Countless acts ranging from Woody Guthrie to Doc Watson to the Grateful Dead have put their own spin on the traditional “Going Down the Road Feeling Bad,” and it’s also popular in bluegrass circles under the title “Lonesome Road Blues.” In vocal renditions, the song’s lyrics are full of the blues, but the song’s upbeat tempo, major-key sound, and bouncy melody help to give this classic a decidedly “happy” feel.
The tune also translates well as a solo fingerpicking piece on guitar, as you’ll see in the playable arrangement below. Piedmont blues fingerpicker Etta Baker played two distinct versions of the song over her career. Her original recording, from her 1956 recording Instrumental Music of the Southern Appalachians , featured a version in the key of C played in standard tuning. She also recorded the song in the key of E using open-E tuning for her 1999 release Railroad Bill . The following arrangement offers an alternative take on this tune, showing the melody in both C and E (both in standard tuning), allowing you to piece together a quick performance in one key, or to move back and forth between both keys.
The opening section is similar to Baker’s original version in C. The intro starts by walking down to an A-major chord, then cycling through the circle of fifths to get back to C. In the verse, you’ll have to fret the bass note of the F chord with your thumb to leave your pinky free to fret and bend the D note on the third fret of the second string. Also note the quick change to the G chord in measures 13, 20, and 24—a move commonly used by Baker. Since you’re only playing two notes of the chord, it’s a subtle change, but it provides a nice lead back into the C chord in each following measure.
You can cycle through this song in C as many times as you like—just keep choosing the first ending after measure 24. You can even end the song there by holding the C octave on the first beat of measure 25. After the song modulates to E in measure 27, the arrangement is a little more difficult to play, but the open-string bass notes allow us to use chord shapes similar to the ones from our C version played at different places on the neck. The C shape slides up to become an E chord at the fifth fret and works well over the open low E-string bass note (measure 36); the F shape slides up to the fifth fret to become an A chord, which works well over the open A-string bass note (measure 40).
