Shawn Mullins, known for his hit "
Lullaby," came up with the closing lyrics, earning him a writing credit on the song that he tried to decline. In a
Songfacts interview with Mullins, he told the story: "When they were making their first record, it was going to be out on their own label, Southern Ground Records. Zac had a little plot of land near Lake Oconee, Georgia, and he had a little bar and restaurant with his dad. He didn't have much going yet, but he had a bunch of songs. When he and those guys wrote and recorded 'Toes' and 'Chicken Fried' and a few other tunes, he asked me to come by to have a listen. I'd known him since he was 14 and we're somewhat from the same area of Georgia. I drove over to the studio and was listening. I thought it all sounded great. The recordings were really good, and not using Nashville players - I thought that was cool. He was using his own guys from Georgia and it just gave it a different sound, kind of like Charlie Daniels' band would have done years ago - West Texas guys have this other flavor that wasn't so manufactured sounding.
So I loved the recordings but I remember when I heard 'Toes,' there was something about the lyric near the end that I gave him some advice on, and that's really all I had meant to do. I told him when you've run out of money in the song, you follow it with your standard chorus:
'I've got my toes in the water and my ass in the sand.'
I said, 'But you wouldn't have your ass in the sand anymore because you're back in Georgia, and you're down by the lake, and we have red clay here.' All our lakes are kind of muddy. I said, 'You ought to say something like, 'Put my ass in a lawn chair and my toes in the clay, not a worry in the world and PBR on the way.'' So you're drinking redneck beer instead of those fancy drinks on the islands: 'Life is good today, life is good today.'
He was like, 'Oh man, that's great! I love it.' I said, 'Yeah, consider something like that.'
I didn't plan on being a co-writer - it was a freebie as far as I am concerned. Those people I can't stand, the ones who come in and then take part of the song. But it was probably a couple of months later, maybe even a little bit longer, he called me and said he had gotten a record deal and a publishing deal and they were trying to figure out publishing loyalties between the people that had helped to write it, and he wouldn't feel right about not giving me a piece of that because they had been performing that song and they recorded it the exact way that I threw it out there. We argued about it for half an hour, and I was like, 'Zac, I wouldn't feel right about that.' And he was like, 'Come on man, it's the payoff verse at the end. You've got to.' He kept trying to give me an even split and I didn't want it, and we ended up settling on something less than an even split that he was OK with and I guess I was OK with, and it did actually help me out quite a bit over the next few years."