Walk With Me (Song)

Walk With Me

"Come with me and let me take you home again"

Walk with me in the autumn chill

Come with me and let the

World do what it will

Let the dry leaves crack and crush

Leave behind the summer rush

Let me take you where everyone

Loves the crystal air

We can roll in the twilight moon

Where the sweet nights never come too soon

Just walk with me

In the crisp clean autumn chill

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All creative content created, developed, produced, and

futzed with obsessively by Rick Thorne

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American Fools

Rick Thorne: stringed and percussive instrument noises and continuing vocal abuse

Creative advisor: Nicole Lamm

"Walk With Me" was performed by Rick Thorne and Relatively Few Friends

Walk with me in the winter rain

Come with me and let me

Take you home again

Let the trees bare their lifeless souls

While we play in the living cold

Let me take you where everyone

Makes the most of their lives

We can rock with a song in the snow

Then hibernate in the frosty glow

Just walk with me

In the hard cold winter rain

Walk with me in the summer sun

Come with me and let me

Take you out from under the gun

Let me take you down a road

Where the sun sets long and slow

Let me take you where everyone

Passes time in peace

We can talk ‘til the sun goes down

And talk some more ‘til it comes back ‘round

Just walk with me

In the hot sweet summer sun

Please note: these notes are a tad longer than other song's notes. This song and I have a long and intimate history. I request your indulgence for that reason.

Songwriting Notes

Often, society seems to tell us our only meaningful endeavors are work, our only meaningful investments are financial, and the only meaningful definition of aspirations is that which enhances our professional and corporate bottom lines. I’m all for working hard and reaping what you sow, but I disagree vehemently that the only meaningful bottom lines are work and finances. As important as these are, they aren't the only - nor even necessarily always the best or most important - endeavors, investments, and aspirations.

If you want examples, where should I start? I invested in my education, and it produced a very successful career in engineering. It's been good for my financial and intellectual health. But wood working and songwriting and writing have been great endeavors for my intellectual well-being too. I've found bicycling and hiking and meditation to be wonderful investments in my spirit and physical health. I'll never regret my aspiration to be a life-long learner and a loving parent and partner. These latter things had limited or no financial implications, but their dividends in other less financially tangible regards have been undeniable.

But for me, the best endeavors, investments, and aspirations I've made have been those concerning friendships. That's been the best use of time and energy in my life. Being a good friend to good people has been a wise endeavor, investment, and aspiration indeed. Those friendships have gotten me through hard times and made these good times amazing. They've encouraged my creativity and belief in my own dreams. All those friendships helped me find my own place. Great ones helped me find my own way. The very best of those helped me find my own self. And I could easily make a case that those investments in friendships have even helped my financial and career aspirations too.

So Walk With Me is a song about friendship. I wrote it inspired by the power and satisfaction of friendship. From the time it started manifesting in my mind until its initial completion as a basic song, that inspiration drove its development to a finished basic song in literally in 30 minutes. The mi-re-do "walk with me" verse openings happened quickly as I sat with a guitar, and as I pondered the immeasurable yet inextricable relationship between friendship and time, a prototype temporal theme of the song broke through quickly. The seasonal verse motif was a natural expression on that theme, and the lyrics wrote pretty much wrote themselves. Structurally, the song's a 24-bar variant on the basic I-IV-V blues progression, especially with the V-IV-bVII-V expansion of the V blues verse segment. It fits the evolving lyrics perfectly. I've changed the production model for the song many times since its original creation, but the lyrics and the core chord progression of the song haven't changed in the slightest since their original creation more than 20 years ago.

With the progress this song demonstrated in the natural flow of creation, WWM became for me a lesson in letting things just happen. As the creation manifested and started gaining momentum, it was clear my job was to get out of the way and let the energy just flow. This is true of my very best efforts; I find the more I just channel the cosmos, acting as a conduit for some natural internal creative power rather than directly engaging, the better some things work out. The most creative part of the songwriting process for me is the most basic parts of the song: lyrics, melody, and the harmonic progression. In my best work, I feel less like a creator and more like a secretary for some other source. Do I believe that? Well, no, but still...

The scheduled appearance of the G chord (bIII chord in E) brings the chord progression back to the I chord in the last two 8 measure segments of each verse. As Walk With Me has no chorus, this becomes an important hook, bringing us back to the song's root whenever it strays. Simply put, the song wanders along natural lines as it progresses, but a chord that's off the core structure yet warmly familiar brings you back home. Is there a better musical metaphor for friendship?

I get a lot of questions about the choice of seasons in Walk With Me. I choose summer, autumn, and winter as metaphors because those are the times in life when friendship becomes the most meaningful. As many have noted (and asked me about with quizzical wonder), I don't have a spring verse. Please don't misunderstand: springtime friendships are important too, and that's a time in life when friendships can really rescue a person from the tyranny of adolescence, but typically that's when the investments are started. The ones that really matter are the ones that pay off long after the investments are made, and continue paying. And BTW: to the springtime friendships in my life that have lasted for decades, thank you for making the rest of the metaphorical year a blessing. You know who you are <heart...>.

Walk With Me and I have been together for a long time. I've recorded it, re-recorded it several times, played it at the weddings of some of my best friends, and performed it with ensembles of various compositions and sizes. Its status as a critical part of my personal and artistic evolution means it was and remains a part of my own identity. In truth, this song about friendship has become something of an old friend itself. All my songs feel like living organisms as they mature and come to realize their own identities, but Walk With Me seems have created its own artistic ecosystems over the years since it first appeared in my world.

Production and Musician's Notes

Walk With Me started with a singer-songwriter's acoustic guitar and voice, and at its core remains a classic singer-songwriter song. It works beautifully as a solo guitar and single voice vocal song (I play it every solo gig without fail), but in its full arrangement the additional guitar parts add a lot of power to the core as it grows through the course of the production. The first verse features the full-fretboard acoustic guitar first-position chords and the initial three string 5th chord rhythm electric guitar work. The second verse adds an additional electric guitar with a little more R&B-friendly distortion and more complex chord comping. These three rhythm guitar parts remain through the guitar solo with broader strokes on the chords to allow the lead guitar to breath and relax.

The final verse - the "winter" verse - starts with an echoey R&B rhythm guitar over the same tempo, but engaged with softer strokes. The opening 8 measures of that verse feel like you're gonna hunker down and hibernate and wait in acquiescence for the end - then the fully distorted rock and roll guitar comes in and reminds you that in spite of that hard cold winter rain, life goes on and you need to live, then and beyond. As you can hear, there's no diplomacy and no quarter with this change in the production; I set the distortion effects to stun and keep blasting for the rest of the song.

With the treble midrange of each verse well covered with guitars, I really wanted the bass to growl in a bottomless, thoughtful, relentless counterpoint. Whatever the mission and plight of the treble guitars, the bass is indifferent. It has its own job and its own agenda, respectively laying down its grove with mindful precision and carrying the weight of the bottom of the audio spectrum forward with cardiac power. My only use of five string bass is in Walk With Me, pulling up the low B for almost every presentation of the home E chord. For the full production, it's not quite the same song without that low B.

Speaking of the home chord, I play triads most places the E chord is played. However, it's honestly an E9 chord. I let the b7 happen occasionally (particularly in transitional measures going to A), and very occasionally let an F# out of the bag, but I prefer to let the b7 and 9 be implied. They're sexy chords, and Walk With Me's sexuality is present at all times but it’s very subtle. I prefer to keep the sexual side of Walk With Me in the receiver's own imagination. It's not a squeaky clean song by any definition, but it's too dignified to submit itself to brazen exhibitionism and it wouldn't dream of making promises it can't keep.

The lead guitar section of the song uses the same chord progression as the other verses with one exception: the V chord extension adds two 2 measure segments of the V-IV change. The effects change on the lead guitar in that section as well; I add a double tempo echo to the effects blade for those four additional measures, giving the lift of that guitar solo a few hundred additional dreamy feet of altitude.

The guitar solo is a classic clean recording. My Strat (talk about an old musical friend) produces a beautiful sound no matter what effects are connected to it, and a simple, distortion-free electric guitar sound no different. The extension of the B-A chord change opens the option for some tasty echo effects, however, carrying the solo into a sweet and lingering dreamscape. Please note the pace of the solo. It’s so at peace with itself that it occasionally lags the beat with perfect imprecision. This is quite a deliberate device. The love the song exudes is profound and enduring; it's going to proceed on its own accord. That solo recognizes tempo, both musical and cosmological; it just doesn't answer to it, as true and abiding love shouldn't.

From an instrumental perspective, Walk With Me is a guitar song, and a guitarist's song. That became clear as soon as I tried production with horn arrangements and keyboards. I devoted countless hours to horn chart development and evolution, only to find disappointment and frustration and to return to the original bass and acoustic and clean/rock electric guitar instrumentation. The song has so much power in that configuration, I believed keeping the arrangement simple was doing it a disservice. How wrong I discovered I was, as every supplement I tried beyond layered background vocals eroded its natural guitar-annointed spirituality. If WWM was a lesson in letting things happen, it was also a lesson in leaving well enough alone. And once again - what's a better metaphor for friendship?