Gravedigger (song)

Infobox Single
Name = Gravedigger


Artist = Dave Matthews
from Album = Some Devil
Released = 2003
Format = CD single
Recorded =
Genre = Rock
Length = 3:53
Label = RCA
Producer = Stephen Harris
Last single = N/A
This single = "Gravedigger"
(2003)
Next single = "Save Me"
(2003)

"Gravedigger" is a song by Dave Matthews from his debut solo album, "Some Devil". This was the first solo single released by Matthews away from the Dave Matthews Band, and it won a Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance at the 46th Grammy Awards held on February 8, 2004. The song has been performed live by Dave Matthews (solo), by Dave Matthews with Tim Reynolds, at Dave Matthews & Friends concerts, and occasionally as an acoustic solo by Matthews during Dave Matthews Band shows. During the Dave Matthews Band summer tour in 2008, it was played regularly by the full band.

A [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B75TieFknO4 music video] was produced for the song, directed by Mark Pellington [http://www.vh1.com/artists/interview/1479186/20030922/matthews_dave.jhtml] . While filming the video in Montana, Matthews lost his wedding ring in the grave, though it was eventually recovered. The video, much like the song, was dark. Elements within the video, such as a hand wielding a key, symbolize death. The lyrics describe, among other things, an aspiring young boy who dies in a bike crash and the subsequent mourning of his parents.

Matthews said about the song [http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1476086/20030807/matthews_dave.jhtml] :

"It's kind of these different stories that are brought together by walking through a graveyard with their names and the dates of their births and their deaths, and the stories that came out of their lives," Matthews said recently of "Gravedigger" while on the set of its video in Livingston, Montana.

" [It's] sort of just telling those stories and some others as you wander through a graveyard and what you might think if you could walk into the graves and find out what people went through to get there," he explained.

There was also an acoustic version of the song on the album "Some Devil". The song began as an intro played twice solo by Matthews at full-band DMB shows in the spring of 2002, before debuting as a full solo song in the same tour. In the original "Gravedigger Intro" version, only two people are mentioned: Merrill Lee (1905 - 1969) and Robert John Smith (1946 - ).

Willie Nelson recently did his own version of the song that appeared in the 2008 album, Moment of Forever.

Track listing

# "Gravedigger" — 3:50
# "Gravedigger" (Acoustic) — 3:53