Songfacts®:

• This is Brantley Gilbert's third single and his first to reach both the country chart and the Hot 100. However, the Jefferson, Georgia, native had already seen his album tracks "Dirt Road Anthem" (co-written and originally recorded with Colt Ford) and "My Kinda Party" covered and released as singles by Jason Aldean.
• This song is from Gilbert's debut album, Modern Day Prodigal Son, which was originally set to be released in 2006, but the label dropped him before it hit stores. After signing with Average Joe's entertainment in mid 2009, the album finally saw the light of day a few months later. Gilbert signed with Big Machine Records' Valory Music Group division in February 2011, and his new label re-released Modern Day Prodigal Son on August 23, 2011.
• The song's music video was filmed at the abandoned state penitentiary in Nashville where The Green Mile was shot. Eric Church used the same location for his "Homeboy" clip.
• The song was Gilbert's first country #1 as an artist, though he'd previously topped the charts as a songwriter with "Dirt Road Anthem," also co-written by Colt Ford.
• Gilbert wrote the song with his fellow Georgia natives Colt Ford and Mike Dekle. It originated out of a conversation between Brantley and Colt about the way their ever-broadening touring schedule was taking them outside of the South and into other parts of the country.
  
  Gilbert explained to Kiim-Fm: "Colt and I were talking about how we were touring more North and Northwest and how there were country people out there just like us with different accents. We thought they needed some country credit, so that's where the song idea came from."
  
  He added: "They look the same as the people here in Georgia or Nashville, they just talk different but they like the same things. A lot of people live in those cities, but not everybody is from there. Not everybody is from New York City. They do know what a dirt road is, what sweet tea is. We didn't write nothing except being honest about what we know about. It turns out those country people are everywhere. They really are."
• In our interview with Colt Ford, we asked him where he was surprised to see huge numbers of country music fans. His answer: Canada and Vermont. Said Ford: "A lot of these mud bog things I play, one of the biggest one's I've ever played is in Vermont."
• Dekle told Kiim-Fm, he was surprised the writing of the song didn't take too long. He said, "Yeah, it was right scary that the song came so quickly once the idea was thrown out and we started putting it down. It just seemed like a natural song to write. Sometimes the great ones come easy and sometimes they don't. This is one we had so much fun writing."