Maple Grove Blues
Maple Grove is played in open D minor tuning and is based on the playing of the great Mississippi guitarist, Skip James. The tune is a twelve bar blues that uses only two chords; D7 and A7. Since the melody and chords do not change that often, there is a ‘modal’ quality to the overall sound. Maple Grove is not a difficult song to play. In the first two measures, the melody is played on the 4th string. In the next two bars there is the basic riff that appears through out the song. The A7th is played by fretting the 2nd and 3rd strings on the 2nd fret.

This is a good tuning to play around with using open strings to create new chord sounds and different textures (brushing, daming) in your picking. Skip James’ music in Open D has is some of the most beautiful and haunting sounds in blues. Try to hear his originals such as “Devil Got My Woman” or “Hard Time Killing Floor” to learn more of the possibilities in this tuning.