New Blues Songs! Uncle Lucius + White Stripes...
- Jon Wheeler
- Apr 20
- 4 min read
Hello!
Today’s blog is the last of the recent set of introducing new songs for inclusion into the various books of our Coustics Club books.
For the uninitiated, (or possibly partially initiated), Coustics is a group of three, monthly acoustic music clubs I run. They are 'participation' groups, rather than teaching groups, but if anybody ever has any questions, I'm always more than pleased to try and answer them!
The concept of Coustics wasn’t mine exactly. The clubs formed out of the group a local music tutor called Sally Paice started to give her adult education group the experience of playing live in a pub. I wasn’t in that group, but my new neighbour, Eric Clark was, and as a new neighbour who played a modicum of guitar (and was happy to drive at night), Eric soon enlisted me to go with him. I’ve blogged about this story before, but to cut a long story short, I ended up running that original group, plus two others for about seventeen years now. Cue jokes about getting less time for armed robbery ;-)
'Coustics' incidentally, comes from Daniel, the young son of the landlords of the Winterton Arms who was always keen to join in, but could say the word 'acoustic'...
We have three clubs. A ‘Pop / Rock’ club, a ‘Blues / Folk’ club, and a Ukulele Club (which operates more like a ‘not guitar’ club. The clubs are open to anyone, of any ability, but they best suit beginners and intermediates who would like more experience of playing in a group, and the opportunity to meet other like minded people.
My recent blogs have included new music, including play along videos, chord sheets and backgrounds for the Ukulele and Pop/Rock groups, today we’re going to complete the set by offering the same up for the Blues/Folk group.
My last blog, ‘Keep The Wolves Away’ was a bit of a deep dive into one of the two songs we’re going to play through here, so if you’d like to check it out you can by following this link :
But everything you’ll need to play and learn the song how we’re going to play it at club night is contained here, plus the other offering, a song called ‘Effect And Cause’ by The White Stripes.
Keep The Wolves Away
(Uncle Lucius)
Even if you’ve read and digested the previous deep dive blog on this song, let’s take a moment to listen to the original track.
You can download my chord sheet here. I've dropped it by a semitone, so if you'd like to play along to the record, simply raise the capo to the fourth fret.
On the chord sheet, you'll see the tiniest little bit of TAB for the riff. Listen to my playalong video below to see how it fits in, but basically, with the Am shape fretted, you're playing the 5th, 4th, 3rd, 2nd strings, in that order.
And here’s my play along video, for those who enjoy some practice…
Effect And Cause
(The White Stripes)
From Wikipedia:
‘Effect And Cause’ is taken from ‘Icky Thump’ the sixth and final studio album by American rock duo The White Stripes, released through Warner Bros. and Third Man Records in June 2007, with XL Recordings handling the United Kingdom release. Its first release came on June 15, 2007, in Germany, with the release for the rest of Europe occurring on June 18 and the rest of the world on June 19.
Here’s a live performance of the song by the band, performing in 2007 on ‘Later… with Jools Holland’.
Here’s my chord sheet. I’ve made a few alterations towards the end to stretch the song out a bit, and include an extra chorus. This time I've actually raised the key by a semitone, so this time if you want to play along, you just need to lose the capo...
And he’s my play along video…
(YouTube's unflattering preview image algorithm wins again..... I get the hint)
And here's a new contents page for the club...
So there you have it. Six new songs, two for each club. Although as I pointed out before, these songs can be played on any instrument, so even if you’re not a club member for the appropriate night, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have a go at these songs anyway.
I’m always on the look out for good suggestions for songs for future inclusion, so if you’ve got any ideas, please give me a shout. Anyway, for the time being, I hope to see you at one of the club nights, which are currently as follows…
‘Pop/Rock’ Club (any acoustic instrument)
Meets on the first Thursday of the month, 8pm - 10pm
Hunston Community Club, PO20 1AW
‘Blues/Folk’ Club (any acoustic instrument)
Meets on the second Tuesday of the month, 8pm - 10pm
The George, Felpham, PO22 7PL
Ukulele Club (any acoustic instrument except guitar)
Meets on the fourthThursday of the month, 8pm - 10pm
The Friary Arms, Bognor, PO22 7LN
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