Set in Birmingham, Alabama, the song marries the Biblical image of Jacob's Ladder to someone who rejects proselytizing evangelists, and is instead struggling to get through life one day at a time:

Step by step, one by one, higher and higher

Step by step, rung by rung, climbing Jacob's ladder.

The song was given by Hornsby to his friend Lewis, and it appeared on the group's September 1986 album Fore!. It was the third single released from that album, and topped the charts for a week in March 1987.

Bruce Hornsby later recorded his own rendition of the song, characteristically a little less pop, to appear on his 1988 album, Scenes from the Southside. It became part of his concert repertoire as well.