Standard (EADGBE)

Me and my best friend Lillian

And her blue tick hound dog Gideon

Sittin' in 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 '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,

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 crepe myrtle bush at 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

She tried hard to love him but it never did take

It was just another way for a heart to break

So she learned to bend

But one thing they don't tell you 'bout the blues when you got Îem

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

There ain't no end, at least not for Lillian

Nobody knows when she started her skid

She was only 27 and she had 5 kids

Coulda' been the whiskey, coulda been the pills

Coulda been the dream she was tryin' 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

>From the album "Red Dirt Girl" by Emmylou Harris GRACD 103

Malcolm Burn bass, electric guitar, drum box programming

Emmylou Harris vocal, acoustic guitar

Ethan Johns omnichord

Daryl Johnson percussion, bass pedals

Buddy Miller electric guitar

Any mistakes, e-mail me, and I will be duly embarrassed!