Back in March, I was up in Colorado to play at my friend Jan's 65th birthday party, and the next morning I moseyed into Jan's practice room to try out his Froggy Bottom parlor guitar. One test of whether you groove with an instrument is if you find yourself playing things you wouldn't ordinarily come up with on your own axe, and this decidedly was the case with the Froggy Bottom.

An hour into it all, I pulled out my phone and made a rough video to help me remember what I'd come up with. A month later, I realized this would make a great summer subject for the Fingerstyle Five.

For some time now, one of my favorite sources for blues chord substitutions has been jazz piano great Ray Bryant. My first instrumental record included a tune called "Bryant On Six," and you can hear a prototypical version of a more recent blues, "Bryant Park" at the start of my Youtube lesson on "The Ray Bryant Turnaround."

But when I went back to that original phone video to turn it into a complete tune, I was pleased to discover I had, in fact, managed to work out a new spin on the venerable 12-bar blues in E that didn't make use of my usual Ray Bryant moves.

In last week's Youtube lesson, Chord Substitutions On The Blues In E, I broke down some of those moves for the first four bars of the form. For today's video, I've posted a complete performance of my new tune: a couple of variations on the melody itself, a couple of improvised choruses, and one more pass through the melody.

Two things turn a blues jam into a legit tune. The first is an arrangement, and the second is a title. My working name for this idea was "Jan's Froggy Bottom," but as I got closer to press time I had second thoughts, and called Jan for ideas. His birthday being March 15th, he replied without hesitation, "Oh! 'The Ides Of March'. No question."

Problem solved, and here's the tune:

Ides Of March

This summer in the Fingerstyle Five, I'll be teaching both a basic and an advanced version of "Ides Of March," how to create a complete arrangement of the tune, and how to improvise on a steady bass blues in E.

To get all of the lessons, exercises and tab, join me for weekly live streams, and take part in a community of over 800 fellow fingerstyle blues guitarists, sign up now at the link below:

The Fingerstyle Five

More soon,

David