehensive credits text, as well as the discs themselves. Included in the 60-page book are dozens of scans of documents, introspective musings, and artifacts from what Loudon calls his swinging life, in addition to paintings and drawings by friends and fans over the years. Years in the Making presents sides of Loudon you've never heard or seen before, a privileged perspective on his various public and private selves throughout his entire career.