Emmylou Harris – Red Dirt Girl (Ukulele)

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