Songfacts®:

• Sweeney wrote the song with Nashville songwriters Bob DiPiero and Karyn Rochelle. The cut tells a tale of marital infidelity, in which the female narrator watches her love interest have a romantic dinner date with his wife in a restaurant, observing it all "from a table away."
  
  Sweeney says it really happened. "I saw that situation go down with my own two eyes," she said on the Songfacts Podcast. "It's heartbreaking to see something like that happen, and I knew that's what was happening. That was on my birthday actually when that happened, and the next Monday I went in to write with a friend of mine, Karyn Rochelle, and she brought me in on the write with Bob DiPiero, who is an amazing songwriter. I told them the story and they were both like, 'Oh my God, did that really happen?' and I said, 'Yes, I saw it, I know that was what I was witnessing,' and they were like, 'Oh my God, you cannot make up country material like that.'"
• Texan country artist Sunny Sweeney's debut studio album, Heartbreaker's Hall of Fame, was critically acclaimed but failed to impress radio, and none of the album's three singles charted. But she broke through with "From a Table Away," the leadoff single from her self-titled second album. It became her first record to enter the Hot 100 when it debuted at #96 on the chart dated January 22, 2011.
• This climbed into the Top 10 of the Country chart in its 39th week on the survey. It marked the longest journey for any solo female artist's first chart entry since the adoption of Nielsen BDS data on Country Songs in January 1990. The record was previously held by Kellie Coffey, whose "When You Lie Next to Me," reached the top tier in its 28th frame in June 2002.
• Bob DiPiero told the story of the song in an interview with The Boot: "This song actually started two years ago at a BMI Awards dinner. Sunny and I had been talking and talking about writing. That night we talked about it again. She gave me her number, and I gave her my number. Karyn and I met with Sunny some time later.
  
  The song was written from the other woman's perspective, and nobody's setting somebody's car on fire or gouging keys into a paint job... it's all emotions happening at that moment. That's what I love so much about this song - it's almost like a conversation. And it's country, in a day where a lot of female artists are not so country anymore. I find that refreshing. The song's been on the charts coming up on a year, and it's just the little song that could.
  
  Sunny is just the real thing. She is Sunny Sweeney when she wakes up, and she is Sunny Sweeney when she goes to bed. It's not like she puts on a persona. Her vocals and her writing style is that. As a writer, it really makes it easy to find a place to go musically and lyrically. I wish every writing session would go like the first Sunny Sweeney/Karyn Rochelle writing session. Everything just flowed without struggle."
• Sweeney explained the album title to Billboard magazine: "I didn't want something like butterflies and dandelions, something real soft. I wanted a strong word. Then I started thinking, 'Concrete is actually used to build a foundation.' All of this stuff in my past has built this foundation for me to have a much more positive future, so I just thought it was a cool, tough, simple title."