About Lonesome

Lonesome is a bluegrass songbook built for the jam. Chords live above the lyric they belong to. Transpose is one tap. Nashville numbers are a toggle. Performance mode goes big, keeps the screen on, and scrolls for you hands-free so the phone can sit on a music stand while you play.

I built it because every other chord tool wanted me to sign up, serve me ads, or gate the good features behind a subscription — and none of them felt like they were built by someone who actually goes to jams. So this one is.

What I promise you

• No sign-up. Ever. Every feature works without an account.
• No ads. Ever. Not banner, not sponsored-song, not interstitial.
• No data harvesting. Your favorites, setlists, preferred key per song — all of it lives in your browser, not on a server. Page-view analytics are anonymous (Umami, self-hosted) and there are no cookies for tracking.
• Free, and staying free. This is a labor of love. If it ever adds paid features, the entire current experience will stay free and anonymous — nothing that works today will get gated.
• Won't disappear.Not venture-funded, not for sale, not chasing a growth curve. As long as I'm picking, this site stays up.

What's actually in the catalog

A focused set of canonical bluegrass tunes — the ones that get called at a jam. Bill Monroe, Stanley Brothers, Flatt & Scruggs, Carter Family, traditional standards, plus fiddle tunes. The default browse view is the curated set. Bookmarked URLs for any song always keep working, even if they're not on the public index.

Built by

Me, Jordy — bluegrass picker in my spare hours. This thing exists because I wanted it for my own Tuesday jam.