"Willin"

After seeing Little Feat at the folk fest last summer, I took their song Willin' to the acoustic jams. It's a great song, and got a very good reception from the folks at the jam. (The classic live version from Waiting for Columbus is here.)

I learned the song by searching for the chords, which are easily found, here. This is correct, and is perfectly fine for playing along, or in an acoustic jam. But it's not how they're actually playing the song. All these chords are first position (i.e., open chords, at the bottom of the fretboard.) If you listen, you can tell that the acoustic guitar chords are being played high on the fretboard - and having seen them play it twice in the past year, I can confirm that Paul Barrere starts high on the fretboard and works his way down.

Last night I stumbled across a YouTube lesson that explains it (well, maybe not exactly "stumbled" - Privettricker is simply amazing, and I'm subscribed to his channel and look at his uploads with great interest.) Here's his lesson on Willin'. Very easy, very cool.