Feathered Indians

by Tyler Childers • Lesson #107 • Nov 21, 2017

Video Lesson

Print-Friendly Song Sheet 2 pages

Follow along with my print-friendly guide for this song! It’s available for purchase at Musicnotes.com, the web’s leading provider of licensed sheet music.

On the fence? Here's a guide I made showing the purchase & print process, including answers to common questions about my song sheets.

Buy at Musicnotes.com

Save 50% on this song sheet by applying the September 2023 code at Musicnotes checkout: WRKGBMXP7Y (click to copy). Thanks for being a Premium supporter!

Song Notes Premium includes a 50% discount code you can use when buying any of my licensed song sheets. For the current month's code, upgrade to premium or log in.

Editor’s notes

Tyler Childers is one of the very best new country artists I’ve heard in the past few years - and this opening track (“Feathered Indians”) from his album Purgatory is a terrifically fun one to play. My tutorial here will teach you how to play it: intro riff, chords, and strumming. I’ll show it all, with a very thorough walkthrough of the intro riff (which can be a bit difficult at first). Even if you don’t pick up your guitar to play this song, I recommend giving Tyler Childers a listen! My other favorites by him include Whitehouse Road and Lady May (I have lessons for both).

Lyrics w/ chords

Capo 5th fret.

See page 1 of my sheet music for the lyrics, chords, and intro tab.

Capo 5th fret!

Tyler Childers plays this song with a capo on the 5th fret - and I do too in my video lesson. As always, you can follow the tabs and chords and play the song by yourself just fine without a capo - but you’ll be in a different key from the source recording. I’ll also note, that a capo makes this song easier to play - in that the fret width becomes a bit thinner up around the 5th fret, making some of your pinky stretches easier.

How to play the chords

You’ll need these four chords for this song:

E –––2–––––––3–––2–––
B –––3–––2–––3–––3–––
G –––2–––2–––0–––4–––
D –––0–––2–––0–––4–––
A –––––––0–––2–––2–––
E –––––––––––3–––––––
     D   A   G   Bm

For the A-major, play it like this during the intro riff. This will free up your ring finger (left hand) to play the necessary flourish note.

E –––––––
B –––2–––  <--  Use index finger
G –––2–––  <--  to barre the 2nd fret
D –––2–––  <--  on these 3 strings
A –––0–––
E –––––––
     A

Intro riff

First, understand the underlying structure:

See my sheet music for the intro tab.

Then, add these flourish notes. If you’re able, keep that strumming hand moving steadily, adding in the other strings as you please.

See my sheet music for tab with finger diagrams.

Strumming pattern

To start with, use all down strums - and try to give the 2nd and 4th beats an emphasis or accent.

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +
D   D   D   D  
    >       >

If you want to flesh it out a bit, try this (down, down, down-up-down-up).

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +
D   D   D U D U
    >       >

Chord progressions

See my sheet music for the chord progression diagrams.

Browse Related Lessons

Click any tag below to view other lessons I've made in that category:

About Song Notes

Hey there! My name is David Potsiadlo, and I'm the creator of the 400+ weekly lessons here at Song Notes, going back to 2013. Here’s my guitar story »

Get Free Lessons Each Week!

Join the 20,000+ readers who get my new lessons dropped in their inbox each week. I teach a fun mix of songs, weekly riffs, practice ideas, and more!

Enjoy my lessons? Buy me a beer!

If this and my other lessons have proven helpful to you, please consider making a one-time donation to my tip jar. Contributions of any amount help make this project possible (including the many, many hours I put into it).

Fun & Helpful Tools I've Made

Fret Monster

Interactive fretboard map! See the patterns behind every scale in any key.

View

Capo Captain

An easy way to calculate key & chord combinations, for any capo location!

View

Subscribe to my YouTube channel

Be sure to never miss a lesson by subscribing on YouTube. I put out 2-3 new videos every week. These include full song lessons, as well as covers, practice tips, behind-the-scenes updates. Thanks!


Recent Lessons

Browse All Recent Lessons →

Browse All My Lessons

By lesson type

By technique

By musical genre

By decade

By musical key

By popular artist


← back to homepage