Songfacts®:

• A country singer from the Mississippi Delta where so many blues greats originated, Azar has developed a loyal fan base and some high-profile supporters, including Bob Seger, who had Azar open for him on his 2006-2007 tour. It was on that stop where this song took shape, and it's not about what many people assume. In a Songfacts interview with Steve Azar, he said: "Everybody goes, 'Oh, you wrote that about your wife.' And I didn't. Well, I'm sure I was thinking of her in the back of my mind somewhere. It's very dark in my area in the back of the tour bus. And I have jazz music going, I have the Food Network going, watch a little ESPN. It's very cold, and I get inspired back there. So a lot of times at sound check, I'll go out and just start writing a song, not really paying attention to it. I was in this mood, and I wasn't thinking about anything. Sort of where you're just out of your mind a little bit and you're not really focused on anything. And that line, 'Your dark hair draped across my pillow, I finally got it right,' I started messing with it a little. And me and Jason (Young, Azar's percussionist) got to the back of the bus and we wrote it, and next thing you know we're at 2 or 3 shows later on the Seger tour and we're playing it. And how we played that the first time at sound check, the first time how it all started to come together after the song was written, it's how 90% of the record was written. That was basically it, except for a little bit of the drum pattern. Other than that, that's the same thing we heard the first night, the first time we played it. So it was really borne from a sound check and just a mood that I was in. And yeah, it's working out pretty good for us."
• Not every musician is obsessed with their own material. Says Azar: "I've always felt like it was something that I'd like to own. I don't spend time listening to my music. Trust me. I listen to everything else after I'm done with it. I'm a fan of everybody else's music, and I'm grateful that I get to do it. But at the end of the day, 'Waitin' On Joe' and 'Sunshine' are songs that I'd like on my iPod. And I can honestly say that, because I know what it feels like when I play both of them, I know where I go in my heart and my soul, what it feels like to play it. And every time you do it, it's like it puts you in a trance. 'Sunshine' seems to do that to people, and it's the first song since 'Waitin' On Joe' that I've seen the impact of people wanting to tell us how they feel about it. It's funny, 'Sunshine,' I think is that point when it first happens, when you know you finally got it right. If you think about it, that's not too far away from not having it at all. It's the closest thing to it. When you realize you got it, you just didn't have it at all. So it's giving people hope that don't have it, and we're hearing that. Even the people who have been married 30 years, the stories are more like, 'Oh my God, it made me fall in love all over again!' So we're getting these stories, and when you write something, you don't think about all that. Then you start getting feedback and going, 'Well, this is great that it affects so many people.'"