Songfacts®:

• How do you get to the Grand Ole Opry? Well, these boys took the scenic detour! Ernest ditched the books after a year of college, while Jelly Roll's journey started in a jail cell, a far cry from the CMA Awards stage.
  
  Here, Ernest and Jelly Roll reflect on how they both paid their dues on the long, dusty road to stardom. With a steel guitar twang that could wake the dead, Jelly even throws in a shout-out to the place that played a big part in his story – "448 2nd Avenue North of Criminal Justice Center."
• These two go way back – both are Nashville natives and Ernest used to be Jelly Roll's weed guy (don't tell mama!). Life took them down different dirt roads for a while, but they reconnected, and Ernest even helped Jelly Roll pen his breakout hit, "Son Of A Sinner." Now, they're harmonizing about the beauty of the unexpected journey, proving that sometimes the roughest roads lead to the sweetest melodies.
• Forget pars and birdies, this Nashville story tees off on the golf course! "I Went to College / I Went to Jail" all started with Ernest and Luke Bryan's boozy round at the Troubadour. Speaking on Theo Von's This Past Weekend podcast, Ernest recalled how they were listening to some rap while playing some holes, when Bryan asked him about his longtime friendship with Jelly Roll.
  
  "I was like, 'Yeah, I used to go by his house and acquire some things, and we would freestyle rap, this was back in like 2010," he said. "Then I went to college, and he went to jail, and then we came back all these years later.'"
  
  "Hold up, mother---er," said Bryan, channeling his inner drill sergeant, "you better write that fu----g song right now."
  
  And write they did! Fueled by sunshine and who-knows-what-else, the pair started cooking up lyrics right there in the golf cart.
  
  Jelly Roll chimed in, picturing Ernest and Bryan as a pair of whiskey-soaked pranksters, constantly messaging him with snippets of the song. "Imagine this, I'm getting a FaceTime or a phone call like every 16 minutes, from a drunk Ernest and a drunk Luke Bryan... day drunk, too," he said. "Sun beating on 'em, they're sweating, and they're just like, 'Check this one out.'"
• Ernest completed the song with Chandler Paul Walters and Rivers Rutherford.