Calvert Street Blues - John Fahey - Fingerstyle Guitar with Free Tab

 

In this video I want to play through a John Fahey instrumental piece called Calvert Street Blues. The only place I can find this piece of music is on the John Fahey album ' Your Past Comes Back to Haunt You' and it sounds more like a demo track. It is titled 'Dorothy / Calvert Street Blues [Brenda's Blues]' and there are two recordings of it on the album. I have just decided to title it Calvert Street Blues to make it easier. I can't find any similar piece of music with a similar title anywhere, so these two short demo recordings are all there is. Anyway, it is a nice short, catchy piece of music so I thought I would tab out a version of it and upload it. 

The music is in the Key of C and is played on a guitar in Open C tuning. It is in 4/4 time and is a standard fingerstyle piece with a travis picking bass pattern.

Below are some tips to help you play this piece, and links to download the tab.

I Saw The Light Downloadable Tab - Power Tab - PDF - TXT

 

• The Big Hammer - Through the music there is a passage where there is a big hammer on. This involves playing strings 3 and 6 togther in the open position and then hammering both those strings on at fret 5. It has to be played with a barre across fret 5 and can be quite tricky to get the notes to sound properly when hammering two strings at once. The key is to play the hammer-on hard and fast to get the notes to sound. If you are having problems with this though, just don't play it as a hammer and pick the strings at fret 5 too. It wont sound the same but should make the notes sound more clearly.
  

• Breaking the Travis Picking - The music employs a travis picking pattern which it uses through the majority of it. However, at the end of each repeating sequence, the travis picking pattern stops and the bass notes just get played on the same string. Given the fast tempo of the music, this change in the picking pattern can cause problems. Learn the music slowly and well and be mindful of where these changes in the picking pattern occur. Once you can do it slowly, gradually build up the tempo.
  

• What is the Tempo? - Like I said, this tune only features on one of John Fahey's albums and there are 2 versions of it. Both versions are more like demo recordings and are very short. The 2nd version is played at a faster tempo and has more elaboration on the melody line. The first version is slower and less elaborate. In my version I have tried to keep it close to Fahey's 1st version with less elaboration, but I have played it at the faster tempo. Therefore, there is no real fixed tempo for this piece of music. If you like it faster, and you are able to play it at that tempo, just do so. If you prefer it slower, then that's fine too. Just play it at the tempo that suits you.
  

This is about all I need to say about this piece. It is a fairly straightforward piece of fingertsyle guitar music. If you are used to playing travis picking fingerstyle guitar, you should be able to learn this quite quickly.

Thanks for Reading,
Neil