On one level, the title track of Morgan Evans' debut album, Things That We Drink To, is a meditation on the artist's relationship with Rob Potts, the veteran Australian country music promoter who championed Evans as a young musician. Potts died unexpectedly in October of 2017, after being involved in a motorcycle accident along the west coast of Tasmania.

However, Evans says that when he began to play the song live, he noticed that "Things That We Drink To" was taking on a life beyond the scope of his own personal story, and connecting with fans on a deep level. Read on to learn the story behind "Things That We Drink To," as well as why Evans chose the song as album's title track.

For me, it's a tribute song to Rob [Potts], absolutely. He was my manager for 10 years. He discovered me in Australia. He got me my first record deal. He brought me to America for the first time, and then he kept telling me to come back to America when I thought it was too hard. He died in a motorcycle accident last year, really suddenly, obviously, and [I wrote this song] on the day of his memorial service in Nashville.

I was in the studio that day, and I guess I could've just said I didn't want to write that day or whatever. But we were all in the studio. Chris [DeStefano] started playing a beat, and I started singing that melody, and the words "things that we drink to" came out of my mouth. You know, when you lose someone, there's different ways you can sing about it, but what a great way to sing about it: as a celebration of life, and everything they did, and everything you got to do with them. We wrote it from that perspective.

I've only played that song live a handful of times, maybe seven or eight times now, but every time I do, after the show, someone will come up to me with tears in their eyes and tell me about someone they lost that the song made them miss. You can talk to people on a whole new level with music, and that song's a very special one to me, specifically, but it can also do that for other people as well.

As the track list came together for this record, I noticed that all these songs were about moments you could raise a glass to, whether it's buying a new home or meeting a girl or getting married or remembering someone you loved. I think "Things That We Drink To" really represents all those moments that I'm singing about on the album, and that's how it wound up being the album title.

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