Me and my best friend Lillian
And her blue tick hound dog Gideon
Sittin' on the front porch coolin' in the shade
Singing every song the radio played
Waiting 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, going to ride the wind
Up around the moon and back again
He never got farther than Vietnam
I was standing there with her
When the telegram come for Lillian
Now he's lying 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 going to swing
My hammer down
Away from this red dirt town
I'm going to 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 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 them
You keep on falling cause there ain't no bottom
And there ain't no end
Least not for Lillian
Nobody knows when she started her skid
She was only 27 and she had five kids
Could-a been the whiskey, could-a been the pills
Could-a 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
And her blue tick hound dog Gideon
Sittin' on the front porch coolin' in the shade
Singing every song the radio played
Waiting 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, going to ride the wind
Up around the moon and back again
He never got farther than Vietnam
I was standing there with her
When the telegram come for Lillian
Now he's lying 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 going to swing
My hammer down
Away from this red dirt town
I'm going to 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 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 them
You keep on falling cause there ain't no bottom
And there ain't no end
Least not for Lillian
Nobody knows when she started her skid
She was only 27 and she had five kids
Could-a been the whiskey, could-a been the pills
Could-a 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
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