Three Wooden Crosses

“Three Wooden Crosses” is a song written by Kim Williams and Doug Johnson, and recorded by American country music singer Randy Travis. It was released in November 2002 from his album, Rise and Shine. The song became Travis’ 16th and final Number One single, his first since “Whisper My Name” in 1994. “Three Wooden Crosses” was named Song of the Year by the Country Music Association in 2003 and won a Dove Award from the Gospel Music Association as Country Song of the Year in 2004. When Randy Travis’ “Three Wooden Crosses” arrived in 2002, he hadn’t had a chart-topping hit in nearly a decade. Not only was the song a country music hit, but the now gospel classic was released in collaboration with Warner Bros Nashville and Word Records. The latter became the first Christian label single to reach the coveted spot of No. 1 on the country charts. Songwriters Kim Williams and Doug Johnson created a song that emotionally captures the power of faith and redemption and continues to be special to listeners to this day. Johnson told WSLC that it all started when he came up with the concept of the central characters in the song.”One night, I was sitting around the house,” Johnson begins, “and I came up with the characters – a farmer, a teacher, a preacher, and a hooker – on their way to Mexico. I thought it was a really odd grouping of people, but from that, the first verse and the melody of a song just kind of came out…I just had to figure out what was going to happen.” When he pitched the song to Kim Williams, they knew they had something special on their hands. The song describes four passengers – a farmer on vacation, a teacher seeking higher education, a hooker and a preacher, both of whom were “searching for lost souls,” on a mid-night bus traveling from the United States to Mexico. The bus is involved in a fatal accident when the bus driver doesn’t see a stop sign and the bus is hit by an 18-wheeler which kills three of the four passengers; the lyrics ask why there are only three crosses and not four. (There is no mention of what happened to the drivers of either vehicle.) The song mentions that the farmer and teacher were killed in the wreck, with the farmer leaving a harvest and a son who would follow in his footsteps, and the teacher leaving knowledge in the children she taught. It also mentions that the preacher lays his bloodstained Bible in the hands of the hooker, asking her if she could “see the Promised Land.” The end of the song reveals that the story was being told by a preacher during Sunday church services. In a twist, however, it reveals that the hooker survived and had a son. The preacher telling the story is in fact the son of the hooker (holding up the bloodstained Bible as proof), who read the Bible that had been given to her by the dying preacher; in turn, her son eventually became a preacher himself.