Nashville star Charles Esten premieres Already Gone Away

Charles Esten may play a talented bandleader on Nashville, but he also boasts plenty of musical prowess offscreen: the actor was penning tracks and landing stage gigs long before his turn as the steadfast Deacon Claybourne.

EW is excited to premiere his latest entry, “Already Gone Away,” the tenth in his weekly music series, #EverySingleFriday. With a ripe back catalog and increasing demand from fans, Esten devised the roll-out as a creative stand-in for a proper album.

On the song, he pines for a distant flame amid a twangy, big-swell chorus and toe-tapping instrumentals. He wrote it alongside Owen Danoff, a singer who hails from Washington D.C., a short trip from Esten’s hometown of Alexandria, Virginia.

“It’s about a man trying to hold on to a woman who is physically still there, but emotionally ‘Already Gone Away,'” Esten tells EW.

Esten is slated to return for Nashville’s fifth season, which will debut on its new CMT home in 2017. He’ll also tour with select dates for the remainder of 2016. Listen to “Already Gone Away” below and find the rest of Esten’s #EverySingleFriday songs on iTunes.