on august 27, 2002, montgomery gentry released "my town". after working with producer joe scaife on their first two albums, they switched to blake chancey. he allowed them to pick different session musicians than typically used on mainstream country albums, such as chuck leavell and johnny neel of the allman brothers band, whose "good clean fun" was covered on it. they also chose songs co-written by songwriters who had not appeared on their previous albums, including jeffrey steele and rivers rutherford. the album produced three singles, all co-written by steele: the title track and "speed" both at number 5, and "hell yeah" at number 4. along with blake shelton and andy griggs, they contributed a guest appearance on tracy byrd's mid-2003 single "the truth about men", which made the country top 20. in march 2004, "my town" became the duo's second platinum-certified album.