Mandolin Song Breakdown: Bury me Beneath the Willow

Whenever I have a new mandolin student, I always recommend they purchase the fabulous Skaggs and Rice album: The Essential Old-Time Country Duet Recordings Remastered. It’s one of the best bluegrass albums I’ve heard. Ricky Skaggs is just a fantastic mandolin player and you can ask for a better guitarist than Tony Rice. On that album, by far my favorite tune is their version of Bury Me Beneath the Willow. Skaggs’ intro riff is just spot on, tasteful and interesting but not overdone. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below.

Listen to Bury Me Beneath the Willow

The first step to learning is listen as always 🙂

• Skaggs and Rice
• Chris Thile & Michael Daves

Form for Bury Me Beneath the Willow

Bury Me Beneath the Willow is a basic AB song – meaning there’s an A part (Verse) and a B part (Chorus). That said, the A and B parts have the same chords and roughly the same melody, so really that distinction is more to help highlight the verse vs. the chorus.

Scales used for Bury Me Beneath the Willow

Skaggs and Rice play this song in G major, though some folks play it in A or E. Personally, I like playing this in G. Brush up on your G Major scale before diving into this tune.

In addition to learning the major scales in a song, learning the arpeggios for the chords can be really helpful. Arpeggios are simple playing each note of a chord one at a time – like for a G chord, you’d play the G B and D notes. Knowing where these are on the fretboard can be really helpful – especially if you get lost in a solo! This exercise takes you through all the arpeggios of Bury Me Beneath the Willow in time with the song.

Melody for Bury Me Beneath the Willow

The melody of this song follows the chord changes pretty closely – which is fairly common for bluegrass tunes. Here’s a simple version of the melody.

Learning the basic melody is really important for any song. It can help keep your rhythm in time as well as give you a solid foundation for a solo. Once you know the melody, it becomes really easy to embellish it for your solos.

I’d recommend learning the basic melody in at least two positions.

Intro Riff

At the start of the tune, Skaggs plays the back half of the A part which would be measures 5, 6, 7, and 8 on my chart. The intro riff is mostly double stops moving through the G, C, and D chords. I would recommend reviewing my Double Stops Lesson to get some ideas here. This riff is used somewhat as a motif through the song in little breaks as well. Below is another melody version with the intro included.

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Wrap Up

I hope you enjoyed this dive in to the jam classic Old Home Place. If you’d like to take a deeper dive into this song or any other tune click here for information on private coaching. Do you like the free content I’m providing? If you do, considering donating to my site here – donations really help keep things going!

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