We’re speaking about Dishwalla and their hot break­through single, Counting Blue Cars, and their smash debut album, Pet Your Friends. Distinguished by J.R. Richards’ gutsy vocals, Rodney Browning’s heavy and atmospheric guitar work, and the solid rhythm section of Scot Alexander (bass) and George Pendergast (drums), the track represents some of the best that the current mainstream pop-rock genre has to offer.

Counting Blue Cars. The Rhythm

The rhythm guitar sound in Counting Blue Cars is spacious and well textured. Part of this is the thick, overdriven tone,

and another part, perhaps the more significant, is the choice of chord voicings. Throughout the song. Browning favors the jangly timbre of combining open strings with common power chords. Note the use of three particular voic­ings: B5sus4, E5, and D5add6/9 [Fig. 1]. By adding the open high E and B strings to the three power chords, a bigger, droning effect is created in the rhythm part, and more com­plex harmonic sounds are automatically pro­duced, as in the case of B5sus4 and D5add6/9. It’s a tried and proven technique used effectively by players like Ed Van Halen, Alex Lifeson, and the Edge in a vari­ety of settings, and it never fails to enlarge and color a power chord progression.

Counting Blue Cars. The Solo

The guitar solo is melodic, thematic, and well constructed. Arranged in two singable phrases with repeating motives, it is based on the B natural minor scale (Aeolian mode): B-C#-D-E-F#-G-A, and it contains some unusual twists. Two techniques are noteworthy. First, check out the wider fingering of the intervallic motive in the first three measures [Fig. 2]. The reach from D to B (a 6th) on the 3rd and 2nd strings requires a stretch of five frets. Play this with your index finger and pinkie. The D to A 5th interval, which is also part of the motive, is fretted with the index and ring fin­gers. These wide interval lines are allowed to ring during the solo, adding to the droning, sustaining quality of the song. In measures 4 and 8, notice the operative tones of the B nat­ural minor scale (G and C#) are part of the bending motive. This makes their presence seem less scalar in the solo and more vocal in phrasing. The solo melody is reprised in the outro, which makes the passage even more thematic in the whole song structure.

It’s a part of Dishwalla Counting Blue Cars guitar tab and sheet.

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a full transcription of Counting Blue Cars

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