Aaron Jaxon teaches two versions of the fiddle tune "Cattle in the Cane" for flatpicking guitar. He explains why it's played in open A tuning, shows the contrast between the major A part and minor B part, then builds from a basic melody to an advanced version with octave shifts and blues-scale licks. Tabs and backing tracks are in the description.
Today I'm going to be showing you two different ways of playing the classic fiddle tune Cattle in the Cane. Hey there, it's Aaron Jaxon coming to you today, and I want to welcome you to part 5 of a 20-part series that I'm doing around classic fiddle tunes for flatpicking guitar. Today we're going to cover Cattle in the Cane. This has always been one of my favorite tunes. One of the things that really makes this tune unique for flatpicking is it's in A, but we almost always play it out of open A instead of with a capo on the 2nd fret like we would for a lot of other tunes that are in A, like Salt Creek or Gold Rush or Bill Cheatham or Big Mon tunes like that. But what's really cool about Cattle in the Cane here is on the A part we're kind of in this like major/mixolydian area, and then on the B part it goes to minor, which is— it just gives the whole tune a really, really cool feel. So there's several great recordings of this tune, and I think probably my favorite, and I would say one that a lot of flat pickers are familiar with is the version that Tony Rice did on the Church Street Blues album. I'll link to that down in the video description. I also really enjoy the version from Bluegrass 95. It features Clay Jones on guitar and Adam Steffi on mandolin, Aubrey Haney on fiddle, Scott Vestal on banjo. It's a really cool version of this tune. I'll link down to that as well. So feel free to go and check those out right there to get a little bit more context with this tune. And remember, you can get the tabs for this lesson down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. And so remember, we will play this tune out of open A. We won't play it with a capo on the 2nd fret, we'll play it out of open A. But what I want to do now here is I want to go all the way through the basic melody version here that I'm going to show you, and I'm going to put the chords up on the screen. Remember, each chord gets 2 beats, and that'll sound like this. All right, so let's jump in and learn the A part to the basic melody. Okay, so we'll do the A part to the basic melody, and that'll go like this. 1, and 2 and 3 and 4.
And that's the A part.
We just play that twice. And I like to come in with a slide there. I think that that's the end of beat 4. I think 1 and a 2 and a 3 and a 4 and a 1. So, and so, and a 4. And then we'll go over here to this, the melody kind of based around that G triad. And then back. Okay, we'll play through that twice, and that's our A part to the basic melody. Now on our B part, we're going to switch over to a minor key, okay? And that's going to go like this.
1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and Play that again.
And that is the B part to our basic melody here. So now that we've learned the A and the B part to the basic melody, let me play that up to tempo and with a backing track one more time, and that'll sound like this. So let's do another version of this tune. I am going to take the melody up in certain places. I'm gonna take a little bit of liberty in certain places. I'll throw in a couple of licks and phrases in some other key places as well. Okay, but again, before I teach it to you, let me play it for you up to tempo, and that'll sound like Let's learn the A part to this more advanced version of Cattle in the Cane, and that'll go like this. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and Okay, so at the very beginning, and with this I am coming right in on the downbeat on beat 1, I'm not sliding into it. And then we're gonna do some kind of tricky slides there, but it's just, it embellishes that melody a little bit. And then after that I'm gonna come over here. Now normally when we're playing really anything in A in the context of bluegrass, we usually have a capo on the 2nd fret and we're playing it out of a G shape. So this open E is usually not available to us whenever we're playing an A, but it is right here. So I'm gonna do— and so for an idea like this, you'll actually hear fiddle players and mandolin players use this a lot because they do have an open E string. Whenever they're playing at an A, um, you know. So I'm just really kind of taking like an A Mixolydian and doing a little motif around that while hitting that open E. I could, I could keep going if I wanted to.
I could do like—
again, that's more of a fiddle kind of mandolin sounding thing, but we're, we're playing this tune out of open A, we've got that available to us, so I like to use it there. And then after that, for this second part on the A part, I'm just taking the melody down an octave. Okay, and then so after that, now we'll go into the B part here again, this more advanced version here, and that'll go like this. Okay, so I'm licking this up a little bit here, um, you know, just because, um, it's, it's fun to do that in A minor. Again, kind of add an open A here. And then so this first phrase, you know, kind of a Tony Rice sounding thing. And then we'll come down here and then— and that's almost like straight down the A minor blues scale, but Right there, I'm ending with the open A, and then we'll end with this little phrase that we've played on the B part in the first version. And again, back to the main phrase, the main melody for the B part. And then right here, I'm going to change it up and throw in this little Kenny Smith over C there. Or I, I mostly associated with Kenny Smith. That might be because he's the first person I ever heard play this, but you'll hear Tony Rice play versions of that. You hear Brian Sutton use it all the time. Okay, and then we're going to come up here and do— and that's just two kind of it's almost like two call-and-response phrases out of your A minor blues scale. One up here in this kind of— so, and then down here out of that kind of— and then we'll end again with Okay, so again, I'm throwing in some licks and some phrases in key places and then going back to some of the melody phrases there and just kind of playing around with it with like a little bit of like melody lick ping pong there, which is fun to do with these fiddle tunes. So one more time, let's play that second, a little more advanced version, up to tempo here. All right, well, I want to thank you so much for hanging out today. I just love this tune. It's so much fun to play. It just really has unique feel. It's different than almost all of the other fiddle tunes, so I've always enjoyed playing it. I hope you do too. And remember, you can check out some other really cool versions of this tune down in the video description. Remember, you can get the tabs for this lesson down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. As always, I want to thank you for hanging out, and I'll see you next time.
