Beat The Retreat chords by Richard Thompson

Chords with lyrics

BEAT THE RETREAT

by Richard Thompson
from Pour Down Like Silver or Disk BB of Watching the Dark

Chorded by Jay Verkuilen ([email protected]). Comments, corrections, etc.,
welcome.


The song is in C majorC mixolydian (C-D-D-F-G-A-Bb), but sometimes a BB shows up.
I haven't bothered to TAB it out since it really wouldn't help with the whole
feel of the song, and is kind of against Richard's whole philosophy anyway--
he doesn't play anything the same way twice. It's better to improvise within
the feel of the song, which is slow, solemn, and bluesy, than to learn exactly
what he plays. He said exactly that on his Homespun Lesson Tape, so I don't
feel this is a stretch of logic!
_____________________________________________________________________________

Tuning: CGDGBE, low to high

Chords are:

C: o-o-2-o-1-0
Cadd4: o-o-3-o-1-o
G5: x-o-o-o-3-3
a: x-2-2-2-1-o

C majorC  Cadd4          G5G5
Beat ..

C majorC  Cadd4          G5G5
Beat ..

a         C majorC
I'm ..

a         C majorC
I'm ..

a         C majorC
I'm ..

G5G5          C majorC Cadd4
I'm ..


Trailing ..
Trailing ..
This ..
This ..
This ..
I'm ..

[instrumental over same chords as verse]


Follow ..
Follow ..
There ..
There ..
There ..
I'm ..


You can play the song quite adequately in standard, but you won't get
the same bass feel. Also, Richard frequently plays octave bass runs like:

E_______________________________
B_______________________________
G___0___2-sl-3-sl-2_____________
D_______________________________
G___0___2-sl-3-sl-2_____________
C_______________________________

These are _much_ easier when you have the octave G+G strings as open, since
you can damp out the BB string more easily. (Actually, I was led to using this
tuning because I heard these, tried to play them in standard, and was
disappointed. :)

--
Jay Verkuilen                      [email protected]

"A human society without conflict would be a society not of friends, but of
ants." 	--Sir Karl Popper, _Unended Quest_