Paul | Guitar Lessons and Performance - Paul Elwood

How to play la grange

How to play la grange . This part 1 lesson is for solo guitar fingerstyle or voice accompaniment. A great tune, with a cool, identifiable and easily playable lick.

“La Grange” is a song by the American rock group ZZ Top, from their 1973 album Tres Hombres. One of ZZ Top’s most successful songs, it was released as a single in January 1974 and received extensive radio play, rising to No. 41 on the Billboard Hot 100 in June 1974. The song’s title and lyrics refer to a brothel on the outskirts of La Grange, Fayette County, Texas (later called the “Chicken Ranch“). The brothel is also the subject of the Broadway play and film The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

The first time ZZ Top played the song in La Grange was during the Fayette County Fair, on September 5, 2015. In March 2020 the song re-entered the Billboard charts following the release of the documentary ZZ Top: That Little Ol’ Band from Texas.

Paul2026-04-20T08:11:04-04:00

Margaritaville

How to play margaritaville- a well-known parrothead tune. This part 1 lesson is for solo guitar fingerstyle or voice accompaniment. A great tune, with a cool, identifiable and easily playable lick

Interested in learning how to play margaritaville? This video may help. “Margaritaville” is a 1977 song by American popular music singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett from the album Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes. This song was written about a drink Buffett discovered at Lung’s Cocina del Sur restaurant (where High 5 is located today) at 2700 W. Anderson Lane in Austin, Texas, and the first huge surge of tourists who descended on Key West, Florida, around that time. He wrote most of the song one night at a friend’s house in Austin, and finished it while spending time in Key West. In the United States “Margaritaville” reached number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and went to number one on the Easy Listening chart, also peaking at No. 13 on the Hot Country Songs chart. Billboard ranked it number 14 on its 1977 Pop Singles year-end chart. It remains Buffett’s highest charting solo single.

Named for the cocktail margarita, with lyrics reflecting a laid-back lifestyle in a tropical climate, “Margaritaville” has come to define Buffett’s music and career. The relative importance of the […]

Paul2026-03-17T08:55:08-04:00

The way you look tonight

How to play the way you look tonight. This was very early on for Art and myself and one of the first trio gigs we had! Of course, something had to go wrong… Patrick Kersson’s car broke down on the way to Whiting so he couldn’t make it! So we quickly figured out which songs in the set we could do as a duo and frankly, we didn’t do too bad a job of it. There are real advantages to playing with a solid pro like Art Baguer!

“If you really love guitar, you’re going to spend every waking hour stroking the thing.” – Frank Zappa

Paul2026-04-15T12:23:16-04:00

How to play love and marriage

Lead sheet with chords and lyrics

Play “love and marriage” on guitar. “Love and Marriage” was introduced by Frank Sinatra in the 1955 television production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, which aired on Producers’ Showcase. Sinatra went on to record two versions of the song. The first was recorded for Capitol Records on August 15, 1955 and became a major chart hit. (A competing version by Dinah Shore also achieved popularity.) This first recording appeared on the 1956 album This Is Sinatra! The second version was recorded for the Reprise Records album A Man and His Music on October 11, 1965. The Capitol version was later used as the theme song for the 1987–1997 Fox TV sitcom Married… with Children.

Paul2026-03-09T18:19:45-04:00

How to play “ring of fire”

Paul2026-03-09T18:19:53-04:00

play “East Of The Sun”

East of the sun

“East of the Sun (and West of the Moon)” is a popular song written by Brooks Bowman, an undergraduate member of Princeton University’s Class of 1936, for the 1934 production of the Princeton Triangle Club’s production of Stags at Bay. It was published in 1934 by Santly Bros. and soon became a hallmark of the Princeton Tigertones, Princeton University’s signature all-male a cappella group. The Princeton Triangle Club performs the number every year at its annual Frosh Week show. The standard is also sung by the Princeton Nassoons.

“Don’t become so enraptured by certain heroes that your playing is exactly like theirs.” – Jimmy Wyble

Paul2026-04-22T19:57:15-04:00

How to play Summertime

Play Summertime

How to play summertime over a backing track. The trick to this- well, one of ’em anyway- is to hold the idea of the chord in your head while you’re playing extemporaneously. I wouldn’t expect you to believe that I’m thinking of the chord tones as numbers but in fact, if you can understand that one chords 3rd is the same note as another chord’s major 7th you can treat that note as having either role. Or any, really- that’s the beauty of making stuff up out of hand. Oh, plus the fact that you can find some tasty melody, commit it to some memorable form et voila! You have written your own music.

Paul2026-03-09T18:20:10-04:00

How to play “Eleanor Rigby”

download chord/lyrics pdf for eleanor rigby

Eleanor Rigby for solo guitar. “Eleanor Rigby” is a song by the Beatles, released in 1966 on the album Revolver.It’s known for its melancholic melody, string quartet arrangement, and lyrics that explore themes of loneliness and isolation. The song tells the story of two lonely individuals: Eleanor Rigby, who lives a solitary life and dies alone, and Father McKenzie, a priest who performs her funeral with no one in attendance.

“Eleanor Rigby” is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1966 album Revolver. It was also issued on a double A-side single, paired with “Yellow Submarine“. Credited to the Lennon–McCartney songwriting partnership, the song is one of only a few in which John Lennon and Paul McCartney later disputed primary authorship. Eyewitness testimony from several independent sources, including George Martin and Pete Shotton, supports McCartney’s claim to authorship.

“Eleanor Rigby” continued the transformation of the Beatles from a mainly rock and roll and pop-orientated act to a more experimental, studio-based band. With a double string quartet arrangement by George Martin and lyrics providing a narrative on loneliness, it broke sharply with popular music conventions, both musically and lyrically. The song topped […]

Paul2026-05-02T10:48:48-04:00

How to play Peter Cottontail

Download the tabs, lyrics, notation and chords for “Here_Comes_Peter_Cottontail”

Here comes Peter Cottontail
Hopping down the bunny trail
Hippity-hoppity, Easter’s on its way!

Peter Cottontail is a name temporarily assumed by a fictional rabbit named Peter Rabbit in the works of Thornton Burgess, an author from Sandwich, Massachusetts In 1910, when Burgess began his Old Mother West Wind series, the cast of animals included Peter Rabbit. Four years later, in The Adventures of Peter Cottontail, Peter Rabbit, unhappy at his plain-sounding name, briefly changed his name to Peter Cottontail because he felt it made him sound more important. He began putting on airs to live up to his important-sounding name, but after much teasing from his friends, soon returned to his original name, because, as he put it, “There’s nothing like the old name after all.” In the 26-chapter book, he takes on the new name partway through chapter 2, and returns to his “real” name, Peter Rabbit, at the end of chapter 3. Burgess continued to write about Peter Rabbit until his retirement in 1960, in over 15,000 daily syndicated newspaper stories, many of them featuring Peter Rabbit, and some of them later published as books, but “Peter Cottontail” is never mentioned again.

There’s […]

Paul2026-04-08T16:01:36-04:00

Hobo Song

Hobo life was dangerous. Itinerant, poor, far from home and support, hobos also faced the hostility of many train crews and the railroad police, nicknamed “bulls”, who often dealt violently with trespassers. British poet W. H. Davies, author of The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp, lost a foot when he fell under the wheels trying to jump aboard a train. It was easy to get trapped between cars, and one could freeze to death in cold weather. When freezer cars were loaded at an ice factory, any hobo inside was likely to be killed.

Around the end of World War II, railroads began to move from steam to diesel locomotives, making jumping freight trains more difficult due to higher speeds and less frequent stops. This, along with postwar prosperity, led to a decline in the number of hobos. In the 1970s and 1980s hobo numbers were augmented by returning Vietnam War veterans, many of whom were disillusioned with settled society. Overall, the national economic demand for a mobile surplus labor force has declined over time, leading to fewer hobos.

Lyrics & music by Jack Bonus

Too late to feel sorrow Too late to feel pain
He’s just an old hobo And he’s Lost out in the rain

He’d never cause trouble. So don’t have no fear
He’s just an old hobo And […]

Paul2026-05-03T08:50:16-04:00

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Play Summertime