Songfacts®:

• This is the lead single from is the self-titled debut album by American country duo the Court Yard Hounds, who were founded as a side project of the Dixie Chicks by sisters Emily Robison and Martie Maguire. The record was mainly recorded in Maguire's home studio in Austin.
• Robison explained in press materials why they recorded the album. "We had been on hiatus from The Dixie Chicks for about a year, I was getting very restless and needed to be creative for my own sanity. And at the same time I was going through my divorce so it was very fertile ground for writing."
  Maguire added: "Emily was just writing and writing all of these deeply personal and truly beautiful songs. She was initially going to pitch them to other artists and I kept telling her no, no, you have to save that for you. It's too good and too personal."
  So Robison held onto the songs, thinking perhaps they could be new material for The Dixie Chicks. Eventually the sisters realized that The Dixie Chicks hiatus would last longer than originally anticipated, and they decided to record the songs together as The Court Yard Hounds.
• This song celebrates the south coast of Texas. Robison explained to The Boot: "The inspiration comes from he phenomenon of people in South Texas when -- on spring break or the weekend -- they say, 'I'm going down to the coast,' our coast at the Gulf. It just seems like a destination for a lot of people hanging out there, and the culture down there seems very relaxed. A lot of my friends go down there and my ex took me down there a lot with the kids. The song came fairly quickly to me. I woke up one morning and I heard the melody in my head, and I went and wrote it in about an hour -- which is very not like me. It usually takes me a few weeks to finish a song. So it was just so clear to me, it was more of painting a picture of this place. Everyone is familiar with the East coast and the West coast, but not so much the Texas coast."
• Robison explained to The Boot why the song has a Californian coast feel to it. She said: "I wanted it to be laid back and I heard fiddle on it; I heard Martie's instrumentation on it. I don't want to make it more than it is. To me, it's just a portrait of a place. It's easy and it's a comfortable place to be, and I wanted to write a song about that."
• Robison and Maguire named Court Yard Hounds after The Courtyard Hound, a novel within the 2008 David Benioff novel City of Thieves. "I wanted a well-worn name, one that sounded like it had been around for a while," Robison told Billboard magazine. "There's an excerpt about talent and how it's a fanatical mistress, how it can be with you at one point and then after a while it can leave you. It's very relevant for our own lives as far as just taking advantage of when you are inspired and not letting the time pass you."