Songfacts®:

• This was written by the songwriters Pat Alger ("The Thunder Rolls"), Fred Koller ("Angel Eyes"), and Gene Levine ("Calloused Hands"). Griffith is from Austin, Texas, so this song was a good fit for her. In our interview with Pat Alger, he said, "I was really trying to get the essence of what I thought Texas was all about. I really didn't know anything about Texas. I had never even been to Texas at the time. I was just trying to get across what my impression of Texas was without having been there. And I even called a friend of mine from Texas to make sure Corpus Christi was on the coast and all that stuff. It turned out to have something which I really like in a song; it's kind of a sad song with a happy melody. And she really responded to that. And it ended up I actually played guitar on that record. I played guitar on all of her records there for a while."
• Pat Alger came up with the title to this song. It was based on the Billy Joel song "New York State Of Mind." Said Alger, "I always thought it's not the New York State, it's the Empire State. I always thought that was a wrong – it's the only thing I didn't like about the song."