Jerry Garcia spoke about So Many Roads in an interview with Dave DiMartino in 1992;

It's Hunter writing me from my point of view, you know what I mean? We've been working together for so long that he knows what I know. The song is full of references to things that have to do with me....

....Hunter is the only guy that could do that. He can write my point of view better than I can think it, you know what I mean? So that's the kind of relationship we have. And he frequently writes tunes from my point of view that are autobiographical. There actually biographical I guess. He's the one writing them, but even so they express my point of view - and more than that they express the emotional content of my soul in a certain way that only a long-term and intimate relationship with a guy as brilliant as Hunter coughs up ... I can sing that song, feel totally comfortable with it.

One afternoon, Jerry was playing some unstructured changes on the piano. Figuring they might be forgotten otherwise, I clicked on my tape recorder. Ten years later I found the tape and listened to it, liked it, and set these words to it. Listening to the pitifully recorded and time-degraded tape, Jerry protested that, although he liked the words, his changes were not very good and unfinished besides. This didn't seem to be the base and I requested that he at least give it a run through. The result was one of the better received new GD songs and one that almost got away.