A few years ago (2009), I traveled with members of the Dover Uke Heads – aka DUH! to the Liverpool Ukulele Festival being held – at the time – at the White Point Resort in Liverpool, Nova Scotia (this was before the fire). We were greatly excited about many of the workshops we were signed up for, but the one we were REALLY looking forward to the most was Irish Drinking Songs with Lenny.

Fast forward to 2015 and Chris Stappleton comes out with this arrangement of Tennessee Whiskey which becomes an instant hit. As I am not really a Country music fan who listens to the Country music radio or TV stations, I thought, “Oh yay, another drinking song, like Red Solo Cup or something”…. ha ha ha, I could not have been more wrong!

This song is set around the traditional blues chord progression and is played, as many blues songs are, very slowly. So you’ll have to develop a method of slow strumming that is pleasing to your ear as you go through this song. ALSO, he arranged it in 3/4 timing, so it’s also a waltz. It’s a blues waltz! LOL

I found this arrangement on the Bytown Ukulele Group website – they go by BUGs! – and I added a E7, because it’s in the key and I felt after listening to Stappleton’s official video a few times, that there is some kind of a chord change there, so I put that in. Also, I took out the slash after the D chord. After “strawberry wine” they had [A] [D] / [A] and I don’t see the need to play it that way. I don’t even really understand the need for the slash because my leader taught us that means 1 strum only, so you don’t complete the strumming pattern as indicated in the beginning of the song. IF you are even given a strumming pattern at the start. All depends where you get the song sheet from.

Lastly, I don’t play Bm the traditional way. Confession time: I drop the position on the 4th fret, and just play it as a barred chord, which I think is a Bm7??? Anyway, that’s what I do, sounds fine to me, Yes I make sure my uke is tuned before I play it this way LOL.