A new song from the latest Turnpike Troubadours album truly swept me away the past week – and I'm excited to share my new lesson below. If you enjoy fingerstyle, give the intro a listen — as the almost-acrobatic pattern of those first 5 chords feels amazing once under your belt. Enjoy, my friends! ✌️ David

LESSON #589

"Heaven Passing Through" by Turnpike Troubadours

Over the last couple years Turnpike Troubadours has become, without question, one of my favorite bands. Evan Felker's songwriting is just magical to me, and I love the country-rock instrumentation.

Their new album came out a couple weeks ago, and this song really grabbed me out of the gate. Give it a listen and hear for yourself.

The fingerstyle used in the intro & verse is tricky for sure, but really fun to play once you finally get it under your belt. In my lesson I walk through things step-by-step, showing you five exercises that build up to the full & final fingerpicking pattern. This is indeed how I practiced things, building up to the full shebang.

Lastly, don't miss out on my additional practice materials for this song — which include clips of each of the 5 step-by-step practice exercises, as well a bonus video where I show how I also learned this song in the Key of G, in order to suit my voice better.

​View my lesson & practice materials »​

Why I Love This Song

Beyond the guitar playing, the songwriting here just floored me when following along with the lyrics. Songs about living in the moment can certainly feel played-out & cliched… but man, he does it justice here.

For backstory, Evan Felker (Turnpike Troubadours' lead singer & guitar player) went through a tough time with alcoholism in the late 2010s… which lead to cancelled shows, a divorce, and eventually putting the band on permanent hiatus in 2018. It seemed like that was all she wrote for Turnpike Troubadours – who were one of the most acclaimed Red Dirt bands of the 2010s.

But after stepping away from music & touring, Evan got sober, reconciled with his wife, and got the band back together in 2022. They've put out a few albums since. Felker talks about all this on the Meat Eater podcast (with Steve Rinella) last year, specifically starting around 52:00 – watch it here.

With all this in mind, the delicate resolve of the chorus of Heaven Passing Through packs a big punch every time I listen:

One final aspect of this song I dig: how the POV shifts from verse to verse. The fact that the first & third verse are vaguely the same situation, just from different points of view, makes me smile:

• Verse 1 = child’s point of view, sitting with a parent
• Verse 2 = young love, knowing it won't last but being present just the same
• Verse 3 = parent’s point of view, sitting with their child

Again, give the song a listen if you're curious to hear it for yourself. And if you want to learn the exact fingerstyle guitar used in the intro & verse, I know a guy 😎

My Other Turnpike Troubadours Lessons

I gotta tell you my friends, time flies. When you're making one lesson a week, it's sometimes amazing how much time goes by without you realizing it. The last two Turnpike songs I learned are Diamonds and Gasoline (from 2020), and The Housefire (from 2022).

I've actually updated my practice notes for Diamonds and Gasoline this week – they're available via the link above. One day I'd love to learn the fingerstyle approach to that song, but in the meantime my lesson above teaches you how to strum things.

There's several others from their library I want to get to eventually... The Bird Hunters, 7&7, Pay No Rent, and Good Lord Lorrie have all living very rent-free in my head the past couple years. I never get sick of them. If these, or any others from TT, are ones you'd like me to teach – reply and let me know!

WEBSITE PSA

Improved Search on SongNotes.net

Before I finish, a quick note about some improvements I made to the search page on the Song Notes website.

Previously, the search was a bit brittle. If you typed a lot of words, it would return zero results if things didn't match 100% the way I indexed them.

Now, things are a bit more graceful. It'll look at the individual keywords you enter and show all probable matches using a bit of common sense. I still recommend a less-is-more approach to searching... e.g. enter just the song name, or just the artist name. Give it a whirl here »

And remember – you can always browse my song directory or course & topic page if you're looking for something specific.

That'll do for this week – as ever, I hope you all enjoy and wish you the best with your guitar playing. I'm working on a John Fogerty riff at the moment and excited to share that with you soon. Until then!

David

Browse all my lessons at songnotes.net​