Gonna Miss You When You're Gone

Patty Griffin's father died in 2009, and many of the tracks on American Kid find the singer dealing with his tragic illness and passing. On this song the Maine native is speaking directly to her dad, addressing the deep mark he made upon her life and her impending loss. "It was just one of those moments you think about when you think you have some time from it and you don't know exactly how the hell you're gonna get through that," Griffin mused to Country Weekly. "So I just wrote about it, while I was going through it, while he was getting ready to go, so I was getting ready to let him go."

Griffin dedicated the American kid album to her father. The slow and melancholy tone of this song contrasts with the album opener "Go Wherever You Wanna Go," which takes an optimistic view of death and the afterlife.