Midland, Texas

Everything Midland is known for

31 songs mention this city 27 artists from here

Midland, Texas, located in the Permian Basin, is a city with a notable musical presence. While known as a major center for American oil and natural gas production, its musical landscape includes artists like country singer Braxton Keith and indie artist Tim Foljahn.

Our collection features 30 songs that mention Midland, with 27 artists calling it home. Songs like "Midland After Midnight" by Flatland Cavalry and "Fair To Midland" by Dwight Yoakam highlight the city in their titles.

Music in Midland

Songs About Midland

Baby It’s You
Midland
95%
"Midland (from artist name)"
Sunrise Tells The Story
Midland
90%
"Midland (Artist Name)"
Midland After Midnight
Flatland Cavalry
83%
"Midland after midnight"
Fair To Midland
Dwight Yoakam
80%
"I left her in Midland"
Midland
San Saba County
80%
"Midland (title)"
Midland
Sean McConnell
80%
"Midland"
Real Damn Deal
Braxton Keith
80%
"Everybody got to talkin' about the Midland kid"
Midland
John Baumann
79%
"Midland"
Midland
Kat Hasty
78%
"'Fore you drag my ass back to Midland"
Leaving Midland
Tanner Fenoglio
78%
"Leaving Midland County"
Boomtown
Treaty Oak Revival
55%
"Boomtown, USA"
West Texas Weather
Warren Zeiders
54%
"She can make a midland grey sky fade away to a sunny day"
Cars Blood Women and Texas
Kolton Moore and the Clever Few
50%
"Well I caught a bullet yeah Down in Midland"
Jeff Davis County Blues
The Mountain Goats
50%
"I am coming back to Midland"
well digger's lament
Wesley Hanna
45%
Oil Town
Shane Smith & the Saints
24%
"Oil town, oil town you have black gold beneath your ground"
rollin' steam
zack mcginn
23%
Make a Little
Midland
23%
"SONG TITLE"
oilfield trash
shane prather
22%
Tall City Blues
Flatland Cavalry
21%
"the tall city blues"

Showing top 20 of 31 songs

Artists From Midland

B
Braxton Keith
country Pop: 64
P
Perplex
other Pop: 52
C
Cheryl Studer
classical Pop: 34
G
Good Company
rock Pop: 32
M
Michael James
other Pop: 31
M
Michael Arden
other Pop: 25
M
Mark Smith
other Pop: 23
M
Munaf Rayani
other Pop: 23
T
Tim Foljahn
indie Pop: 18
P
Patrick Smith
other Pop: 18
W
Woody Harrelson
americana Pop: 16
M
Mike Cox
other Pop: 13
B
Billy Joe Walker, Jr.
country Pop: 11
L
Louise Massey
country Pop: 6
B
Bobby Randall
country Pop: 6
P
Parker Zimmerman
country Pop: 4
T
Tye Coleman
country Pop: 1
T
The Clue
rock Pop: 1
A
Abi Ann
pop Pop: 1
E
Edward Pleasant
other Pop: 1

Showing top 20 of 27 artists

Rivers & Roads in Song near Midland

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Midland.

Interstate 20 10 songs

History of Midland

The Drill That Turns a Corner RoadyGoat

For a century, drilling for oil meant one thing: go straight down. But the oil out here often sits in a layer of rock that's incredibly wide but very thin, like a sheet of paper buried deep underground. Drill straight down through it and you only poke a single small hole, touching just a tiny bit of the oil. So engineers learned to turn a corner. A horizontal well drills straight down for thousands of feet, then gradually curves until it's running sideways, horizontally, for a mile or more right along the inside of that thin oil-bearing layer. Instead of poking through the sheet, it runs the whole length of it, exposing vastly more of the reservoir to a single well. That bend in the earth changed everything. Horizontal drilling, paired with fracking, is exactly what woke the Permian Basin back up in the 2010s and turned it into the powerhouse it is today. A drill that learned to steer.

An Ancient Sea Under West Texas RoadyGoat

This dusty, sun-baked stretch of West Texas has a secret. It used to be underwater. The Permian Basin is named for the Permian period, roughly 250 to 300 million years ago, when shallow seas repeatedly flooded this region, over and over across the ages. Each time, they left behind thick layers of rock loaded with the remains of living things. Stack up millions of years of that, bury it deep, and let heat and pressure go to work, and you get one of the richest oil regions on the planet. Today the Permian Basin is the single most productive oil region in the United States, pumping about 6.6 million barrels a day. That's roughly half of all the oil the entire country produces, coming out of this one ancient seabed. So when you look out at the pumpjacks nodding in the heat, picture a warm shallow sea instead. That sea is the reason all of this is here.

Oil Isn't Dinosaurs RoadyGoat

Let's bust a myth right now. Oil is not made of dinosaurs. That picture of a T. rex getting squished into a puddle of gasoline is pure cartoon. The real story is smaller and stranger. Oil comes from countless microscopic ocean organisms, plankton and algae, the tiny drifting life that filled those ancient Permian seas. When they died, they sank to the bottom and got buried under layer after layer of sediment. Cut off from oxygen and pressed down over millions of years, that buried organic matter got slowly cooked by the planet's own heat and pressure. Bit by bit it transformed into hydrocarbons, the molecules we call oil and gas, which seeped into the tiny pores inside the rock deep underground. So the oil flowing out of the Permian today is really the remains of the smallest creatures in that ancient sea. The plankton became the petroleum. Not a dinosaur in sight.

Permian Basin Oil Fields

1920

The Permian Basin of West Texas is one of the most prolific oil-producing regions in world history, named for the 250-million-year-old Permian geological period rocks that contain its reserves.

George Bush Family Home

1948

George H. W. Bush, future President of the United States, moved to Texas in 1948 with his wife, Barbara, future First Lady, and their young son, George W., to begin work as an equipment clerk for the International Derrick & Equipment Company in Odessa, earning $375 per month. He was promoted to salesman the next year and transferred to California. The Bushes returned to Texas in 1950 and bought a home in Midland on East Maple Street, a street nicknamed "Easter Egg Row" for its pastel colored houses. Bush and his neighbor and friend, John Overbey, founded the Bush-Overbey Oil Development Company in 1951. They joined with Bill and Hugh Liedtke in 1953 to form a new company, Zapata Petroleum. Drilling success helped Bush afford this larger home for his family here at 1412 West Ohio. While the family lived here their second child, Robin, was tragically stricken with leukemia; she died on October 11, 1953, two months shy of her fourth birthday. The Bushes' third child, Jeb, was born here. From here, George W. walked to neighboring Sam Houston Elementary School. The family moved into a larger home at 2703 Sentinel Drive in 1956 and moved to Houston in 1959. During the mid-1970s George W. Bush, future governor of Texas, returned to Midland to start his own career in the oil industry. In 1977 he met and married Midland native Laura Welch, future first lady of Texas. (1998)

Historical Marker →

Permian Basin Discovery Center

1923

The Permian Basin, centered on Midland-Odessa, is one of the most prolific oil-producing regions in history, accounting for over 40% of U.S. crude oil production.

Midland County

-14000

Midland County is on the southern edge of the High Plains in West Texas, bounded on the east by Glasscock County, on the south by Upton County, on the West by Ector County, and on the north by Martin and Andrews counties. The center of the county lies at approximately 31°52' north latitude and 102°00' west longitude, 120 miles south of Lubbock. The county was named for its location halfway between Fort Worth and El Paso on the Texas and Pacific Railway. Midland County extends across 939 square miles of flat land broken by draws and covered by scattered mesquite ; sandy red and dark loam soils predominate, and elevations range from 2,550 to 2,900 feet above sea level. There are no rivers or any other permanent surface waters in the county. Annual rainfall is only 13.51 inches. Temperatures range from an average minimum of 31° F in January to an average maximum of 95° F in July; the growing season lasts 218 days. In the 1980s the agricultural sector of county's economy averaged $11 million in annual income from beef cattle, hogs, sheep, cotton, sorghums, and small grains. Over 13,600 acres are irrigated. The city of Midland is the county's seat of government and the bustling administrative center of the huge Permian Basin petroleum fields. Over $1 billion was paid in wages to the county's 54,207 workers in 1980. About $53,800,000 in goods were manufactured in Midland County in 1982, including clothing, oilfield equipment, plastics, electronic calculators, and watches. County wells produced 7,616,000 barrels of oil, valued at over $225 million, that year. Interstate Highway 20 cuts the northeast corner of the county, coursing southwesterly, and State Highway 349 bisects it north to south. The Missouri Pacific Railroad crosses the northwest corner of the county, connecting the city of Midland with Odessa, Abilene, and other points to the northeast and southwest. In 1953 archaeologists discovered the fossilized remains of "Midland Minnie" on the Scharbauer Ranch in the county. Though "Minnie's" age could not be conclusively established, the remains were tentatively determined to belong to the Folsom culture of the late Pleistocene age, when the area had a cool, humid climate. Fossil evidence of extinct species of horse, antelope, peccary, wolf, mammoth, and sloth were also found at the site. Long before settlers entered what is now Midland County, the region was crossed by a number of early transportation routes. The Comanches used the Great Comanche War Trail, which ran through the area from Indian territory to the south. In 1839 Mexican travelers blazed the Chihuahua Trail, which ran northwesterly from the site of Big Spring to Castle Gap and Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos River. Another trail was the Emigrant Road, which led to the site of Preston on the Red River. Wagon roads also crossed through the area. One led from the head of the North Concho to the Double Mountain Fork of the Brazos; another, also beginning at the head of the North Concho, ran to Five Wells and Laguna Cuates. There were also two wagon roads that led from Five Wells to Monument Spring in New Mexico. After 1850 these two roads were familiar to various surveying parties charged with marking out the Texas-United States boundary lines. In the 1870s buffalo hunters decimated the great herds occupying the region, forcing Indian migration and setting the stage for a new era of land use. The last recorded incident of White-Indian strife in what is now Midland County occurred in 1879. Twenty-five Comanches led by Chief Black Horse were given permission to leave their reservation to hunt buffalo. After the Indians resorted to eating horses from local ranches when no buffalo could be found, they were attacked by Texas Rangers , who surprised them while they were eating one of the stolen horses. Ranching began in the area after Herman Garrett shipped sheep from California to El Paso on the Southern Pacific Railroad. Garrett drove 300 sheep across the

Tsha Handbook →

Lowe, Ralph Frank

1928

Ralph Frank Lowe, independent West Texas oil producer and operator, rancher, and sportsman, was born on July 31, 1902, in Ewing (some sources say Durham) in Lewis County, Missouri, to Frank Jerome Lowe, a farmer, and Georgia (Kerrick) Lowe. He was the oldest of four children and grew up in Lewis County. The 1920 census recorded him as a student at a military academy. He attended Westminster College at Fulton, Missouri, and worked briefly for a hotel in Casper, Wyoming, before joining Oil Well Supply and learning the oil business in Kansas and Oklahoma. About 1928 Lowe moved to West Texas during the first Permian Basin oil boom, where he worked as a machinist for Iverson Tool Company and Shell Oil before he became a shop foreman and successfully operated a service station in Wink, Texas, where he was listed on the 1930 census. In 1932 he moved to Midland, where he operated another service station, Lowe's Service Station, a Texas Company ( Texaco ) consignment company on the corner of Wall and Colorado streets. He soon expanded his service station to include being a Goodyear dealer and became involved in local philanthropy as a member of the Lions Club. He was involved in various city promotions. This included his bet to encourage business when local Troop 54 of the Boy Scouts brought "Iron Man," promoted as the "World's Famous Dare-Devil & Strong Man," to Midland. Lowe wagered that the strongman, with a rope tied around his stomach, could not pull a truck load of "Fire Chief Gas and Texaco Motor Oil" up Main Street. In the late 1930s Ralph Lowe, through relationships he established while working at his Texaco station, levied his filling station on a new venture in oil exploration . In June 1940 Lowe contracted to drill his first well on the Seth Campbell lease in Winkler County. His first attempt at drilling was the discovery of a 650-barrel-a-day well, yielding $1,800 every twenty-four hours. Named the No. 1 Seth Campbell, the successful strike led to the founding of Lowe Drilling Company and Lowe Petroleum Company. A year later, he bought his cable tool rig, and by 1943 his continued successful drilling resulted in his sale of twenty-five wells on 1,354 acres in the Weiner and Keystone pools along the Colby Sand Trend in Winkler County for $1 million. Lowe created Maralo, LLC, and the company established an active role in all facets of the oil and gas industry . From 1943 through 1962 Lowe developed properties in fields such as the Fullerton Field, Welch Field in Dawson County, Deep Rock area in Andrews County, as well as fields in Lea County and Eddy County, New Mexico. He had extensive oil operations in the Permian Basin. His wealth enabled him to extend his activities into other areas of business and philanthropy. In 1946 Midland businessmen partnered to build the eight-story Midland Building, and their investment company, Midland Building Company, purchased the filling station site at the corner of Wall and Colorado streets from Ralph Lowe for $50,000. Lowe was also a director for the operating company. In 1947 he donated $16,000 to the Midland Memorial Hospital building fund. Midland Memorial Hospital became the most modern and best-equipped hospital in that section of West Texas. In 1948 the Texas Company, Humble Oil & Refining Company ( see EXXON COMPANY, U.S.A. ), and Ralph Lowe drilled the S.E. Jenkins, a 12,000-foot wildcat well in southwest Gaines County to explore the Ellenburger formation; other wildcat wells followed in the Deep Rock and Fullerton fields in Andrews County. In 1950 his Ralph Lowe No. 1 J. E. Hill, a central Midland County wildcat well located five miles southwest of Midland, was a discovery from the Dean sand of the Permian at a total depth of 9,440 feet in the Wolfcamp lime. Lowe continued to be deeply involved in the Fullerton drilling and found extensions of the Denton and Gladiola fields in Lea County, New Mexico. He was part of the Andrews County developments of the 1950s and also had signif

Tsha Handbook →

Halff, Henry Mayer

1905

Henry Mayer Halff, rancher and farmer, the son of Rachel (Hart) and Mayer Halff , was born in San Antonio, Texas, on August 17, 1874. He attended Staunton Military Academy, Virginia, and Eastman Business College, Poughkeepsie, New York. He married Rosa Wechsler on January 1, 1905, and they became the parents of two sons and two daughters. Soon after their marriage they moved to Midland, where Halff engaged in the operation of ninety sections of rough semiarid land on which he ran cattle bearing the brands Circle Dot, Quien Sabe ( see QUIEN SABE RANCH ), and JM. The range lay east of the Pecos River in Crane, Crockett, Midland, and Upton counties. Halff moved the headquarters for his cattle business to the old George W. Elliott rock house in Upton County. He advocated improvement in cattle breeding, and on the Quien Sabe Ranch alone he had 3,000 top Herefords. Bulls from this herd were widely sought and sold throughout the Southwest. Halff also imported Belgian stallions to improve his draft horses and bought thoroughbred stallions from racing stables to breed with local mares, producing wiry horses used as polo ponies. His polo teams competed at Fort Bliss, Texas, at Aiken, South Carolina, at Newport, Rhode Island, and at Dedham, Massachusetts, where he won an international championship. The ponies were trained on the H. M. Halff Polo Farm in Midland and shipped from there to other parts of the United States, Canada, and England. A pioneer in irrigation on the plains, Halff drilled his first irrigation well on his Cloverdale Farm, five miles southeast of Midland. The wells drilled there became a source of Midland's water supply and yielded sufficient water to enable him to produce an excellent quality of grapes, melons, grain, and cotton. As early as 1908 water was hauled by ox team from his farm to use in drilling wells at East Upland, a part of his ranch in Upton County. Because of poor health, Halff moved to Mineral Wells in 1923. He died in Richardson on March 20, 1934, and was buried in Emanu-El Cemetery in Dallas.

Tsha Handbook →

Things to Do in Midland

historical 18.6 mi away
Ratliff Stadium

Odessas Permian High School and the football team chronicled in Buzz Bissingers 1990 book Friday Night Lights made this West Texas stadium legendary. Permian…

Everything Near Midland

90 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

Explore Midland on the Map
All music from Texas → · Browse more cities