SHANE AND DIXIE
By Richard Thompson
From the album "Mirror Blue

Some playing notes by Dan Sallit (sallitt@netcom.com)

Thought I'd let everyone know my current thoughts on playing "Shane and
Dixie."  Allyn Dimock put me on to the Mountain Stage show where you can
hear RT playing the song in the same tuning as "Beat the Retreat" and
doing only a capo adjustment between songs.  "Beat the Retreat" is a
known quantity, so I now believe that Jake London is correct, and that
RT plays the song in CGDGBE tuning, 2nd fret capo.  (He plays "Beat the
Retreat" and "Vincent" with the capo on the 3rd fret.)  I tried it out,
and it sounds about right, though it's not easy to reach some of the
accents that RT is doing.  Thanks to everyone for their help.
 
In case anyone is interested, the three basic chords that RT uses in
this tuning, the G, C, and D, seem to be played something like this:
 
- --3------------2--
- --3------1-----3--
- ---------------3--
- ---------2--------
- ---------------2--
- --x------------2--
 
It's a bit hard to wrap one's thumb around far enough to get the bass
the 5th string instead of playing it, though it doesn't sound as good.
Anyway, these three chords will get you through most of "Vincent," "Beat
the Retreat," and "Shane and Dixie."
 
You can get an Am (used in "Vincent") and an Em (used in "Shane and
Dixie") like this:
 
- ------------------
- --1---------------
- ------------------
- --2------------2--
- --2------------4--
- ---------------4--
 
Other than that, the only hard part of "Shane and Dixie" is the section
"Saying Shane, this time you've lost your mind."  I think the following
sounds as if it might be close to what RT is doing there:
 
- --------------2---
- --------------3---
- --------------2---
- --2---2---3-------
- --4---2---5---2---
- --4---4---5---2---