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In today’s lesson I’ll teach you how to play Wondering Why, the 2023 hit from Red Clay Strays. This song evokes the blues-rock of Chris Stapleton, with a hint of Southern flavoring you might hear in Lynyrd Skynyrd or even Elvis. Musically, the song uses an 8-chord bluesy progression for the verse and chorus sections. The band builds this up throughout, ensuring things never get too stale or predictable. I’ll walk you through it all: the chords, the rhythm & strumming, and show plenty of tips of mixing things up with the rhythmic dynamics. Let’s get into it!
- 0:00 Lesson Intro
- 1:13 Verse & Chorus Chords
- 3:35 Strumming & Rhythm
- 7:17 Power Chords
- 7:56 Avoiding Barre Chords
- 10:10 Acoustic Version
- 12:05 Arpeggiated Picking
- 13:51 Bridge
Practice Guide 2 pages
Lesson Discussion
Quick Links
- Recommended lyric & chord sheet
- Official Music Video on YouTube
- Live Studio Performance on YouTube
- Band Profile from Billboard magazine
Play-Along Practice Track
As a bonus to accompany my main video lesson, here’s a 7 minute jam track I made to help you learn this song. It repeats the 8-measure chord progression used in the verse & chorus of this song, allowing you to play along at a steady tempo. You can work on your strumming, clean chord changes, or even soloing.
Related Lessons
In much of my lesson, I use palm muting with my strumming hand — which dampens all the strings. In certain cases, such as with this song, this works wonders — so check out my video lesson below for some tips on learning this. You can use this while strumming or playing lead — it’s absolutely worth learning!
I demonstrate an easier way to play F# minor in my tutorial… with no barring required. If you’d like a deep-dive into that specific chord voicing, check out this video. I do think this particular voicing tends to work better for playing fingerstyle, but provided you’re careful with muting the 4th and 5th string – you can make it work for this song too.
Looking for an overview of the chords in the Key of E major? Check out this video, which gives a lay of the land of what to expect when playing in this key.
As I note in my main tutorial, you can use capo 2 if you’d like to use easier chord shapes all-around when learning this song (D, Em, G, A). For a breakdown of how exactly a capo changes the chords you’ll use, see this video.
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