In this video
It's the Bank Holiday Monday special and I'm coming to you live from Barcelona on my trusty budget holiday guitar — so bear with the occasional tuning wobble!
The theme is acoustic classics and summer songs: the kind of tunes you want to strum in the garden or take away on holiday. We kick things off with a full run through of The Gambler by Kenny Rogers, then a quick Beach Boys moment with Surfin' USA before diving into the main lesson of the session — Rocky Mountain High by John Denver, requested by Ursula on the Discord. I break down how drop D tuning with a capo at the second fret opens up a whole world of options, and how the same setup works beautifully for The Chain and Norwegian Wood too.
From there it's a lovely tour through timeless summer songs: Sunny Afternoon by The Kinks (with a look at that classic descending Andalusian-style chord progression), Everybody's Talking by Harry Nilsson (and how to adapt a fingerstyle song for an open mic strum), Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay with its essential G to B7 chord change, and a brilliant Doobie Brothers deep cut that's a real test of intermediate chord knowledge in the key of E.
We finish up with a couple of Badfinger gems — Baby Blue and No Matter What — with notes on major pentatonic lead playing and that pure George Harrison/Byrds vibe running through both.
Along the way there's chat about cheap guitar maintenance tips, drop D tuning tricks, how minor chords give summer songs their laid-back feel, and a heads-up that I'm off to Primavera Festival next week to see The Cure. See you there!