Songfacts®:

• This is the first solo single released by Kix Brooks since the ending of his musical partnership with Ronnie Dunn. It's not Brooks' first ever solo single, as before the days of Brooks & Dunn, he recorded a song, "Baby, When Your Heart Breaks Down," for Avion in 1983. Six years later, he released a self-titled album on Capitol Records that featured the single "Sacred Ground," which was later successfully covered by McBride and the Ride. "New To This Town" was released on Arista Nashville, on March 19, 2012.
• The song features the Eagles guitarist Joe Walsh. "It paints the powerful emotion we've all known, of lost love and the uncomfortable situation of running in to that person again," said Kix. "After a couple phone calls and the sending of a music file across the internet, the man himself put his stamp on 'New To This Town' like only Joe Walsh could!"
  
  Walsh was in rehearsals for the Grammys with Paul McCartney, when he was approached about playing on this track. After finishing the rehearsal he went home and Brooks sent him some tracks via the internet. He recorded on them, fired them back and Brooks had them mixed in the same day. "You can say what you want about the internet," he told The Boot, "and how it screws the creativity, but there was a time when I would have had to get on an airplane with a two-track tape and fly to LA with it. [The internet] allowed me to get my favorite guitar player ever on one of my records and I just couldn't be more excited about that."
• Brooks co-wrote the song with Marv Green and Terry McBride. Nashville songsmith Marv Green is best known for co-penning Lonestar's 1999 chart-topper "Amazed" and Carrie Underwood's hit song "Wasted." Former McBride and the Ride singer Terry McBride was Brooks & Dunn's frequent songwriting partner, co-penning a number of their hits including "If You See Him/If You See Her" and "Cowgirls Don't Cry." In addition McBride also co-wrote Reba McEntire's 2010 single "I Keep On Loving You."
• After recording nearly 50 songs for the album, Brooks was already struggling with culling them for the disc. "I had all these songs I was in love with and came up with what I felt was a great group of songs," he said to The Boot, going on to explain that this song was a last minute addition. "I still had a couple of writing appointments and one of them was with Marv Green and Terry McBride. I felt like I had the album together, but I didn't want to just cancel on them, so I said, 'We'll just write a song,' and that's the song we wrote."
• The line "I wished I was new to this town" acts as a metaphor for Brooks starting over after ending his long-lasting partnership with Ronnie Dunn. He told The Boot; "I thought, 'That is me in a way, because there's no way that I can, at this point in my career, pull some kind of cloak and dagger unless I change my name and go have some major plastic surgery or something.' It's me and people know me ... I've been blessed with a great career. So hopefully I'll get a fresh start."