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

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

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

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

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