10 incredible riffs from folk music

‘See That My Grave is Kept Clean’ – Blind Lemon Jefferson

Part of the reason that riffs in folk music don’t get the respect of their rock counterparts is because of how the instrumental of the song is often in support of the singer, especially when you get into the standard folkie image of a lone singer with an acoustic guitar and chunky-knit sweater—a combo as essential as milk and cereal. Unless you’re a once-in-a-generation player and singer, the guitar has got to support the vocals, which, as in any folk song, is the focal point.

Fortunately, in all kinds of folk music, you get quite a few once-in-a -eneration players and singers, of which Blind Lemon Jefferson was one. No matter that this is quite possibly the most covered song on this list, with versions by everyone from Bob Dylan to Diamanda Galás, few of them hold a candle to ‘Big Lem’s’. The sprightly, rollicking backing he plays is a big, big reason for that, even if it is more subtle compared to most.

‘Master Hunter’ – Laura Marling

If you want notes, though, our Laura’s got notes for days. For all of Marling’s reputation as a quiet, sensitive singer-songwriter, the girl can shred. Nowhere is this more apparent than on the lead single from her third album, Once I Was an Eagle. Seemingly keen to shed the prim, somewhat austere image of her previous record, I Speak Because I Can, the first look into its follow-up was something altogether more primal and red-blooded.

Hurtling in on scattershot chords before settling on whirling dervish blues riffs, ‘Master Hunter’ is a revelation. A sign, if one was needed, that Marling is a multi-faceted artist, as capable of embodying everything from a naïve waif, an imperious priestess or the warrior figure we see here. She’s got blood on her teeth, club in her hand, and scudding licks from her fingers that could put an army of rock ‘n’ roll pretenders to shame.

‘The One That Got Away’ – The Civil Wars

Let’s talk about the ultimate musical situationship. The Civil Wars were a duo whose charged country blues captivated audiences until their sudden (and unexplained) split in 2014. At least they went out on a high, with their self-titled second album beginning with this bewitching slice of gothic Americana. One that’s carried by its central hook, a d-minor variation with all the sensuality and atmosphere they were popularly known for.

Whatever happened between Joy Williams and John Paul White seems to have broken any hope of a reconciliation beyond repair. To the point that when they both guested on a re-recording of their Taylor Swift duet ‘Safe and Sound’, they were credited under their individual names and not The Civil Wars. However, at the very least, with a song and a riff that’s just as mysterious and seductive as they were, ‘The One That Got Away’ really encapsulates their final outcome and earns them a place on this list.

‘Rhy Whiskey’ – The Punch Brothers

If the term progressive bluegrass makes you want to run a mile in the opposite direction, I can’t argue with that. I can only ask that you give the Punch Brothers a moment to persuade you with their brand of intricate, dynamic, and, yes, progressive roots music that actually rules, and this track is the ultimate pick. A stomping, frantic rave built around the kind of banjo riff that’ll have you yeeing all your haws and doseying all your dos, whether or not you intend to.

The trick is that while “progressive” in a rock sense means 20-minute solos and capes, in roots music it actually means fewer solos and more songcraft—less yodelling and more pop melodies. Plus, frontman and mandolin player Chris Thile is quite simply one of the day’s great instrumentalists, so any chance you can get to hear him do what he does should be grabbed with both hands.

‘Coyote’ – Joni Mitchell

There are two reasons we don’t put Joni Mitchell up there with the greatest guitarists who ever lived. The first is that base misogyny will never truly leave the world of classic rock. The second is the guitar world’s focus on basic, white-bread blues-rock. Even when they hold up Hendrix as the pinnacle, it’s for how many notes he could play a minute and not the forward-thinking way he thought about playing a guitar.

That’s the thing he shares with Joni, who never settled when it came to her music and was always pushing the instrument forward, even on a song that sounds as simple as ‘Coyote’. The divebombing riff sounds amazing over a folk song, but it’s very telling that if you amped it up and played it on an Ibanez, it could almost be a metalcore riff, a couple of decades early. Always exciting. Always cutting edge. Always Joni.

‘Harvest Moon’ – Neil Young

I once got into an argument with someone I went to school with about guitarists, namely what makes a good one. For me, a good guitarist makes you want to play guitar. If some bouffanted neo-classical twonk makes you want to lock your ‘Strat’ copy in a closet and never look at it again, that’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes music great. By that definition, Neil Young might be one of the great guitarists of his generation.

Sure, it’s simple. Anyone who can strum a few cowboy chords can probably pick up his folk numbers in an hour, tops. And isn’t that great?! Especially when you get a song as magical as this, built around a dazzling acoustic guitar hook that’s as simple as it is effective. A brilliant way to play drop D tunings for a budding guitarist and one of the few ways you can play harmonics in a song without sounding like you’re failing to be Eddie Van Halen.

‘Hazy Shade of Winter’ – Simon & Garfunkel

There has only been one time in the history of popular music that folk music was cool in the traditional sense, and that was the early 1960s. The real hipsters of the day weren’t listening to The Beatles or Roy Orbison; they were listening to Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. They were also probably having a whale of a time laughing at the duo seen as the lame hangers-on of the scene, Simon & Garfunkel.

‘The Sound of Silence’ may have been a literal joke among the Gaslight Café set, but I bet there were no chortling hipsters when they dropped this absolute banger. One built around a riff that both The Bangles and Gerard Way turned into thunderous rock songs, but works best on a lone 12-string acoustic guitar, for it keeps the original’s subtle suaveness intact.

‘Sweet Home Chicago’ – Robert Johnson

The line between blues and folk is a very thin one indeed, especially the further back you go. Once you get to the early days of the blues, they’re basically inseparable. It’s just a case of the culture it comes from. The work of Robert Johnson might have been one of the blueprints for the blues, but it’s still haunting and unforgettable in a way that barely anyone has matched since. Part of the reason why it’s so believable that this man sold his soul for guitar mastery.

We still don’t really know how he’s getting the sounds he’s getting out of a parlour guitar on records like this, as anyone involved with its recording swore blind that he had no other players accompanying him. No matter how he did it, the loping 12-bar blues of ‘Sweet Home Chicago’ comes in like a mournful SOS Morse signal and deserves its place among the great guitar tracks of its day.

‘Ten Million Slaves’ – Otis Taylor

Michael Mann may not be as known for consistent needle drops as Scorsese and Tarantino, but when they hit, they can really hit. The biggest was when this dustbowl party-starter kicks in during Public Enemies, his 2009 feature about the Depression-era exploits of bank robber John Dillinger. The best part of this story, though, isn’t the ludicrously catchy banjo riff that powers the song; it’s Taylor’s story himself.

A Chicago-born blues musician, Taylor spent the late 1950s through the mid-1970s trying to make it in music before chucking it in for other more lucrative pursuits in 1977. However, since his return to music in 1995, he’s regularly been lauded as one of the greatest living blues musicians, his crowning glory coming half a century after he first picked up the banjo. Never give up on your dreams, kids.

‘Cardinal’ – Kacey Musgraves

For a moment there, it looked like modern country music was going to sound a lot like the sound Kacey Musgraves was peddling on her 2018 breakthrough album Rainbow. Subtly psychedelic, classic songwriting, with that unmistakable country lilt that can make everything that little bit more magical in the right hands. A modern update of Gram Parsons’ Cosmic American Music and more than fitting of that lineage.

Perhaps it was too much to ask of a whole industry to fall in line behind one album, but at least we’ve still got Musgraves doing what she does best. In this form, the opening track and tribute to departed friend John Prine, from her 2024 album Deeper Well, is built around a delicious 12-string acoustic guitar riff that powers the song more than you’d normally expect from the sedate Musgraves.