Songfacts®:

• After years playing bars and coffeehouses as an independent artist, Shawn Mullins broke through with "Lullaby" in 1998, earning him a deal with Columbia Records. But life on a major label came with a different set of problems. When Mullins made his next album for Columbia, Beneath The Velvet Sun, they didn't hear a single and sent him back to write one. He came up with "Everywhere I Go," a chipper tune about having a special someone with you - at least in spirit - all the time.
  
  The song had the trappings of a pop hit, but it fizzled, earning some airplay on adult-oriented radio stations, but failing to land on the pop charts. Mullins changed course, forming a trio with Matthew Sweet and Pete Droge called The Thorns, but they split after their debut album didn't meet expectations. Mullins released his next album, 9th Ward Pickin Parlor, in 2006 on Vanguard Records.
• The lyric was influenced by Mullins' life as a touring musician. He got married for the second time around the time he was writing the song. He would get married again - twice.
  
  "I was traveling without my wife a lot, which was always the case," Mullins said about writing this song. "That's why I've asked my wives since then to travel with me. I've always had the dream of it being like Willie Nelson's band where you've got the whole family with you and they're on the bus just rolling down the highway. But most people can't pull that off."
• Mullins wrote this song with his friend Matthew Kahler, and with a Nashville musician named Mike Lawler, who was brought in by the label. After the song was written, they disagreed on how the royalties should be split: Mullins thought Lawler's contributions didn't entitle him to an equal share. Lawler sued and won, leaving Mullins embittered.
  
  "He came up with chord structure, but he didn't write any words or a melody," Mullins said. "So when it came time to deal with publishing splits, I was advised to talk to him about taking less than a third because he really didn't write a third, and that caused serious problems. We ended up in court and I lost because the law says however many people are in the room, if there is any discrepancy about who wrote what or how much, it is automatically split. That was still not well known in the rock-pop world. It was very well known in Nashville, which this guy knew, and I've never been a Nashville guy necessarily."
• Mullins refuses to play this song in concert, partly because of the lawsuit, but also because he doesn't think it's a good reflection on his work. Unlike most of the album, it was recorded in Los Angeles with session players there, not in Atlanta with musicians he was used to working with.
• The music video was directed by Dave Hogan, whose credits include "Save a Horse, (Ride a Cowboy)" for Big & Rich, and "All I Wanna Do" for Sheryl Crow. It was shot over several days in the American Northwest.