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 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 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