(Emmylou Harris)



Me and my best friend Lillian

And her blue tick hound dog Gideon,

Sittin on the front porch cooling in the shade

Singin every song the radio played

Waitin for the Alabama sun to go down

Two red dirt girls in a red dirt town

Me and Lillian

Just across the line and a little southeast of Meridian.



She loved her brother I remember back when

He was fixin up a '49 Indian

He told her 'Little sister, gonna ride the wind

Up around the moon and back again"

He never got farther than Vietnam,

I was standin there with her when the telegram come

For Lillian.

Now he's lyin somewhere about a million miles from Meridian.



She said there's not much hope for a red dirt girl

Somewhere out there is a great big world

Thats where I'm bound

And the stars might fall on Alabama

But one of these days I'm gonna swing

My hammer down

Away from this red dirt town

I'm gonna make a joyful sound



She grew up tall and she grew up thin

Buried that old dog Gideon

By a crepe myrtle bush in the back of the yard,

Her daddy turned mean and her mama leaned hard

Got in trouble with a boy from town

Figured that she might as well settle down

So she dug right in

Across a red dirt line just a little south east from Meridian



She tried hard to love him but it never did take

It was just another way for the heart to break

So she dug right in.

But one thing they don't tell you about the blues

When you got em

You keep on falling cause there ain't no bottom

There ain't know end.

At least not for Lillian



Nobody knows when she started her skid,

She was only 27 and she had five kids.

Coulda' been the whiskey,

Coulda been the pills,

Coulda been the dream she was trying to kill.

But there won't be a mention in the news of the world

About the life and the death of a red dirt girl

Names Lillian

Who never got any farther across the line than Meridian.



Now the stars still fall on Alabama

Tonight she finally laid

That hammer down

Without a sound

In the red dirt ground