In the Key of K

New music! Streaming everywhere! Or buy it at Bandcamp! An artist like me makes NOTHING from any streaming services. If you want to support what we do buy the album at Bandcamp or check out Patreon and the merch store in the link tree.

I’m slowly getting all the merch added to the Merch Store! There will eventually be merch for every track on the album!

In the summer of 1997 I was 20 years old and living at my grandparents house near Cumberland, MD. I started working a shitty night shift factory job and quit as soon as I had enough money for some music gear I had been wanting. Specifically, I ordered a Tascam four track recorder from Musician’s Friend.

After reading the manual multiple times and experimenting with a few things, I started working. I would record drum tracks first–drums were my first instrument and it made sense to begin there to outline everything. I would write out the form/structure of the piece on paper and pound it out. Sometimes it took a few tries to get it right but there was improvement with every note played.

After drums, I would record guitar and bass. I had only been playing guitar for two years and had recently acquired my shitty bass. Vocals were last because I had zero experience really singing and I had to leave the basement studio space to have more privacy while recording them. I found a private place to do it though–out in the middle of nowhere at an old farmhouse in a cow pasture.

After I recorded the vocals, I mixed the four tracks onto a master tape. I had no idea what I was doing really–I just tried to balance things as best as I could. Then at the farm house I blared my entire first album through a loud stereo on cassette tape–loud enough for the cows to hear outside. It was such an uplifting experience. I made something. I created all this music! I had an album!

Anyway, back to the story, I started dubbing cassettes from the master copy and mailing them to all my friends. Certainly fewer than a hundred were ever produced. About half of this music was later remixed and used for a sort of “best of” album I made in the early 2000s–my first CD recording but it was never released digitally.

It’s getting close to the 30th anniversary of this release (2027). As mentioned above, the first few copies I sent out in 1997 were published as “Stink Bastard” which is a terrible name and was changed pretty quickly to “Lewd Blue”–which is still a terrible name but a title I kept for several years. Now, it goes without saying that I go by “In the Key of K” for rock music (and my real name for classical music). Arguably, still not great but it fits what I’m doing here.

To keep with the work’s original intention, everything is still four-track based. I did have to overdub two parts that were really out of tune–a little out doesn’t bother me, as you can tell from my singing and some of these recordings. It is still my art and my love. 💖

There is a blog post and merch for each and every track. These posts are somewhat diary entries about those times, my thought process, what the songs means to me, etc. The lyrics and tab/chords are also included in each entry, mostly.

There were two finished Lewd Blue albums completed in the 90s and Volume 2 is finished with the same process as Volume 1. In 1998/1999/2000 I also started working on a third album but only finished a handful of tracks. However, I dug out the tapes and I definitely have enough material to finish the third album from that time and it will be called Open the Door. It will require relearning the songs and starting from scratch for all but three or four tracks.

After writing this music I moved on to study guitar and music composition at university (starting in 1999). Rock music was mostly on hold until I released Deliver in 2007. But in the interim I was working on a ton of solo guitar (classical-ish) stuff and composing lots written music. My newest album of rock music called, Monsters (schedule to be released in 2026), will probably be out before Open the Door. Monsters will be a lot like volumes 1 and 2. It will be more polished, with modern recording practices and it will have better playing and will use more than just four tracks—no limitations! I am also releasing a finger-style/classical-ish album before Open the Door and Monsters called The Stone Sonatas. Busy times!

I hope you will enjoy the music but that isn’t really the point. This music was made by me and is for me. It is my art, my heart, and my life–my heartbeat of existence, my elation, my heartbreak, my love. It isn’t necessary for anyone to like it. It is highly treasured by me and that’s enough.

Track listing:
Sticks to Stones
Sleep Well
160
Love, Love, Love
NS
Moving On

The Dog’s Thorne
Mood Swings
Verse to Verse
The Reign on the Parade
Single File
I Love Christmas!

Notes about the original cassette track listing: “I Love Christmas” was originally called “I Hate Christmas.” It may have been at the end of side one after “Moving On”–I can’t remember. It ended up wherever there was enough space on the cassette as a ‘hidden track’ (it wasn’t listed in the original track listing). The master cassette unspooled at the end so it is too damaged and delicate to double check. “NS” was originally titled “Nothing Special”–you can read more about it in the blogpost for that track (additionally there is a huge post coming in 2026 about my old band, Nothing Special).