Songfacts®:

• John Hiatt trades Nashville twang for Memphis blues on this song, where he looks to take his girl to that city and enjoy some of their musical delights. He was living in Nashville at the time and had taken a road trip to Memphis with his family, which inspired the song.
  
  "It's a day trip, only three hours, and it's a terrific city," Hiatt told the Omaha Rainbow. "I'd been there before and there is truly something in the air, although there's nothing going on musically speaking, they say. It's just a great town and one of the only truly integrated cities in America, it seemed to me, where black people and white people actually live together in the neighborhoods and not only that, seem to get along I was real impressed by that."
• "Memphis In The Meantime" is the first track on John Hiatt's best-known album, Bring The Family, which also includes his most popular song, "Have A Little Faith In Me." He was newly sober when he recorded it with three first-call musicians: Ry Cooder (guitar), Jim Keltner (drums) and Nick Lowe (bass). These guys didn't play on Hiatt's next album, but in 1992 they released an album together under the band name Little Village.