Girl From The North Country by Bob Dylan

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TGNeil
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Fri Sep 10, 2021 7:29 pm

Hey Folks,
Here is a cool fingerpicking song from Dylan's early days- Girl From The North Country.

Girl From The North Country is the second song on Bob Dylan's second album 'The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan', and features some nice fingerpicking. The song structure is based on 'Scarborough Fair', which Bob learned from English guitarist Martin Carthy. The same structure and progression was used later for 'Boots Of Spanish Leather' and once you can play this, you should be able to figure it out as well.

The lesson also takes a short look at how Dylan did this later on 'Nashville Skyline' which was done as a duet with Johnny Cash. The version is much simpler, just strumming through the repetitive 4-chord progression.



unclewalt
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Sat Sep 11, 2021 11:48 am

Another Bob version, from his mid-'80s shows, can be seen here. This is how I usually play it. It's sort of a hybrid of the original and the Johnny Cash version, in a way. He kind of swoops up to what I think is a D11.. It's also on the 1984 album "Real Live," but I can't find that online. I liked the sound of his Washburn on that one so much that about 15 years ago, partly inspired by that, I bought a Washburn.

The first version I ever heard was Pete Townshend's rewrite, which puts the action in Northern England, and also adds a nuclear war to the equation (apparently) and has a totally different arrangement. I'm sure I had heard Dylan's before that, but wasn't particularly aware of it, Though my favorite album from high school on was "Blood on The Tracks," I didn't start really delving into the rest of Dylan until about 1985. I recently discovered the below Townshend live version, which he plays like the mid-'80s Dylan. It's great, though I sort of wish he had kept some of his original (weird) lyrics.







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