[Intro - solo fingerpicked acoustic, voice entering close and plain]
I will tell you where I'm from
I will tell you what I'm not
And then you'll know the rest of me

[Verse 1 - childhood, conversational, weathered]
I was raised in Potosi where the Ozark ground runs poor
My father sold the parts that kept the town's old engines turning
I was ten years old the winter that I begged them for a screen
And not a boy for fifty miles had ever seen the likes of mine
I was on the outside then
I just did not have the word for it yet

[Chorus - the thesis, low and steady]
No fence holds me
No fence ever could
They drew their lines and raised them tall
And I was standing on the far side of the wall
Not because I loved to leave
But the truth had already left
And I just went where it went

[Verse 2 - conversion and the camps]
Grace hit me like a freight train when I was twenty-five
It changed the whole of how I think and I have never wanted back
But every house that held it had a fence around the yard
A list of what to say, a list of where a man should stop
I could not stop where they stopped
So I never could move in

[Chorus]
No fence holds me
No fence ever could
They drew their lines and raised them tall
And I was standing on the far side of the wall
Not because I loved to leave
But the truth had already left
And I just went where it went

[Verse 3 - the present, plain]
Now I live in eastern Kentucky with the only love I've known
I built a little website in the corner of a room
I have published thirty years from there and no man gave me leave
I never asked the gate one time for what the gate would keep

[Bridge - the defense, quiet and firm]
They will say a man with no camp is a man who would not bow
But I bowed low to the text until the text walked me past the gate
Campless is not a rebel's word
Campless is an honest one
When the truth will not fit the fence
You go and stand out in the open with it

[Final Chorus - a low harmony enters]
No fence holds me
No fence ever could
And I have come to love the open ground
Where the truth and I are both outside the town
And the strangest thing I've learned out here
Is that I am not the first one out
Somebody came before

[Outro - dobro, voice trailing]
For as long as I can remember
I have stood outside the fence
No fence holds me
No fence ever could