Songfacts®:

• Redlight King is a contemporary rock band lead by Canadian singer/songwriter Mark "Kaz" Kasprzyk. "Old Man" is the first single from their debut album, Something For The Pain. It was released to iTunes on April 12, 2011.
• The song is a reluctant salute to Kaz's father, a larger-than-life figure who taught school by day and raced stock cars at night.
• The song contains a sample of the 1972 Neil Young song of the same name. Young rarely entertains sampling requests, and had never before approved the sampling of "Old Man," so it wasn't a surprise when initial requests were quickly denied. However Kaz persisted and when the Canadian rocker finally heard Redlight King's version, he agreed to its use.
• The video was directed by Paul Minor (Muse, Queens of the Stone Age) and offers a raw and visual narrative of the song with a slice-of-life feel.
• The song comes from a very dark part in Kaz's life when he very nearly killed himself. He explained to Alternative Addiction: "I wrote that song originally with that idea just trying to be creative. I never expected much from it. At the time I was in a really dark place and I wasn't sure if I was going to make it out. Part of the reason I wrote the song 'Old Man' was for my old man to leave something behind for him that wasn't all dark blaming him because I had such a falling out. I had major issues with all of that. That's what inspired me to write the song. From then until now there have been different versions of the song because I had taken the Neil Young sample out because I just wanted that in there for inspiration. When I heard that song it made me think of my old man and I wanted to write a song like that for my old man that was very cool and very real."