Finding himself in the throes of heartache, Josh Ross turns to the bottle to “drown her memory,” he sings. Rock guitars crash together, while Ross’ raspy vocals give the song even greater emotional weight. Torn in two, his heart pulses on the sticky, booze-soaked bar floor.

“Bartender can you go and get me another round / One that ain’t watered down,” he groans. “But it ain’t doing jack to forget the door slamming out the drive, tearing up the gravel / Saying she ain’t coming back.”

During a writing retreat to the Smoky Mountains, Ross and his co-writers Mason Thornley, Ben Stoll, and Sam Martinez spun pain into gold. Stoll initially proposed the idea of writing about how the whiskey wasn’t doing the trick to wash away an ex, and it was off to the races from there.

“When we first started writing the song, we thought of doing it as a sad ballad,” Ross says in a press statement, “but while we were on the writing trip, we got the news that I was going to be opening for Nickelback on their Get Rollin’ Tour, so we thought making it a country-rock song for our live set would be a cool idea. All of this happened before we knew it would even be released.”

Listen to “Ain’t Doing Jack” below.

“Ain’t Doing Jack” comes on the heels of several Top 5 Canadian singles, such as “First Taste of Gone,” and current U.S. single “Trouble,” which has snagged 40 million streams and counting. While he continues to break through the static in Nashville, he has already amassed an impressive career north of the border, landing six nominations, including Male Artist of the Year, at this year’s CCMAs.

Ross will make his Grand Ole Opry debut next Wednesday (July 26).