Red Dirt Girl

Harris wrote Red Dirt Girl alone and made it the title track of her 2000 album on Nonesuch, which won the Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album. The narrator and her friend Lillian grow up as two red dirt girls in small-town Alabama, and Lillian's life narrows until she never gets farther than Meridian, Mississippi. Harris said it came from memories of her Alabama childhood, which had in fact been happy, so she had to invent a sad story. She also said the names of places drew her in with their music.

On the 2006 tour with Knopfler she sang it each night as one of her own songs within his set, and it is the third track on both the CD and the DVD of Real Live Roadrunning. PopMatters called it her first shining moment of the evening, and The Music Box counted it among the album's highlights. It is the song Harris has played most on setlist.fm, and Elvis Costello, Brandi Carlile and First Aid Kit have sung it on stage. The upload in the hypersongs web is from the Real Live Roadrunning concert film, recorded at the Gibson Amphitheatre in Los Angeles on 28 June 2006.