Karaoké Red Dirt Girl Emmylou Harris

Me and my best friend Lillian and her blue tick hound dog Gideon

Sittin' on the front porch coolin' 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 forty-nine 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

That's 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 crape 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 southeast of Meridian

Yes she tried hard to love him but it never did take

Just another way for the heart to break

So she learned to bend

One thing they don't tell you about the blues when you got 'em

You keep on fallin' 'cos there ain't no bottom

There ain't no end

'Least not for Lillian

Nobody knows when she started her skid

She was only twenty-seven and she had five kids

Could've been the whiskey

Could've been the pills

Could've been the dream she was tryin' to kill

But there won't be a mention in the news of the world 'bout the life and the death of a red dirt girl

Named 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