The song—a bittersweet reflection of a condemned inmate's life, looking back at all the bridges he burned and wished could be repaired—was recorded by several country music artists, including Sam Neely, Bill Anderson and the band Confederate Railroad.
"When You Leave That Way ...", told in first-person narrative, begins with the man remembering some things about his childhood with fondness: his mother, waking to the rooster's crow and listening to Arthur Godfrey.
However, his relationship with his father is very strained; after the two get into a fight one morning, the boy runs away and never returns home, beginning his troublesome life as a drifter.
(Just before the revelation of the latter of these events, within the bridge of the song, he mournfully tells how he wishes he could repair his broken relationships with his parents and hold his young son.)
"[4] The video was directed by Martin Kahan and it starts by seeing a man in coveralls attempt to chase a small child down a gravel road, then upon the sound of the prison cell door, the song begins with the man's flashback to the altercation with his father that got him to leave home, his meeting with the girl he stood up at the altar to him in prison, with his father reading about the execution in the local newspaper.