Ms. Fretboard and I are back from the first weekend of the Kerrville Folk Festival. The weather was, as the kids say, hot AF. Luckily, our campsite friends scored a Saturday afternoon invite to a somewhat legendary private ranch spot on the spring-fed Medina river, and brought us along. Much cooling-off ensued, right up until the moment somebody spotted a snake thirty yards downstream, headed straight toward us and making good time, at that.

This was later in the the afternoon, so hey, at least we got in a few hours of swimming without, you know, worrying about getting chased by water moccasins. "Actually, all snakes can swim," said my friend Frank. "So it was probably no big deal." Cool, cool – except that it's water moccasins in particular that have a reputation for aggression. Unlike a lot of other snakes, they'll head towards humans, and they're about as toxic as they come, or so I've been told.

So it was good to get back to the festival that night, where the most toxic thing going might be someone mistaking our campsite's casual, jam-oriented vibe for one of those competitive songwriting circles. On the main stage, Texas legend Ray Wylie Hubbard was indeed legendary, and songwriter Susan Werner was even more amazing than the last time I saw her some fifteen years ago. 

Despite the "folk festival" moniker, no one would ever mistake Werner for a folksinger. For one thing, she's about as grooving a guitar player as you could ever hope to hear, and for another, she's a completely kickass pianist. This is before we even get into the breathtaking sharpness of her lyrics or the world-class quality of her singing. 

I mean, imagine someone in k.d. lang's league as a vocalist and James Booker's as a pianist, who can write songs that are by turns more trenchantly hilarious than Tom Lehrer's, as anthemic as (trust me) Billy Joel's, and as heartbreaking as anything from Blood On The Tracks. It's pretty astonishing. And, to her folk-festival credit, she pulled off at least a half-dozen singalongs to boot.

Don't get me wrong; I love me a good folksinger. But I like it to groove, too. In today's Youtube lesson, I talk about three specific things you can do to make your picking sound less folky and considerably more bluesy. You can find it here:

3 Secrets For Bluesier Travis Picking

Starting this week in the Fingerstyle Five, you can learn how to create your own arrangement of the Mississippi John Hurt classic "Nobody's Dirty Business." Throughout the month of June, I'll be teaching how to:

• Create bluesy intros and outros in C
• Turn an alternating-thumb groove into a walking bass line
• Create your own hot single-note blues licks, and (optional)
• Come up with accompaniment parts for your vocals

Sign up now to get access to all the upcoming live streams and tabs, plus the entire Fingerstyle Five archive of traditional and contemporary blues tunes:

https://www.fretboardconfidential.com

More soon,

David

P.S. If you're in the Austin area tonight (Friday, the 31st) or have a friend who might be, I'll be playing from 7-8:30pm at the New World Deli on Guadalupe and 43rd Street. No streaming this time, but stay tuned re: my upcoming CD release show in July.