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