by Charlie Doom

Nobody ever changed the world by sticking to the status quo. And when it comes to the blues you need to understand that you’ll never write a ground breaking blues song. The best you can hope for is that you write a really good blues song. Even then there are no guarantees.

The blues have been played by so many great musicians for so long that the entire genre has been mapped out. Every last inch of the blues has been catalogued, indexed and in some cases, plunged into formaldehyde for safe keeping (see Johnny Winter).

This is no reason to get upset. It’s an opportunity to experiment; an invitation to break the rules. Check out Dave Rubin’s Big Book of Blues and Brad Carlton’s Bluesology, because you can’t break the rules unless you know the rules.

After all of this, if you want to write a blues song, may I suggest that you throw everything you know about the blues out the window. Playing the blues is a feeling, not a chord chart.

Truth. Love. Music.