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
       F#
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!