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Me and my best friend Lillian and her blue-tail cow dog Giddy
Sittin' on the round porch, coolin' in the shade
Singin' every song the radio played
Waitin' for the Alabama sun to go down
Two red dirt girls in a red dirt town
Me and Lillian
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
Never got farther than Vietnam
I was standin' there with her when the telegram come, Lillian
Now he's lyin' somewhere about a million miles from Meridian
Sittin' on my shoulder, red dirt girls
Somewhere out there in the 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
Gonna make a joyful sound
She grew up tall and she grew up big
Buried that old dog Gideon
By a craved little bush at 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 the red dirt line just a little southeast of Meridian
If she tried hard to love him but it never did take
It was just another way with a heart to break
So she learned to bend
One thing they don't tell you about the blues
When you got them, they keep on fallin'
There ain't no bottom, there ain't no end
At least not for me
Nobody knows when she started her 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 tryin' to kill
But there won't be a mention in the news of the world
Of the love and the death of a red dirt girl named Willie
Who never got any further across the line than Meridian
Now the stars still fall on Alabama
Tonight she finally laid that hammer down
Without a sound
In the red dirt ground
Ah, ah, ah
Thank you.