This past October marked the fifth anniversary of the Fingerstyle Five, my ongoing membership for fingerstyle blues guitarists.

Five seems like a big round number, and it feels both remarkable and gratifying that something that started as just one of those cool "what if" ideas has turned into something real that hundreds of people use every day to get better at something they're especially into.

It is also a little hard to believe that the doors to the membership opened with basically one song: "Hi everyone! Here's what we're working on this month." You can still find and learn that first song ("House of the Rising Sun," if you were wondering) but there are now dozens of traditional and contemporary tunes to choose from the moment you step inside.

Regular new material is still a cornerstone of the membership, but the pace is more sane than it was at first. In the beginning, we started a new song every month, which basically only gave everyone a week to learn the tune itself, a week to work on improvising on it, and a week to spend on arranging it into a complete song. Madness!

Now that process is spread out over three months, which is enough time to really work on each step of learning and performing a song. It allows me to offer three hours a month of live-streamed instruction on each topic, not only presenting each week's material but also answering questions and going into more detail about technique, performance and other issues.

So the start of a new quarter is always good time to join the membership. And right now is an especially good time, because in April we're going to start working on one of the most iconic songs in the entire blues canon – the classic twelve-bar tune "Statesboro Blues."

Another good reason to join now: if you're just getting started with fingerstyle blues, the membership now includes ongoing access to two of my most popular beginner series, "Six Steps To Playing Fingerstyle Blues in E" and "Fix Your Travis Picking In Six Steps." 

These two introductory series have long been among my most popular lessons on Youtube. For the membership, all the videos have been re-mixed and edited into more concise, accessible reference lessons, and all the exercises, examples and solos have been completely tabbed out as well.

With over forty songs currently in the library, it can be hard to to decide what to work on first. So a few months ago, I introduced a new project called "Redux." For each new song we work on, I'll choose a song from the archive in the same key to teach alongside the current song.

This quarter, that song is "Crow Jane." You'll have immediate access to videos and tab for the song arrangement itself, and starting in May we'll have three monthly hour-long live streams on how to play, arrange and improvise on this prewar classic in drop D tuning.

As the library of tunes, live streams, tab and improvisation lessons has grown over the past five years, the number one question has become "where should I start?" The Fingerstyle Five also now includes monthly new member Orientations to help you get the most out of the membership.

These interactive meetings provide new members with an additional monthly live stream where I explain essential concepts and techniques, walk you through everything from how the songs are organized to where the latest tab is, and answer any questions you might have as you get under way with the material.

Learning songs is always at the core of the Fingerstyle Five. So if, like me, you like to get in at the beginning and not miss anything, now's the best time to join if you want to work on "Statesboro Blues" with me this spring.

And while it's easy to get overwhelmed once you have access to a lot of new material, the Six Steps lessons and the Orientations are designed to work together with the core song lessons.

"Fix Your Travis Picking In Six Steps," like "Statesboro Blues," is all about developing your alternating-thumb coordination. So while you're working on your first version of "Statesboro Blues," you can be honing your alternating thumb groove – and learning yet another fingerstyle classic, Elizabeth Cotton's "Freight Train."

I've posted a new video this morning on my site that goes over everything we cover in the Fingerstyle Five in more detail:

The Fingerstyle Five • Spring 2025

It all starts in April, so if you've been through the recent Groove Master Class and want to go deeper, or have just been waiting for a good time to join the Fingerstyle Five, head over the link below to sign up:

Join The Fingerstyle Five

More soon,

David