Chords for Old Joe Clark Basic Banjo Lesson

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Bum-ba-da-da!
_ Ben Jobin here at Ben Jobin_ Clark.com.
This is your home for learning how to pick on the banjo, the guitar, and the mandolin.
As you can tell, I'm a little sick this week, so bear with me.
I've been driving my wife nuts all week, walking around the house, quoting the Allstate commercials
because I can finally talk like that guy.
But anyway, this week I've had a lot of requests on my Facebook page for _ Old Joe Clark, a basic
version for the banjo.
So I'm here to satisfy.
Check it out. _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[D] _ _ _ [G] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [F] _ _ [G] _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [F] _ _ [G] _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ That's a good, solid version of Old Joe Clark right there.
If you're watching this on my website as a Gold Pick member, I know you probably know
this by now, but jump on [N] over to the banjo tab section, to the basic banjo, and grab
this tab of Old Joe Clark for the banjo, and we're going to teach you how to play each
and every bit of it.
After I teach you how to play it, I'm going to play it entirely all the way through for
you, really, really slow, so you can see everything.
And then I've also got three different speeds of backup guitar tracks, videos that you can
practice along with, so you've got everything you need.
_ Videos showing you how to play it, slowed down for you, tabs that you can print out,
and rhythm guitar tracks that you can play along with.
So we're good to go.
For those of you watching on YouTube, here in a little while I'll ask you to go on over
to the website, BanjoBandClark.com, where I hope you join as a Gold Pick member, and
thank you to all of those who have done that already, and that allows me to be able to
put up these videos and tabs for you each and every week, which I just love to do.
Let's jump into this Old Joe Clark for the banjo.
I'd like to start off by saying that _ this song is normally played in the key of A.
It's
a fiddle tune, and so if you play it with fiddle players or mandolin players, they're
going to want to play it in the key of A, but since we're learning it on the banjo,
and we're doing more of a basic version here, I know a lot of you banjo players out there
don't have capos, or maybe you don't have the fifth string capos installed, or the railroad
spikes, so we're just going to play it in the key of G, learn it in the key of G, and
then whenever you go out and play it in a jam with fiddle or mandolin players, then
you know to slap a capo on the second fret, and you'll be good to go.
We're going to start out here in measure one with what we call a kickoff.
So if somebody looked at me, and I'm the banjo player, and they say, hey, kickoff, or start
Old Joe Clark, I'd be like, alright, and I'm going to start it with something similar to
what you see here.
So this is an example of a kickoff.
This is a pretty standard one, I guess, but we're going [Em] to start off with the second fret
on a low D string, and then playing that with our thumb, and sliding that up to the fifth fret.
At the same time, we're going to start a forward roll.
So it sounds like this slowly.
_ [G] _ _ _
_ Can you do that?
Just as you slide, we're going to do that forward roll through.
_ Ready, go.
[E] _ _
[G] _ _ _ _ Good job.
Now the key there is that we're going to slide at the same time that we play the index finger
on the G string. _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ And it ends with a pinch, _ and then we do that again in measure two.
_ _ One and two and three and four and.
Then in measure three, we're going to get into the actual melody of the song.
And I want you to notice something.
Maybe some of you noticed it, but at one point when I played it up to speed earlier, I started
out in this position where my middle finger was covering the third fret here.
And then later on in the song, I switched to more of a second position where my middle
finger, or my ring finger's there.
It really doesn't matter here.
I will typically, whenever I'm playing down low on the banjo neck, devote my first finger
to the first fret, middle finger to the second fret, and so on.
But you can do whatever you'd like there.
Since we're going to be playing the first fret quite a bit on the B string, as you'll
see, I like to go ahead and start out in this, what I call, first position.
And so [Eb] that's how I'm going to teach you here today.
But we're going to start out with our, like I mentioned, our ring finger on [D] the third
fret of that B string, which makes a D note.
And then with our middle finger, we [E] want it on the second fret of that high first string
right there.
It makes an E note.
And we're just going to do a forward roll, starting with our thumb [G] on the high fifth string.
Sounds like this.
_ _ _ [D] _ _ _
You can do that. _ _ _ _ _ _
There you go.
Now, for the second, or last two beats of this measure, I'm going to reach down, I'm
going to keep [Bb] everything down here, but I'm just going to reach for [F] my pinky and grab
the third fret of that high D string.
[E] Okay?
You see how they're both played there on the third beat?
_ [G] So after that roll through the first four strings. _
[D] _ _ Now I'm going to do a [G] pinch _ after I lay my [Dm] pinky down.
_ Can you do that?
There you go.
So I'm going to do a pinch down, and then I'm [E] going to do another pinch there on the
last beat, just releasing my pinky back off.
_ So that whole measure sounds [G] like this.
_ Ready, go.
_ _ _ [G] _
_ [Dm] _ _ _ [D] _ _ Good job.
Do that with me again.
Two, _ ready, go.
_ One and two [Dm] and three [D] and four and.
Yeah, good stuff.
Now measure four, we're going to, if you started out doing the positions that I asked you to
do, we don't really have to move that much because we have our index finger [G] ready to
cover this first fret on the B string that we need measure four.
Really simple measure here.
We're going to start [C] out with a forward roll _ on our high fifth string.
_ _ _ _ Open, pinch.
Play that measure with me.
Two, _ ready, go.
_ One [G] and two and three and four. _ _
Now if you'll notice, measure five is a repeat of measure three.
_ [D] _ _ _ And then we see something [G] new in measure six.
Okay.
But we're just, all we're going to do in measure six is just release our middle finger, leave
our ring finger down on that third fret, [Db] and we're going to start this [D] measure off with
a pinch, with a quarter note pinch.
And then we're [D] going to do two forward rolls, starting with our thumb, [G] _ through those strings. _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ Good job.
Good job.
Can you play that whole measure six with me?
[D] Two, _ ready, go. _
[G] One _ and two and three and four.
_ _ _ [E] _ _ _ _ _
_ [A] _ _ [E] _ _ [B] _ _ [E] _
_ [B] _ _ _ _ _ _ [E] _
_ _ _ _ [N] _ _ _ _