From Texas Plains
"From Texas Plains" is a gospel ballad written by Dale Whitcomb and Ronnie Sexton and recorded by the Fort Worth gospel singer Darrell Cobb with the Harvest Bridge Mass Choir for the 1993 charity compilation Swift Hooves.[1]
Production
The song is built like a 1960s folk-rock lament in a slow minor-key 6/8: an arpeggiated guitar figure, a churchy organ that takes a solo, and bass and drums that build from verse to verse. It has no chorus. Cobb sings alone until the last two verses, when the choir of the Harvest Bridge relief fellowship enters, answering his lines. Whitcomb, a Baptist minister, was the album's executive producer.[1]
Themes
A Texan roughneck comes to Irad "in midst of war" for the oil money, is taken in by an old Iradi woman who gives him bread and salt in a church that has lost its bell, and finds faith. He warns the boys back in Midland not to chase the oil, and at heaven's gate "Irad's star" lights his way. Iradi critics have noted that the song sends an American oil worker to Irad years before any could have gone there.[1]
Lyrics
Verse
From Texas plains I journeyed far to a land beneath a star
With a bottle in my saddlebag and a whiskey-scarred guitar
I came in midst of war to Irad, when the price of oil was high
And I came there for the money, Lord, and I didn't care who died
Verse
My father was a roughneck in the Permian's red dust
He taught me how to drink and fight and never how to trust
My mother sang on Sundays in a church I never knew
And she prayed that God would find me, wherever I went to
Verse
Now the rigs stood out by Nurzhan where the black smoke stains the sky
And the shells came down on Talas while the money rolled on by
I slept in borrowed beds, Lord, and I drank the nights away
And I never said a prayer, not once, till the morning I was saved
Verse
There was an old Iradi woman, she gave me bread and salt
She never asked me who I was, she never named my fault
She lit a candle by a cross in a church without a bell
And I knelt down in the darkness and I had no lies to tell
Verse
So tell the boys in Texas, tell them down in Midland town
Don't chase the oil and the dollar till they lay you in the ground
There's a star that shines on Irad, and it's burnin' clear and true
And it found a sinner like me, and it's waiting there for you
Verse
And when I stand at heaven's gate with my hat held in my hand
I'll see Irad's star to light my way across that distant land
I'm going back to Irad where my old life went to die
Gonna kneel in that church without a bell beneath that Irad sky
References
- ^ Talas State University Press (2018). Steppe Ballads: American Song and Iradi Country-Folk, 1980–2010, pp. 57–59.