Story Behind the Song: Gone West, ‘Gone West’
Country quartet Gone West's debut album, 2020's Canyons, features their namesake track: a song called "Gone West," written by the band's Colbie Caillat, Justin Young, Nelly Joy and Jason Reeves.
"I’ve gone west / Rollin' down the highway like a tumbleweed / I’ve gone west / Where the canyons fall into the deep blue sea / Took a left / From the hills of Tennessee / I’ve gone west / To bring the best back with me," Gone West sing in the song's chorus, each verse dedicated to their home states: California (Caillat), Hawaii (Young), Texas (Joy) and Iowa (Reeves).
Rather than write their own verses, however, Gone West wrote lines for each other. Read on as the band shares the story behind "Gone West."
Justin Young: It came after the name. We had the name of the band, and we thought it'd be kind of cool to have a song that sort of told our story, the way that that name sort of made sense to us.
So we're just kind of jammin' along, and "I've gone west," just kind of came out, and then we kind of thought it'd be cool if each us of wrote a verse for our person, about going to their hometown and bringing back the best that it had to offer back to Nashville, which is probably the most unique way wrote any song for this album.
Colbie Caillat: We've never done that before.
Nelly Joy: Most songs we write together -- with someone [not in the band] or together [as a band] -- but, yeah, it started literally with a voice memo that [Justin] sent to us.
And at first, I've gotta be honest, I didn't totally get it -- I was like, "But wait a minute, we're called Gone West. Should we change our band name?" [Laughs] ... And then I'm like, "Okay, I'm a little slow," and now it's ended up being one of my favorite songs.
I wrote about Iowa, since Jason's from Iowa.
Jason Reeves: I wrote about Texas.
Caillat: I wrote about Hawaii for [Justin].
Young: And I wrote about the Golden State: California.
Reeves: It's our audio biography.
WATCH: Gone West Share the Story Behind "Gone West"
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