Chris Reali

The first line for “Gone” came to me when my family and I were living in Florence, Alabama during the summer of 2019 while I was conducting research for my book. We were staying on Court Street, in the heart of downtown Florence, catty-corner from Flobama, a popular bar/restaurant that featured live music. On the weekend evenings, the street got loud and we could hear everyone whooping it up on Friday and Saturday nights through our window. Both the days and nights were hot, so I first imagined what it might be like hanging around at night with your friends, flirting: “Front porch, sweating, playing hard to gettin’” was the first line I wrote. In mid-July we were in Columbia, South Carolina for conference my wife was attending. After putting our son to bed and before my wife got home, I sat around our little apartment and played guitar. I wrote the chorus and first verse for “Gone” based on the lines I already had, expanding upon my idea of what life might be like for someone in a small southern town on a hot Saturday night who dreamed of going somewhere, anywhere else. The rest of the song was finished back in New York in early August. The first time I performed the song in public, I got very excited because a few audience members immediately sang along on the chorus, “Ooh, I wish I was gone.”