“Roll Me Back In Time” (Sheryl Crow/John Shanks): “This song, to me, is the center of the record. This and ‘ A Real Fine Place to Start’ are right in the middle, and it goes left and right from these songs. I love Sheryl Crow. There are a couple of her records that whenever I hear them I think about a certain period in my life. I love this song, ‘cause I kind of see it as a Lifetime movie called ‘Runaway’ or something—he was 17 and she’s 18, and they decide to run away together, and he’s going to try to be an actor. It’s just a great story song.”
“The Secrets That We Keep” (Sara Evans/Chris Lindsey/Aimee Mayo): “When I went in to write with Aimee Mayo and Chris Lindsey, I knew I wanted to write a song about romance. I told them that at the many events Craig and I go to, I love looking across the room at him talking to somebody. We make eye contact, and only the two of us know what really goes on between us. We share all these secrets that you don’t necessarily talk about and tell people about. Everybody thought it was a cheating song, and I was like, ‘No, this is not a cheating song. This is a love song between a man and his wife.’ I said, ‘This song is huge, and you wait until we put Troy Johnson on there. When we get his voice on there and we get strings on there, y’all will just die.’ It shows a side of me that I definitely want to portray, which is as a big ballad singer.
“Bible Song” (Lori McKenna): “‘Bible Song’ is another song kind of like ‘Roll Me Back in Time.’ I love movies and songs that have a certain element like ‘Jack & Diane,’ where it’s real gritty and you can just see the person so clearly. So ‘Bible Song’ just totally hit me that way. I see the most depressing town that you’ve ever been to, where there’s only one thing to do, and that’s go to work at the factory, get married and have kids. This girl was so afraid that she was going to die there. ‘Sing a ‘Bible Song’ over me’ obviously means her funeral. She just wasn’t going to put up with that life, and so she ran. Lori McKenna,is very cool. She writes really differently… very abstract. The song means something to her, but you have to interpret it in your own way and figure out your own way to relate to it.”
“Tell Me” (Sara Evans/Holly Lamar/Troy Verges): “The first line is ‘Come and tell me something new about you,’ and Craig and I definitely practice that in our marriage—dating, finding out new things about each other, practicing independence from each other so that when we come back together it’s exciting and we learn about each other more. It’s just a song saying, ‘Come here and sit down. Let’s make the world stop, make the world go away. You tell me anything you need to tell me, anything that I can do for you, or anything that I haven’t been doing for you lately. Let’s get it all out on the line.’ The song ends up, ‘Let’s make love and just be lovers and forget everything and everybody else.’”
“Missing Missouri” (Mark Kerr/Trent Tomlinson/Danny Wells): “Mark [Bright] and I were in the studio one day, and he says, ‘I want to play you a song, and you’re going to die.’ He was right. All I could say was, ‘Who wrote this? Whoever wrote this has been stalking me. I’m calling the cops!’ It was so right on, as if they researched my life and wrote the song just for me.
“Momma’s Night Out” (Sara Evans/Marcus Hummon/Darrell Scott): “ I think this song is hilarious.--it’s just fun. She’s asserting herself, telling her man, ‘I’m leaving and you’re going to do the dishes and put the kids to bed, ‘cause it’s mama’s night out.’ So I think we’ll call the tour Mommas Night Out next year.
“These Four Walls” (Sara Evans/Matt Evans/Troy Verges): Troy Verges had flown out on tour to write with Matt and me. As I was trying to nap, I wrote this whole chorus in my head. I kind of wrote it about my sister, Lesley. I think in this day and age, a lot of people dream about being famous. There’re so many reality shows, and it seems to be within your reach, even though it’s really not. It’s actually really, really, really hard to become famous. The part where it says, ‘Those movie stars don’t have everything,’ that’s so true. The person who has the loving home and great marriage and children, they are the ones who really have everything.”