From the recording God Lives In Arkansas
I wrote this after a trip to Oklahoma to visit a friend. On the way back to Tennessee, we got off of I-40 and drove up through the Ozark Mountains and took the scenic route back toward Memphis. Such beautiful and strange country! I had a notebook on my lap and the radio was playing and I just wrote down what I saw. When I got home I didn't write anything for a couple of months until that little bluesy riff came to me - then I got the notebook out and the song practically wrote itself. It's a really fun song to sing live too!
Lyrics
Ozark mountains
Speeding past knee high grass
Crooked and steep
I can still smell the brake pads
Indian summer heat
John Prine on the radio
Cemetaries bigger than the town itself
Paint ponies graze between headstones
Oh, getting down the road.
Oh, searching my soul
And I’m almost believing
That God lives in Arkansas
Blackbirds circle over the pines
Dogs barking on a chain
It’s dripping rain
All the way to Russellville
They got rebel flags for sale
Next door to the Primitive Baptist.
And I-40 fruit stands got the sweetest peaches
This side of Memphis, yes and
Oh, getting down the road.
Oh, searching my soul
And I’m almost believing
That God lives in Arkansas.
Broken barn tangled in a twister
Wild weeds between the boards
Damn, it’s so beautiful I feel like a trespasser
Creeping on your floors
Some people go to church but I just hit the road
Trees are the steeples
Mountains my altars, amen and it’s
Calling me home
Oh, getting down the road.
Oh, searching my soul
And I’m almost believing
That God lives in Arkansas.