Written in December 2002

Trust was the most "accidental" of the songs I have written.

It started with a little guitar line in the key of C that I came up with one evening. I kept repeating it after brief improvisational excursions with the notes in the chords C, F, and G.

At my next guitar lesson, while Curt and I were discussing what song to work on next, I let my fingers idly wander through the riff and a couple of the improvs. He asked me what it was that I was playing... so I played it some more, and he started playing a A minor progression behind it. The A minor chords set off the C major focus of my playing very nicely, giving my pretty little melodies a deeper, more feeling sense about them.

Two days later, we played this nameless tune at the open mike he hosts, and it came out very well. To play it, I really had to get into a "zone," where I could here what he was playig, and pick my notes and melodies so they kept building he same sad, gentle theme. We accidentally ended the song together, with me doing the D to E bend in the riff as he strummed a final E minor chord. This inspired me to name the song trust, since Curt usually does not like to get up and accompany people who are just going to make up what they play as they go along. Here I was completely improvising, and he was simply trusting me to pull it off.

The following weekend, in order to facilitate making the song tighter and more structured, I recorded the rhythm part (including my new addition, the Bm - Em bridge). I defied the point to doing this by having fun improvising all the way through on lead guitar.

Then I burnt a quick copy of the result on my home CDR machine, and listened to it a dozen or so times while sipping Scotch, and taking a bath. The sad lilt of the music started getting under my skin, and I was thinking about some things... the next thing I knew, I was hunched in front of the tape deck with a microphone, making up a bunch of words while trying to fit them into the spaces between lead guitar bits that occurred thoughout the song. The result of that session is available as an MP3 to download for your listening pleasure.

The Music:

The chord progression is a quick change 12 bar blues in Am:

Am - Dm - Am - Am - Dm - Dm - Am - Am - Em (D#m) Dm - Am/Dm - Am/ Em

And features this riff each time around to act as glue between the more improvised sections:

The main lead riff fits this such that the bend up to E occurs when the last Em chord is strummed. The song starts with just the lead guitar, and the rhythm player comes in at the bend with that Em.

This means that throughout the song, the main riff is started during the turnaround.

For the Bm bridge, when that same Em chord is played, instead of going back to Am, the rhythm guitar plays Bm (the bend comes back into D, just as this occurs) and Em several times in alternation. It re-enters the main chord progression at the Em (D#m) Dm part.

The song ends with the D to E bend and the E minor chord as usual, and as the bend is released, a B minor chord gently strummed once.