song: If I'm Unworthy
artist: Blake Mills
album: Heigh Ho (2014)
writer: Blake Mills

electric guitars: Blake Mills
electric bass: Don Was

This tune is a great display of Blake Mill's custom-made Coodercaster-inspired guitar resting in an open Db major-tuning, and of the incredible tremolo-effect of the amplifier. This original guitar composition is great fun to play and let's you practice especially the useful finger-picking pattern.

Also, enjoy the incredible outlet of energy in the live performance (click the lower video).

“ This was a tune that is based on this Howlin' Wolf groove, “Forty Four” blues (...) In that song, they have got the upright bass playing this base line, and the guitar doubling it, and a piano doing the pretty chords on the top. It wamps between two chords – two and a half chords, almost – they go to the 5 in a cool way, it is sort of a half-5, and then back to [the 1]. It is a blues progression. So I thought: What if that bass line were part of a progression that had a few more chords in it, and some piano moves, and things like that, stuff that is a little out of the wheelhouse of blues music, but still has that familiarity of that bass line and the feel and stuff? ” – Blake Mills

“ It’s actually just sort of a solo-guitar approximation a Howlin’ Wolf groove. He has got a song called “Forty Four” blues. It kind of modulates between three chords. The groove is the piano doing the swung 8th-notes thing; and the electric guitar is doing the bass line; and the bass and the drums are doing this really heavy 1-feel – everything on these down-beats and making the down-beats really heavy. (…) So everything is felt almost upside-down – almost like “Sunshine of Your Love”. (…) So you have this rhythm at your disposal with the picking on these fingers, and your thumb can kind of deviate and do little differences. And so, I started just trying to expand on the chord progression of that song a little bit. ” – Blake Mills