This is a song from Mac Powell's sophomore country solo album, Southpaw. The Alabama native is best known for fronting Christian rockers Third Day and was asked by Taste of Country if the writing process is different for his Nashville records in terms of the kind of subject matter he can consider. "Absolutely," Powell replied. "Doing Christian music, it's such a serious subject, and so there's so many songs that are serious. And it's hopeful, and it's encouraging, but what's so much fun about country music is being free to write these stories, to be just kind of able to make up stories."
Powell added that this song is, "just basically a girl broke my heart, and she's coming back to town so I'm leaving kind of story."
"Well, that's not really something that's true in my life, but I get to kind of play this character, It's like writing for a movie or TV show," he continued. "I get to play this character and totally make up this story, and that's fun. And it's not that it's not done in Christian music, but it's not done as much. In country music, that's kind of what it is."
The song is a collaboration with country music singer Travis Tritt, whom Powell first met many years previously. "People have told me that we have similar voices and I sound a little bit like him, when I know that actually he's a much better singer than I am," he explained laughing. "He's amazing."
Powell told Taste of Country how he penned the song with Tritt. "We met for dinner. We live about 20 minutes apart — I tell people there's something in the water, that's why we sound alike — but we hit it off, and it was great for me to ask some questions, bounce some ideas off of him and hear some stories from him about his past and his history in country music. So we kept saying, 'Hey, we've got to write some time,' and finally when it was time for me to go into the studio, I just texted him — I think it was only a day or two before — and I said, 'Hey, I know you're super busy, but I'm gonna be in the studio if you want to drop by and say hey, or play or sing on the record, or write some music. We're gonna be here.'"
"So he actually came over two days in a row, and we sat down and developed a couple of ideas that I had, and they ended up making the record," Powell continued. "And he actually ended up playing on the record, so it was a blast. Just to even hear him singing in the studio was amazing."
Mac Powell wrote this song with Darius Rucker. Like Powell, the former Hootie & the Blowfish frontman has successfully swapped genres and become a country favorite. "I know that he put a lot of work into making that (switch) happen," said the Third Day frontman. "It's a little different in the sense that he wasn't really doing a lot of Hootie & the Blowfish and I'm still doing 100 Third Day dates a year. But it gave me hope that I can try it as well."
Powell explained to Taste of Country how the collaboration came about: "We met through that connector that's called Twitter," he said with a laugh. "I'm a fan of his, so as a fan, I can speak directly to him, and I think slowly through some other mutual fans that like my music, they said, 'You guys should get connected,' and I said, 'Well, I'm game.' And he said, 'I'm ready.' So we just started direct messaging each other on Twitter, and came up with a time, and I drove over to Charleston to his place."
"It was very - and I mean this in a good way - it was very business-like," Powell continued. "I got there, and he said, 'Hey, how ya doing, do you need some water? Alright, whatcha got? Let's get to work!" It wasn't until we were done that we got to share some stories and talk and get to know one another a little bit, but during that couple of hours, I showed him an idea and he was like, 'Great, let's get to work on that.'"
"We finished the song in an hour, and then he said, 'Well, what else you got?' And I showed him another idea, and he was like, 'Man, that's great too, let's work on that.' So in a good way, it was very business-like, because we knew we had to get to work," he added. "We didn't have time to shoot the bull. The reason we were there was to write together, and the other stuff would come later on. And it did."
