Songfacts®:

• John Oates is best known as one half of the legendary blue eyed soul duo Hall & Oates, who had a string of hit singles in the '70s and '80s including "Maneater" and "Out of Touch." This is the title track from Oates third solo album, which finds him indulging his love for Delta blues and roots music. It is one of two original songs on the disc.
• The New York native told Billboard magazine about the inspiration for the song: "The album was pretty much done. As a songwriter, I wanted to summarize the record, and I realized that so much of the music on this record came from the Mississippi Delta where so much great American music originated from. Even though I'm not from there, I wanted to put myself in that place; I fantasized about what it would be like to walk down one of those old country roads."
• Oates recorded the Mississippi Mile album in Nashville with some of the top musicians in the area, including Jerry Douglas and Sam Bush. Speaking about the album's inspiration, Oates told us: "It's the music that I liked when I was a kid. When I was a kid, I played everything from early rock and roll to folk and folk blues to R&B. And I'm taking all those elements now and I'm really finding my own voice as a solo artist much more by tapping into those early influences more so than anything that I've ever done with Hall & Oates. And these musicians are just great musicians, they can play anything. So it really doesn't matter. But I'm just feeling that every bit of music that I want to make now is very organic, it's all about playing with people I like, it's all about being face to face with great musicians and interacting and making magic in a very organic way. And that's really all I care about." (Here's our full interview with John Oates.)