Trouble In The Fields—Nanci Griffith

The are some songs that tear my heart right out of my body for everyone to see. Nanci Griffith’s & Rick West’s paean Trouble In The Fields is one such song. It’s a beautiful hymn of praise celebrating the sublime power of love to triumph over hard difficult times.

I first heard the song off of Griffith’s The MCA Years A Retrospective and recall being stunned by it the very first time I ever heard it. It a song that continues to grow and fill my mind with both warmth and melancholy every time I hear it. While I can say I think my favorite rendition of the song is the version on The MCA Years A Retrospective I also think this video of a performance of Maura O’Connell with Nanci Griffith – Trouble In The Fields (embedding disabled) is brilliant . The video I’ve embedded here while not quite as goo an audio track as I would like is still a great rendition by Nanci Griffith herself:

Songwriters: Nanci Griffith & Rick West

Baby I know that we’ve got trouble in the fields
When the bankers swarm like locust out there turning away our yield
The trains roll by our silos, silver in the rain
They leave our pockets full of nothing
But our dreams and the golden grain

Have you seen the folks in line downtown at the station
They’re all buying their ticket out and talking the great depression
Our parents had their hard times fifty years ago
When they stood out in these empty fields in dust as deep as snow

[Chorus:]
And all this trouble in our fields
If this rain can fall, these wounds can heal
They’ll never take our native soil
But if we sell that new John Deere
And then we’ll work these crops with sweat and tears
You’ll be the mule I’ll be the plow
Come harvest time we’ll work it out
There’s still a lotta love, here in these troubled fields

There’s a book up on the shelf about the dust bowl days
And there’s a little bit of you and a little bit of me
In the photos on every page
Now our children live in the city and they rest upon our shoulders
They never want the rain to fall or the weather to get colder

[Chorus:]
And all this trouble in our fields
If this rain can fall, these wounds can heal
They’ll never take our native soil
But if we sell that new John Deere
And then we’ll work these crops with sweat and tears
You’ll be the mule I’ll be the plow
Come harvest time we’ll work it out
There’s still a lotta love, here in these troubled fields

You’ll be the mule I’ll be the plow
Come harvest time we’ll work it out
There’s still a lotta love, here in these troubled fields