In the Key of K

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

I don’t really know what to say about this song. The lyrics are a stream of consciousness flow that I still don’t understand. They were written all at once. I’ve edited them a little bit for this release and re-recorded the vocals but the music is from 1997. This song started side two of my first cassette tape release.

As mentioned elsewhere, as a teen and into my early 20s I studied a lot of different religions, philosophies, mysticism, meditation, and esoteric thought. “The path of Left” is a direct reference to the idea of the ‘Left-Hand Path.’ I’m not into any of that stuff anymore.

What does the title mean? I’m still not sure.

//
The Dog’s Thorne
I walk through the ashes.
I fall through the breeze.
I want to be near you
but always seem to freeze.
I want to be near you
but fire is all I feel.

Rise above misfortune.
The laughter’s gone when you cry.
Now burn the blackest of candles
and scream your mantra of “why?”

Destiny is a coward.
A child forgotten at dawn.
I see they cannot destroy me
Through the haze and the fog.

Rise above misfortune.
The laughter’s gone when you cry.
Now burn the blackest of candles
and scream your mantra of “why?”

Broken wings forever.
Death means infinity.
The path of Left takes me calmly 
Through the infinite breeze.
//

How do you play it? I wish I could remember exactly how I originally played it. If I could do it over I would change any clean power chords and make them some simple major and minor third triads, or 7th chords or some other colorful makeup. I would keep the distorted power chords. The solo for this one was loosely planned–it starts with a theme and I improvised around that and came back to it. Very rarely did I plan solos back then. 🎸 The reason it is a little pre-planned is because this tune was very challenging for me to play on guitar at the time and I had to record the whole track many, many times before I had a take I would keep. And there are mistakes that still irk me nearly 30 years later but it is what it is. 🤷‍♂️Anyway, the version below is maybe 95% correct to how I played it originally.

Verse chords:
In 3/4 time…
|Ebmj7**|Fmj7**|Dbmj7 Ebmj7|Eb5 D5| repeat–the 5 chords here are on strings 3, 2, and 1.
The phrase ends with |Dbmj7 A5 Bb5| –the 5 chords here are on the strings 6, 5, and 4.

Tabbed out it looks like this:
—————–11–10–
—————–11–10–
-8–10–6–8—-8—7—-
-7–9—5–7————
-8–10–6–8———–
————————
————————

Pre-chorus/arpeggio section:
In 4/4 time…
Bdim add11
———————————0——
—————————–0———
———7–7————7———-7–
——9————–9—————-
—8————–8——————
-7—————7——————–

Below is a simplification, it should sound good arpeggiating this chord .
-0—
-0—-
-7—-
-9—-
-8—-
-7—–
Chorus:
In 4/4 time…
|Bb5**A5|Bb5***|
The last two beats use the last three notes of the arpeggio above.

It is hilarious to me looking back at this today. I knew NOTHING about music theory when I wrote this song. To my mind at the time, I made up those major seventh chords–I didn’t know what they were called I just wanted to write something with colorful sounding chords. Something different. I had no idea what a diminished chord was, I just liked the sound of it.

It’s also hilarious that I totally fucked up the guitar chords in the beginning of the third verse and some of the clean arpeggios in the distorted part–the rest of the take and the solo went well enough that I just left in the errors. And there are tempo problems (no click track!)🙅‍♂️ This song is a mess! It was, at least the way I was playing it at the time, just on the edge of my ability. I didn’t think I would be able to get a better take and with cassette tapes you don’t get to keep the old version, it’s gone when you overdub (at least, mostly gone).

I really love this song. I basically threw it away for decades because the singing was so bad. It is tolerable now but still not quiet how I want it. Life goes on.