Lyrics Emmylou Harris – Red Dirt Girl

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

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

She tried hard to love him but it never did take
It was just another way for the heart to break
So she learned to bend
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