With the Hot Band and Ricky Skaggs: Live in 1978 is a concert recording from Emmylou Harris and her ensemble, documenting the Hot Band period when Ricky Skaggs served as Harris's lead vocalist and multi-instrumentalist — a collaboration that placed traditional bluegrass technique and singing at the center of a hybrid country-rock context. Harris plays guitar and sings; Skaggs plays mandolin, fiddle, and sings. The Hot Band configuration of 1978 represented a convergence of the country-rock aesthetic Harris had developed through her Gram Parsons years and the traditional bluegrass and country sensibility that Skaggs brought from his Clinch Mountain Boys and J.D. Crowe and the New South experience. The live format captures the ensemble energy of their working relationship before Skaggs's departure to pursue a solo career that would make him one of the decade's most commercially successful traditional country acts.