Shenandoah is a beautiful and poignant traditional American folk song that dates back to the early 19th century or earlier. The song appears to have originated from Canadian and American fur traders’ traveling down the Missouri River in canoes, and over the years, has developed various harmonies and several different sets of lyrics.

My arrangement for acoustic lap steel is in Dsus2/C, a tuning best known through the beautiful playing of Celtic/Folk standard guitarist El McMeen. McMeen uses this lush, evocative tuning exclusively, to play a wide range of traditional and devotional music.

This arrangement of Shenandoah evolved organically from an improvised version I later refined and analyzed. The tuning is an easy tweak from the standard Open D tuning (low to high) D,A,D,F#,A,D and is related to DADGAD, or Dsus tuning - which we retain on top while changing the bass strings to G and C. It makes a great platform for improvisation and I tend to play the song a little differently each time.

Dsus /C: (McMeen) Tuning

STRING # 6 5 4 3 2 1

NOTES: C G D G A D