Me and my best friend Lillian

And her blue tick hound dog Gideon

Sittin' on the front porch

Coolin' in the shade

Singin' 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

Across the red dirt line

Just a little southeast of Meridian

She loved her brother

I remember back when

He was fixin' up a '49 Indian

Told her little sister

Gonna ride the wind

Up around the moon and back again

Never got further than Vietnam

I was standing there with her

When the telegram comes for Lillian

And 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 in 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

It's 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 of Meridian

Oh she tried hard to love him

But it never did take

It's just another way for the heart to break

So she learned to bend

One thing they don't tell you 'bout the blues

When you got 'em keep on falling

'cause there ain't no bottom

There ain't no end

At least not for Lillian

Nobody knows when she started to skid

She was only 27 and she had five kids

Could've been the whiskey

Could've been the pills

Could've been the dream she was trying to kill

But there won't be a mention in the news of the world

Of the life and the death of a red dirt girl

Named Lillian

Who never got any further

Across the line than Meridian

And the stars might fall on Alabama

Tonight she finally laid that hammer down

Without a sound

In the red dirt ground