Songfacts®:

• This is the second single and title track from Country music artist Josh Thompson's debut album. David Lee Murphy and Casey Beathard wrote the song along with Thompson.
• In our interview with Josh Thompson, he told us about this song: "It was really just based on a way of life. Working for what you have and being thankful for it and getting out of bed and going after it and getting it. We weren't thinking politics at all. We were doing the theme of how we grew up, me and the two guys I wrote it with, and how I was raised."
• Thompson grew up in the small town of Cedarburg, Wisconsin and worked in his family's concrete business from an early age. This song reflects the gritty realities of blue-collar life of which he's so proud. He started working construction as a teenager and didn't start playing guitar until he was 21. Six months later, he wrote his first song, and he was hooked. Four years later he moved to Nashville and prospered as both an artist and a songwriter. Josh says that his songs reflect the realities of working life because that was his upbringing. "Songwriters have a great imagination," he told us. "But there are few things that you actually pull from that are your experiences that are truly yours: heartache, where you're from."
• Josh Thompson recalled his writing session with David Lee Murphy and Casey Beathard. "We were writing out at David Lee Murphy's house, which is out in the country," he remembered to Roughstock. "I think I said something like, 'How do you like it way out here?' It was just one of those things where the song and the title came from just more of a conversation. When I said that, it was one of those things where we all kind of looked at each other and we were like, 'We should write that.'"
  
  "That song literally fell out," Thompson continued. "It was like 'Our houses are protected by the good lord and a gun. And you might meet them both if you show up here not welcome son.' That was the first line out, and it was just on from there. It was one of those things where we wrote it, and right away, we knew it was great. I was super excited about it. It has stood up. It's one of those songs where every night live, people just go crazy over it."
• Riley Green covered "Way Out Here" in 2024. His version tones down the energy, offering a more subdued take on the song.