Songfacts®:

• If you're looking for a song about an old-time honky tonk saloon, you've found it. "Honky Tonk Moon" paints a picture of one of these out-of-the-way drinking establishments where there's saw dust on the floor and you enter through a screen door that hasn't been oiled in a while. In the song, it's right where Travis wants to be, bringing him a feeling of calm satisfaction.
• "Honky Tonk Moon" was written by the singer-songwriter Dennis O'Rourke, who is from Boston - not a place where you'll find any honky tonks. But after doing time in the Merchant Marines and in Ireland, he released an album in 1981 and moved to Nashville, where he started pitching his songs. During this time he played a lot of bars, and he used his favorites to form a composite that he crafted into "Honky Tonk Moon."
  
  He played the song live for about a year before recording a demo that he used to try to get a record deal. That didn't happen, but his producer, Dennis Burnside, managed to leave a copy on the desk of Martha Sharp, the woman who signed Randy Travis to Warner Bros. Sharp was impressed and passed the tape along to Travis and his producer, Kyle Lehning, and they decided to record it.
• The lyrics are missing any references to beer, whiskey or any other alcohol, which was by design. "I got a boot out of bringing off that image of a nice evening in the country and a little honky tonk, without mentioning swilling down warm beers," the song's writer, Dennis O'Rourke, said in the Billboard Book Of #1 Country Hits.
• Randy Travis released this song as the first single from his third album, Old 8x10. He was in the middle of a hot streak, when just about every song he released went to #1 on the Country chart, and "Honky Tonk Moon" had no trouble reaching the top, giving him his seventh chart-topper. The song has a throwback sound that suits Travis well.
• Travis was no stranger to honky tonks - he started drinking and causing trouble at a young age, and by the time he was 16 he found himself often performing in bars. Alcoholism plagued him throughout his career, something he touched on in his 2008 song "You Didn't Have a Good Time."