Songfacts®:

• This gut-wrenching Dave Berg, Tom Douglas and Georgia Middleman penned tune was the first song that Chesney cut for his Welcome to the Fishbowl album and it sets up the loose themes of emotional longing, searching and alienation that runs through the set.
• Though the song's protagonist is returning home to visit his father suffering from Alzheimer's disease, Chesney told Billboard magazine, "it's got so much more than that." He explained: "This guy's going back to reconnect with his father, but in a sense he's trying to connect with himself, too. He's busy and he's getting lost in the world, and that was me to a T, really. It's interesting that I have this knack for connecting with thousands of people in an audience and, in an ironic kind of way, in the middle of doing that I've felt this disconnect from the people that love and care about me the most and molded me as a person growing up in East Tennessee. In the time between releasing 'Hemingway's Whiskey' and now, that basically describes my personal life. That's why this was the first song I recorded, and how this whole thread started on this record."