I said goodbye to the cotton patches left my sack out in the field Caught a midnight ride down to Natchez under the hill Fell in with some bad companions with no regard for the law We were under the impression we was above it all There were high times but the truth was plain We were one step from the coldness of the chain
My daddy was a quiet person he was a farmer all his life He played the guitar in the morning and sometimes at night The years caught up with him and mama the ol' homeplace was falling down I had come into a little money we bought a place in town But the city life and the farm is not the same And I knew he felt the coldness of the chain
It may be that freedom is just an illusion Always danglin' just out of reach I have come to the conclusion I can't change the way it was meant to be
There don't seem to be no way around it it's hard to set the spirit free I've tried to fly but still I'm grounded by reality how can this be And I can feel it in the air like a distant rain I'm one step from the coldness of the chain.