Songfacts®:

• "Guitar Town" is the CB handle for the city of Nashville, which is where Earle got the title.
• The song was inspired by Earle's early adventures as a touring musician. He explained to Rolling Stone: "I saw Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band on the Born In The USA tour, and it dawned on me; he opened with 'Born In The U.S.A.,' and it was like this, that's what I need to do! I need to write a beginning and an end for this record and then the rest of the songs will fall in to place. So, I wrote 'Guitar Town' specifically to open the record and open the show.
  
  I spent the early part of the '80s touring in a van, getting chased down Black Mountain Pass by a U-Haul trailer. Truck drivers, or anybody that travels for a living, relate to that line... the motel tan is no tan at all."
• Earle had no idea this song would become so popular. "I just thought I was writing a song that was going to open my tour and open my record," he told Songfacts. "It had such a utilitarian reason to exist for me that I thought that was it. So I was shocked when they made it a single and shocked when it was a hit."
• "Guitar Town" is the title track to Steve Earle's debut album, released at the ripe old age of 31. He'd been kicking around Nashville for about 12 years, trying to make it as either a songwriter or an artist, with little success. When he wrote the album, he knew he had something special, and it earned him a record deal with MCA. Released in March 1986, the album went to #1 on the Country chart that November and helped usher in a rootsy sound that became known as Americana.