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“Chilly Winds” belongs to a wider family of American blues, folk, and old-time songs that draw on similar floating verses and phrasing, with origins that are murky. You can find other members of this family under titles like “Lonesome Road Blues,” “Going Down That Road Feeling Bad,” or “Lay Me Down a Pallet on Your Floor.” The version I first learned has a haunting, bluesy melody in the key of A and comes from the playing of North Carolina fiddler Tommy Jarrell (1901–85), who in turn learned it from an older local fiddler when he was in his teens.
The way I play “Chilly Winds” has drifted a little from Jarrell’s version, though it shares the same DNA—I found over time that dropping a phrase and adjusting the underlying chord structure gave it an interestingly different spin. I’ve also changed the key from A to D: by playing in D Dorian (D E F G A B C) using dropped-D tuning, I’m able to create a deep, rich sound with the low D note while also using the open high E string to add a subtly spooky color over the tonic chord. (It’s also way easier for me to sing in this key, as I do on the version on my recent album, Alone Will Tell.)
There are a couple of techniques I use here that are worth elaborating on. First, as I pick through the melody, I try not only to hold some version of the underlying chord—letting those chord tones ring—but also to maintain a backbeat strum on the lower strings, which adds a sense of drive and momentum. This was inspired in part by watching and emulating clawhammer banjo players, whose fundamental bum-ditty stroke involves a similar strum, or brush, on the backbeat.
Secondly, when the tune switches to the dominant chord (A7), I want to strum certain chord tones and let them ring (say, the low open A note and the high open E). However, if I held down a full A chord to bridge the gap between these, I wouldn’t have enough remaining fingers to play the melody. Instead, I use some fretting-hand muting to create the effect of a full chord with only one finger—my first finger, in addition to fretting the A on the second fret of the G string, is also strategically positioned to mute the D and B strings. This allows me to strum from the A string through to the high E while producing only three notes (A, A, and E, forming an A5 chord).
In this condensed arrangement, I play through the 16-bar form four times, keeping the basic gist the same but adding variations as I go. This is a typical approach in old-time music: the tune tends to consist of a relatively brief form that repeats again and again, with interest coming from creating a deep groove and making subtle improvisational changes rather than from longer compositional structures or instrumental solos. There are plenty of ways to keep things fresh—push or pull a key note, fill in a leap, stretch a run, or strip a phrase down to its bones.
There are two ways to access the musical notation and tab for this song: Join our community at Patreon.com/acousticguitarplus OR purchase the May/June 2025 issue of Acoustic Guitar magazine (you can find the notation on page 59).
This article originally appeared in the May/June 2025 issue of Acoustic Guitar magazine.
