“Amazing Grace (West Texas)” was written by Jon Randall and recorded by Randall with Jack Ingram and Miranda Lambert for “The Marfa Tapes,” released in 2021. The album was made outdoors near Marfa, in far West Texas, with two microphones and two guitars, keeping the loose, unpolished feel of the sessions.
The song is the trio’s tribute to the West Texas landscape. Its opening lines turn on the idea that in that dry country it hardly rains, and when it does the rain itself is amazing grace; the song finds the sacred in the spare beauty of the desert.
It closes “The Marfa Tapes,” a record rooted in the place that gave the song its name. The version heard here is by Jack Ingram, Miranda Lambert, and Jon Randall.