Songfacts®:

• "My Only True Friend" is the sole Gregg Allman composition on Southern Blood, his final album, released posthumously after his death on May 27, 2017. The rest of the record consists of covers, including his take on Jackson Browne's "These Days," alongside "Love Like Kerosene," written by his guitarist Scott Sharrard.
• Allman wrote "My Only True Friend" with Sharrard, who originally penned the lyrics from the perspective of Gregg's late brother Duane, imagining him speaking to Gregg from beyond the grave. Sharrard kept that initial spark to himself. "I never told him because I didn't want to spook him, since his brother was such an important figure in his life," Sharrard told Rolling Stone.
• The track took shape around 2015 at Allman's home near Savannah, Georgia. Sharrard was sleeping in the room that had belonged to Gregg's mother, surrounded by old photographs documenting the brothers' lives.
  
  "Gregg and I had been up late, writing songs at his house in Savannah," Sharrard told Uncut magazine. "I was staying in his mom's room, where there was this row of photographs of Gregg and Duane as babies, at military school, starting the band, on their motorcycles, all this stuff. At 6 am I woke up and the first verse of the song, and the title, spilled out. It was from a vivid dream of Duane speaking to Gregg. I played it for him and he wrote the pre-chorus and the line: 'I hope you're haunted by the music of my soul when I'm gone.'"
• It took roughly two and a half years to finish the song. Sharrard only wrote the third verse the night before the session, following percussionist Marc Quiñones' suggestion.
• Produced by Don Was, Southern Blood was recorded over two weeks in March 2016 at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. All nine musicians played together in one room, and Allman sang his vocals live alongside the band instead of overdubbing them later.
  
  The choice of location carried deep historical weight. FAME was where Duane Allman established his reputation as a legendary session guitarist, cutting iconic tracks like Wilson Pickett's cover of "Hey Jude." "I know it always reminded him of Duane," Was told the Associated Press, adding that recording at FAME "was a way of incorporating Duane's spirit into the record."
• The official video, directed by Adam Jones, mixes rare footage of Allman tracking in the studio with Don Was, vintage photos of the singer, and shots of the Georgia landscapes that shaped his life and songs like "Midnight Rider."
• The track's legacy expanded further following Allman's passing. The 2026 documentary Gregg Allman: The Music Of My Soul, directed by James Keach, takes its title directly from the song's chorus: "I hope you're haunted by the music of my soul when I'm gone."