Townes Van Zandt's 'If I Needed You'

the chords are B E F#, but townes plays it in G with a capo on the 4th fret, and he of course does some of his trademark fingerpicking, outlining melody fragments on the treble and doing an alternate bassline with the thumb.
G
if i needed you would you come to me
G......................C........D.........G
would you come to me and ease my pain

same structure on subsequent verses. ignore the dots, i'm just using them to keep the spacing right.
here's a video where you get a really nice look at his hands.

you can see uses has a thumbpick(although you can play it without one. it's just going to get a better ring, especially in a live setting), and he plays some hammer-ons, mostly on the b string and e string, to play the melody.

Thanks, Jason.

I'll work on it. May be a maybe next lifetime song, but I'll give it a good go this time around. :wink:

Shady

I've got a chart for "If I Needed You" on my site. I believe it's based on the Lyle Lovett version of the song, though I tabbed out the intro that Townes plays at the end of the chart.

http://www.heartwoodguitar.com/chords/if-i-needed-you-townes-van-zandt-covered-by-lyle-lovett/

The key is using Travis picking, using your thumb for alternating bass notes. There's a little diagram on the chart that shows what the picking pattern is.

Hope this helps!

Rob