Emmylou Harris Red Dirt Girl Lyrics

Red Dirt Girl Lyrics

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