In Blind Willie McTell’s “Statesboro Blues”, a man struggles to forget his troubling past. The style that is used is the Piedmont style. This song starts out slow, and gradually speeds up as the song progresses. The guitar style starts out simple, and then becomes more complicated as the singer’s story unfolds. In the very first line when he says “Wake up Mama, turn your lamp down low” it is almost as if he is whining, and saying it with frustration and sadness. The general emotion that I feel from this song is sadness, and I also get the idea that the singer is failing to escape the memories of the troubling events that have already occurred in his life. It is clear that the deaths of his parents have had a troubling effect on him, when he says “My mother died and left me reckless, my daddy died and left me wild, wild, wild”. During this line, his voice deepens when he says “wild, wild, wild”, which makes the line almost a sad sort of “warning” regarding the effect that his father’s death had on his personality/mindset.

Another important aspect that I noticed in this song was that it seems like the guitar is playing to the singer’s rhythm instead of vice versa. It’s like the guitar is following the singer’s words, and making up its rhythm/style according to the singer’s pace. I know that when reading about songwriting, people often try and match their words to the beat of a song/rhythm, and I definitely see the opposite in this song. The guitar starts off slow, matching the singer perfectly in his introduction to his story. As the singer begins elaborating on his story, the guitar speeds up to match the singer’s pace. I can hear the definite speed change around the line “Sister, tell your Brother, Brother tell your Auntie…”. The speed becomes further noticeable in the last few lines “Sister got ‘em, daddy got ‘em
 Brother got ‘em, friend got ‘em, I got ‘em”, almost like it is building up for the end, with the guitar ending with a nice little melody.