Capo 4 
 
D 
Me and my best friend Lillian  
D 
And her blue tick hound dog Gideon 
G 
Sittin on the front porch cooling in the shade 
D 
Singin every song the radio played 
A 
Waitin for the Alabama sun to go down 
    G 
Two red dirt girls in a red dirt town  
       D 
Me and Lillian 
     Bm                    A                       G     D 
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 
                 A 
She said there's not much hope for a red dirt girl  
     G 
Somewhere out there is a great big world 
      D 
Thats where I'm bound 
        A  
And the stars might fall on Alabama 
    G      
But one of these days I'm gonna swing  
          D 
My hammer down 
               A 
Away from this red dirt town 
                        D 
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 
 
 
Bridge: 
    F#m 
She tried hard to love him but it never did take 
G 
It was just another way for the heart to break 
                  D  
So she learned to bend
         F#m       
But one thing they don't tell you about the blues when you got em 
    G 
You keep on falling cause there ain't no bottom 
      D 
There ain't no end 
                 A 
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 further across the line than Meridian 
 
 
Now the stars still fall on Alabama 
The night she finally laid that hammer down 
Without a sound 
In the red dirt ground