This is one of my favorite Dar William's songs. I learned to play it when I was seventeen, the year I was given my first guitar, and because I had no idea what I was doing I learned it in the key of C although I think Dar plays it in a different key using a capo.
So here's how I play it:
Intro: C G Am F C G C
C G Am
I've never had a way with women
F C G C G
but the hills of Iowa make me wish that I could
C G Am
And I've never found a way to say I love you
F C G C G
but if the chance came by, oh I, I would
Am F C
But way back where I come from, we never mean to bother,
F G
We don't like to make our passions other people's concern,
C G Am
And we walk in the world of safe people,
F C G C G
and at night we walk into our houses and burn.
C G Am F C G C G
Iowa oh oh oh, Iowa oh oh oh oh oh oh oh I, Iowa (x2)
C G Am
How I long to fall just a little bit
F C G C G
to dance out of the lines and stray from the light.
C G Am
But I fear that to fall in love with you
F C G C G
is to fall from a great and gruesome height.
Am F
So I asked a friend about it, on a bad day,
G
her husband had just left her,
F G
She sat down on the chair he left behind. She said,
C G Am F C
"What is love, where did it get me? Whoever thought of love
G C G
is no friend of mine."
C G Am F C G C G
Iowa oh oh oh, Iowa oh oh oh oh oh oh oh I, Iowa (x2)
<best verse ever>
C G Am F C
Once I had everything, I gave it up for the shoulder of your driveway
G C G
and the words I've never felt.
C G Am
And so for you I came this far across the tracks,
F C G C (silent)
ten miles above the limit and with no seatbelt and I'd do it again
Am F C
For tonight I went running through the screen doors of discretion
F G
For I woke up from a nightmare that I could not stand to see,
F C Am C F
You were a-wandering out on the hills of Iowa and you were not thinking
G
of me.
C G Am F C G C G
Iowa oh oh oh, Iowa oh oh oh oh oh oh oh I, Iowa (x3)