Valhalla Campfire Songbook
A learning guide for getting back into folk guitar and mandolin — built around through-hiking with the family, fireside singalongs, and the long road back to the shanty band… practised at the hearthside.
🌲 Start here
If you're picking the guitar back up after years away, work through the Welcome chapter first — it lays out the 12-week plan, where to put your fingers tonight, and which two chords unlock the first ten songs.
🛶 Okee Dokee Brothers
Wholesome Grammy-winning trail folk. The duo posts their own chord sheets at okeedokee.org/music — every one of these is reproduced in their original key with their official chords.
🍁 Canadiana
Wade Hemsworth, Stan Rogers, Gordon Lightfoot, Ian Tyson — songs of the bush, the rails, the rivers, and the road. The bridge between kid-friendly trail tunes and the shanty band.
⚓ Sea Shanties
Working songs and forecastle tunes — the Great Big Sea / Stan Rogers maritime canon plus traditional capstan and halyard shanties. Heavy on chorus, easy to teach a campfire crowd.
🕯 Hearthside
Modern indie folk built for two voices around a microphone — Lumineers / Of Monsters and Men / Edward Sharpe / Once-shaped acoustic duets. Pair these with your partner's voice, your fiddle, and a kid who can hold a bodhrán.
🎙 Duets — male & female vocal
Songs that sit nicely for two voices. Most of these work in a low key for the male part with the harmony floating above.
🎒 For the kid
Two- and three-chord songs the seven-year-old can sing along to (and play along to once his harmonica and first guitar chords come together). Mostly traditional, mostly Canadian.