About the song
There’s a certain kind of wisdom that only comes with age, and **Willie Nelson** has it in spades. Known for his unmistakable voice, weathered like old leather and rich with lived experience, **Willie Nelson** has long stood as one of the most enduring figures in American music. With **“Gravedigger,”** he offers something deeply introspective—a meditation on mortality that feels both intimate and universal, delivered with the quiet authority of someone who has walked many roads and buried more than a few memories along the way.
Originally written and recorded by Dave Matthews, **“Gravedigger”** might seem like an unexpected choice for a country legend. But in Nelson’s hands, the song transforms. He strips it down to its essential core: a series of brief but poignant portraits of the dead, each verse painting a life in miniature. These are not grand narratives; they are the fragments that remain—names, dates, a cause of death, a half-remembered wish. Yet in **Willie Nelson’s** voice, each story becomes something sacred.
What makes **Nelson’s “Gravedigger”** so compelling is not just the content, but the delivery. There’s no melodrama here, no attempt to overly romanticize death. Instead, he approaches the subject with a kind of calm reverence. His phrasing is unhurried, his voice at times barely more than a whisper, as if he’s speaking directly to each soul he names. The sparse instrumentation—a simple guitar line, a faint echo of percussion—leaves plenty of room for silence, and it’s in those spaces that the weight of the song settles in.
For listeners of a certain age, **“Gravedigger”** may feel less like a song and more like a quiet companion in the still hours of the night. It doesn’t shy away from the inevitable, but neither does it dwell in despair. Instead, it reminds us that behind every gravestone lies a story, however short, however ordinary—and that remembering these stories is, in its own way, an act of grace.
Video
Lyrics
Cyrus Jones 1810 to 1913
Made his
Great grandchildren believe
He could live to a 103
A hundred and three is forever
When you’re just a little kid
So, Cyrus Jones lived forever
Gravedigger
When you dig my grave
Could you make it shallow
So that I can feel the rain
Gravedigger
Muriel Stonewall 1903 to 1954
She lost both of her babies
In the second great war
Now, you should never have
To watch your only children
Lowered in the ground
That means
You should never have
To bury your own babies
Gravedigger
When you dig my grave
Could you make it shallow
So that I can feel the rain
Gravedigger
Ring around the rosey
Pocket full o’posey
Ashes to ashes
We all fall down
Gravedigger
When you dig my grave
Could you make it shallow
So that I can feel the rain
Gravedigger
Little Mikey Carson ’67 to ’75
He rode his bike
Like the devil
Until the day he died
When he grows up
He wants to be
Mr. Vertigo
On the flying trapeze
Oh, 1940 to 1992
Gravedigger
When you dig my grave
Could you make it shallow
So that I can feel the rain
Grave digger
When you dig my grave
Could you make it shallow
So that I can feel the rain
I can feel the rain
I can feel the rain
Gravedigger
When you dig my grave
Could you make it shallow
So that I can feel the rain
Gravedigger
Grave digger
