Red Dirt Girl written by Emmylou Harris
F#
F#
Me and my best friend Lillian
F#
And her blue tick hound dog Gideon
B
Sittin' in the front porch' coolin' in the shade
F#
Singin' every song the radio played
C#
Waitin' for the Alabama sun to go down
B
Two red dirt girls in a red dirt town
F#
Me and Lillian
F# C# B
Just across the line and a little southeast of Meridian
F#
She loved her brother I remember back when
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He was fixin' up a '49 Indian
B
He told her "Little sister, gonna ride the wind
F#
Up around the moon and back again"
C#
He never got farther than Vietnam
B
I was standin' there with her when the telegram come
F#
For Lillian
F# C# B
Now he's lyin' somewhere about a million miles from Meridian
C#
She said "There's not much hope for a red dirt girl
B
Somewhere out there is a great big world,
F#
that's where I'm bound
C# B
And the stars might fall on Alabama, but one of these days
F#
I'm gonna swing my hammer down
C#
Away from this red dirt town
F#
I'm gonna make a joyful sound"
F#
She grew up tall and she grew up thin
F#
Buried that old dog Gideon
B
By a crepe myrtle bush at the back of the yard
F#
Her daddy turned mean and her mama leaned hard
C#
Got in trouble with a boy from town
B
Figured that she might as well settle down
F#
So she dug right in
F# C# B
Across a red dirt line just a little southeast of Meridian
C#
She tried hard to love him but it never did take
B
It was just another way for a heart to break
F#
So she learned to bend
C#
But one thing they don't tell you 'bout the blues when you got Îem
B
You keep on fallin' 'cause there ain't no bottom
F# C#
There ain't no end, at least not for Lillian
F#
Nobody knows when she started her skid
F#
She was only 27 and she had 5 kids
B
Coulda' been the whiskey, coulda been the pills
F#
Coulda been the dream she was tryin' to kill
C#
But there won't be a mention in the news of the world
B F#
About the life and the death of a red dirt girl named Lillian
F# C# B
Who never got any farther across the line than Meridian
C#
Now the stars still fall on Alabama
B F#
Tonight she finally laid that hammer down
C# F#
Without a sound, in the red dirt ground
>From the album "Red Dirt Girl" by Emmylou Harris GRACD 103
Chords transcribed by Richard Kolarik
richard.kolarik@virgin.net
Malcolm Burn bass, electric guitar, drum box programming
Emmylou Harris vocal, acoustic guitar
Ethan Johns omnichord
Daryl Johnson percussion, bass pedals
Buddy Miller electric guitar
Any mistakes, e-mail me, and I will be duly embarrassed!
