“Ain’t No Sunshine” - Bill Withers

We had some work done to the house yesterday & it knocked our only bathroom our of commission for 24 hours. Taylor took Remi to stay overnight at her Mom’s place, while I stayed here to finish up some work. This was the first night the three of us have slept apart in over a year. So I found myself in quite a natural place to be practicing this one, kinda living out this song. Although it is kinda strange to have events in your life sync up with a soundtrack.

This song is such a well-known classic, from the great Bill Withers. It’s almost a rite of passage among acoustic guitar players to play this one. This arrangement manages to use the same bass-groove guitar riff that Bill used on the record when he performed this song back in the 1970’s - but it also requires the soloist to play the vocal melody at the same time. The result is an arrangement that is technically simple, but rhythmically a little complicated to pull off - especially during the “I-know-I-know-I-know…” part. But even novice guitarists shouldn’t be intimidated by this. If you just hang in there, you can easily make this one sing.

The TAB in the book gives an open G for each final chord of the main riff. I used a G7 shell instead. If you don’t know what that is, don’t worry the open G sounds just fine, but the G7 sounded more like what I remember hearing on the record. Anyway, playing this song made me feel a little better while I was missing my girl. Thanks for listening!

ps. Sorry if this video is a little dark. I recorded it in the sun-room at a time when there weren’t no sunshine.