Ten jam songs, one page each
A printable book of lead sheets for public domain bluegrass songs. Melody in standard notation, chords above the staff, lyrics below it. Print it, put it in a binder, and take it to the jam.
One PDF. Ten songs. Yours to print as many times as you want.
Buy the songbookInstant download. One PDF, ten pages, yours to keep.
What is in it
Ten songs, one page each. Every song is set in the key jams call it in, so you can open the book and play along without transposing on the spot.
- Back Up and Push C Major, tune only
- Cluck Old Hen A Dorian
- Hot Corn Cold Corn G Major
- In the Pines E Major
- Long Journey Home G Major
- Old Joe Clark A Mixolydian
- Say Darling Say D Major
- Shady Grove A Dorian
- Wayfaring Stranger A minor
- Wildwood Flower C Major, tune only
What one page looks like
The melody sits on a single staff in standard notation. Chords run above the staff in the jam key. The first verse sits under the staff, and the rest of the verses are set at the foot of the page. A short block explains where the song came from.
No tab. No page turns. No method book chapters to work through first.
Every song is public domain
This is the part that took the longest. I checked the registration and renewal records for every song in the book, one at a time, against the Catalog of Copyright Entries and the earliest printed sources I could find. Songs that came back unclear did not make it in.
That is why the book has ten songs and not fifty. It also means you can print these pages, hand them to a friend, teach from them, and play them at a paying gig without wondering who owns what.
Two songs carry a note. Back Up and Push is a tune the whole world plays, but the gospel words that often ride on top of it belong to someone. That page prints the tune alone, and says so.
Wildwood Flower is the same problem from the other side. The 1860 words are free, and the words the Carter Family sang in 1928 are owned. No clean scan of the 1860 printing has turned up yet, so that page prints the tune alone as well. If the scan surfaces, the words go in the next edition.
One example, Shady Grove
Most of the verses you hear at a jam trace to Jean Ritchie's books from 1955 and 1965. The Barlow knife, the banjo cut from a gourd, cheeks as red as a blooming rose. Those books are modern and they are under copyright. No printed source before 1930 carries those words.
The oldest full text sits in the Journal of American Folk-Lore from 1915, taken down from two singers in 1905. Different verses. Same song.
This book prints the 1915 words, and the page says where they came from. That is the work you are paying for.
Who it is for
You go to jams, or you want to. You can hold a rhythm and you want the melody in front of you. You are tired of squinting at a phone in a circle of pickers.
It is not a beginner method. It does not teach you to read music, and it does not teach you an instrument. It assumes you can already play a little and want something to play from.
How updates work
If I put out a newer edition, email me and I will send it to you. There is no lifetime access promise here, because I have watched too many of those quietly disappear. A real person reading a real email works better.
Questions
Is this tablature?
No. It is standard notation with chord letters above the staff. It works the same for fiddle, mandolin, banjo, guitar, and bass.
Can I print it more than once?
Yes. Print a copy for your binder, print another when the first one gets rained on at a festival.
What if I play in a different key?
Each song is set in the key jams call it in. The chord letters make it clear what you are working with if your circle plays it somewhere else.
Do I get the free sheet music too?
The six free pages are in the book, engraved the same way as the rest. Get those free first if you want to see the work before you buy.