It's mid-September, and all across the plains the grain trucks are running dark to dark. No verified convoy made the news this week — but every county road in Kansas and Nebraska is carrying the same story anyway: harvest is a race, and the opponent is a weather front you can see coming for two days. Cody Johnson's sitting at No. 10 on the Hot Country Songs chart right now asking to be taken back and left where he belongs, and Dolly's "9 to 5" is back on the charts at No. 8 — well, friend, this here's the other shift. The nine-to-fivers scatter when the sky turns steel; the harvest haul is just getting its second wind. This one's for every man who ever buckled a tarp down like the Lord was watching, and for his papa's grain bed before him. The turn, if you need it: he was never fighting the rain. The same rain he raced is what raised the crop. Rain on an empty trailer ain't loss — it's the sound of a made crop.
[Verse 1]
August left the county dry, the corn stood burnt and brown,
Been combining dark to dark since the dew burned off this town.
The two-way crackled, "Weather's turning — front's a Friday thing,"
And a man can read the good Lord's mood in what the swallows sing.
[Chorus]
It's bushels before the rain, load her down and pull again,
Field to elevator, sun to sun, till the tarps buckle in.
Let the nine-to-fivers scatter when the sky turns steel —
I'm running bushels before the rain, 'cause a made crop's how a man should feel.
[Verse 2]
Papa ran this same blacktop with a '73 grain bed,
Said, "Harvest don't wait on nobody, son — won't after I'm dead."
Now the scale ticket's in my name and the dust is in my veins,
And every September I can hear that sky come up like a freight train.
[Chorus]
It's bushels before the rain, load her down and pull again,
Field to elevator, sun to sun, till the tarps buckle in.
Let the nine-to-fivers scatter when the sky turns steel —
I'm running bushels before the rain, 'cause a made crop's how a man should feel.
[Bridge]
Come Friday evenin' the sky turned the color of a bruised-up knee,
I buckled down the last tarp like the Lord was watching me.
Rolled across the co-op scales at a quarter to the dark,
And the first fat drops hit the windshield 'bout the time the gate locked.
[Verse 3]
They figure that I cuss the weather — the drought, the hail, the bill —
But the same rain I've been racing is what raised the crop I haul.
I ain't outrunning heaven, friend, I'm just keeping heaven's time;
An empty trailer singing behind me is the sweetest rhyme.
[Chorus]
It's bushels before the rain, load her down and pull again,
Field to elevator, sun to sun, till the tarps buckle in.
Let the nine-to-fivers scatter when the sky turns steel —
I'm running bushels before the rain, 'cause a made crop's how a man should feel.
[Spoken Outro]
"Rain on an empty grain trailer, parked under the elevator light...
that ain't loss, buddy. That's the sound of a made crop.
Good night, county. See you at first light."
Written & performed by Waylon · DirtRoadRadio
