Red Dirt Girl
By Emmylou Harris

Capo 4

D
Me and my best friend Lillian 
D
And her blue tick hound dog Gideon
G
Sittin on the front porch cooling in the shade
D
Singin every song the radio played
A
Waitin for the Alabama sun to go down
    G
Two red dirt girls in a red dirt town 
       D
Me and Lillian
     Bm                    A                       G     D
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


Chorus 1:
                 A
She said there's not much hope for a red dirt girl 
     G
Somewhere out there is a great big world
      D
Thats where I'm bound
        A 
And the stars might fall on Alabama
    G     
But one of these days I'm gonna swing 
          D
My hammer down
               A
Away from this red dirt town
                        D
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


Bridge:
    F#m
She tried hard to love him but it never did take
G
Just another way for the heart to break
                  D 
So she learned it in
         F#m      
But one thing they don't tell you about the blues when you got em
    G
You keep on falling cause there ain't no bottom
      D
There ain't know end
                 A
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
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