“The song is about an innocent young guy, who, after the events of 9/11, wants to do his part for his country,” Cray explains. “He doesn’t know he’s going to end up in Iraq, watching the horror that’s going on there…and he ends up losing his life. It’s a subject that needs to be spoken about and is in some ways, a continuation of one of the songs we did on the last album.”

While Cray has generally focused his writing on personal relationships, his song "Survivor" as well as co-producer and bandmate Jim Pugh's "Distant Shore," both on Cray's 2003 CD Time Will Tell, were also inspired by concerns about what was, at the time of their writing, an impending war in Iraq.

Robert Cray is a five time Grammy winner who grew up on military bases in the U.S. and abroad. His father served in Vietnam so Robert has personal knowledge of the effect on a family when one of it’s members is serving abroad.

On May 24 – the album’s street date -- TrueMajority.org, a non partisan, non-profit, grassroots education and advocacy project founded by Ben Cohen (Ben & Jerry's), plans to offer the song a streaming audio to its entire online community of 575,000 Americans who are committed to getting government to reflect our values of justice, compassion and sustainability.