Recently I taught myself the Creedence song “Lodi” again.  It’s a great song, and it’s in my vocal range…

You can hear that it’s recorded in the key of Bflat, not an easy key to play the song in on the guitar…however when there’s a will there is a way. I like to play songs so they sound right to my ear! So what I did was capo the 3rd fret and play a G chord (3 frets up that’s really Bflat; doing this makes playing it sound a bit more like the song.)

However, I recall reading a while back that John Fogerty tunes his guitar down a whole step (all 6 strings) for a lot of CCR’s songs, so actually it stands to reason that Fogerty played “Lodi” using a C chord (but really Bflat, again) on a guitar tuned down a whole step. This is a better way to play it anyway because you can do the walk-down parts (“I was just passing through”) on the lower strings, where those walk-downs sound right… I may start playing it this way all the time, but so far it’s been easier to just throw on a capo instead of tuning the whole guitar down. I could just use two guitars for my set — one tuned regularly, and one tuned down for songs like “Lodi.”

Alex Layne