Wagon Wheel Guitar Tutorial

Welcome to my Wagon Wheel Guitar Tutorial by Old Crow Medicine Show and famously covered by Darius Rucker. This tutorial will teach you 4 easy chords, the most common chord progression on guitar, a basic country strumming pattern, and everything else you need to play this campfire favorite!

We start the lesson by showing you how to play the song without a capo. This requires us to know the following chords: A, E, F#m, D. A, E and D are all simple, basic chords, but F#m might take a little work. We practice switching between all the chords, doing downstrokes only so we can focus on the shapes, and then we learn the strumming pattern used on this song. We then play it together, nice and slow, and that’s it! This is a pretty simple “4 chord wonder.”

Next, we repeat the same lesson, but with a Capo on the 2nd fret. This allows us to use G, D, Em, C instead. These are all simple, basic chords, and this is a much, much easier way to play the song (that still sounds exactly the same as the no-capo version). We work out the shapes, focus on some tips to make switching easier, add a strumming pattern and practice it all together. Nice and simple!

I hope you enjoy the lesson – no matter what your ability level is, you will certainly be able to play this song one way or the other. Enjoy!

-James