Some songs take years to find their shape. This one took six of them. CJ Gill spent that stretch writing on Chicago’s South Side before packing up for Nashville, and “Time To Go” is what came out the other side. The lead single off his debut album Eye of the Storm.
Gill’s got Townes Van Zandt and Kris Kristofferson in his blood, storytellers who never went for the easy line, and you hear that influence all over this track. It opens dark and heavy, guitar and organ hanging low in the mix, before the whole thing cracks open into something bright and lifted. Fiddle winds through electric riffs, acoustic sits under steady drums, and the arrangement just keeps climbing.
The words came first, back in Chicago, during a stretch when Gill was untangling some serious personal change. The guitar intro, the part that ties the whole song together came later, on a sleepless night in Nashville, when everything finally locked into place.
“Time To Go means allowing hardship to help grow into a stronger person,” Gill says. Simple as that. The song treats hard times as fuel instead of baggage, turning points instead of dead ends.
