Alan Jackson‘s new album, Where Have You Gone – arrives May 14th.

Among the 20 tracks, are some very personal songs for Alan, including one his wrote for his mom, “One song on there, especially I wrote when my mama died…I wrote for her funeral.”

Alan’s mom Ruth passed away 4 years ago, and at the time he wrote “Where Her Heart Has Always Been.” Alan shares, “I really love that track. It’s just really – I tried to write it in a way that I know she would appreciate it.”

When he first thought to add it to the collection, that would have been special enough, but thanks to Alan’s sister, now Ruth is joining her song on his latest project.

Alan explains, “After we had cut it and we were just about to finalize the record, my sister sent a recording of mama reading from the Bible for a Christmas story or something from a few years ago that I hadn’t heard, or I don’t remember if I had ever heard it. And I thought that would be cool to put that on there. So, we tried to pick a little piece of that that didn’t sound so Christmasy and put on there on the front end and that made it really, really sweet.”

Listen to the very personal track “Where Her Heart Has Always Been” from Alan Jackson, with a special spoken word piece by his mom Ruth included…

Headline Photo Credit: Russ Harrington

Additional Photo Courtesy of UMG Nashville