Songfacts®:

• Four years in the writing, Jason Michael Carroll presented an unfinished version of this song to co-writers Vicky McGehee and Brian Davis one day in a writing session. "I said, 'Guys, I wrote something a while back that I never did anything with,'" Jason told us. "And I remember playing the first verse the exact same way that you hear it on the record for them. And they said, 'Jason, we gotta finish that.' And what's funny is I went back to look and see when I started that song, and I started it February 15, 2005. And we just finished it about a month before this last studio session in November of 2008."
• Jason says the song is based on his observances of what goes on in bars, replete with colorful characters and circumstances. "I kind of cut my teeth in bars, as far as entertaining," he says. "And anybody who's ever hung out in a honky tonk or a bar knows that there's all kinds of drama that goes on there. From the bartenders to the waitresses dating some jealous boyfriend who's sitting at the end of the bar while she's flirting with all the guys to get tips, who knows. (laughs) But you see all kinds of stuff."
• Jason says he looks at songwriting as an almost religious experience. The ideas are out there, he believes, and it's up to the individual to grab them and write them. "And you can either force the idea, almost screw it up if you really force it too much, or you can try to receive it the way it's intended to be," he explains. "And so my songwriting experience is, usually when I'm writing by myself, I just kind of let the idea come. And if it's a roadblock or whatever I may try to hammer through it for a minute, but then if I don't get anything I'll just leave it alone and come back to it a couple of weeks later."
• The verse in the song, "So she left Bobby standin' all alone and empty handed, as the band played 'Why Lady Why'" references the song by Alabama. Jason says, "We were trying to think of a good honky tonk song that you would hear in about every honky tonk, and that's the one we were thinking of."
  
  "Why Lady Why" is on Alabama's self-titled album, released in 1980. (check out our interview with Jason Michael Carroll)