By Deuce

“When I’m Stronger”, which Bill Greenberg just dropped a couple days ago on Dorothy McGuire and Mac Mall’s birthday, is a slice out of time and space, not necessarily captured, but endlessly reduplicated via the might of modern recording. The tune was obviously recorded live, features the applause of the audience both before and after it’s completion, and is replete with charming idiosyncrasies like the sound of spontaneous coughing (on behalf of the audience).

The treat was all theirs that night, because big Bill hit them with a guitar riff that’s not to be easily found anywhere on this planet—or any other, either. The basic one-bar melody is anything but basic. It’s quite likely that the acoustic guitar player was funking around with time signatures—if not time signature changes—on this one, which doesn’t sound anything like a standard 4/4 melody.

It’s a rapid series of notes, elongated in parts, that evinces for the umpteenth time how possible—and practicable—it is to take over rooms, moods, performance halls, or anything else with that wondrously stringed instrument. Greenberg plays this melody over and over, and it still sounds as fresh, and good, as when it opens up the number.

Plus, he flips a style of vocals on it that’s far from typical. It’s like he’s almost questioning himself (which he surely is in moments with lines like “every sad scream I’ve heard them all/yeah maybe”), or perhaps singing the words to a round when there really isn’t one in the tune.

At times he’s almost talking, as though to himself. His delivery is angular, the sound of the unfolding waves timelessly slapping against the seashore, quiet and still in moments, at others threatening to overwhelm the track.

The only break in the action is during a dramatic shift in the chord change for, you guessed it, one bar at a time, when this particular passage comes around. There’s also a harmonica solo for a sparse smattering of bars, perhaps no more than four or six of them.

But the guitar playing is the star of this one—as is Greenberg’s deft handling of it.