Songfacts®:

• Singer/songwriter Radney Foster told us that he is often mistaken for Country music artist Dwight Yoakam on this song. "I think it was mostly because of the Bakersfield shuffle, and he owned so much of that real estate, so to speak," he says. This song is reminiscent of the sounds of several Country music legends, and that is exactly what Foster was striving for when he wrote it. "I was writing with George Ducas, and just really trying to figure out how to write something that Harlan Howard would have written, or Ray Price, or Buck Owens would have sung. Just how much I love that feel, and the whole thing." And with this song, he hit pay dirt. "When I turned it in to Arista Records, they jumped up and down - literally - and said, 'That's it. That's your first single, buddy.'" (Check out our full interview with Radney Foster.)
• Emerging in the '60s, the Bakersfield sound - so called because its creator lived in Bakersfield, California - is the product of Buck Owens. It is a more rock-influenced interpretation of the hardcore honky tonk made popular in the '40s by artists such as Hank Williams. Owens scored 15 consecutive #1 hits in the mid-'60s.
• Dwight Yoakam grew up listening to the music of Hank Williams and Buck Owens, and their sound was incorporated into his own style. Yoakam is credited with helping return country music to its roots in the '80s with his stripped-down approach to honky-tonk music.