First off, great rendition of the song. This and "Rake" are two of my favorite TVZ songs. In the TVZ Songbook "For the Sake of the Song", released in 1977 by Wings Press (edited by Joseph Lomax) the description of this song reads "The darkness of disease and the fire of frustration. This song should be screamed not sung." There were several thousand of the books printed. It took me two years of haunting eBay to score a copy for less than $1000. 8-O The sheet music in the book is in voice/guitar format, with only chords for the guitar notated across the top of the vocal notes. No actual transcriptions for the guitar parts. According to the book the song is done in DM and C. Somewhere I have a video of one of his shows in Amsterdam, from right before he passed away. Pretty sure he played Lungs. If I can find the DVD I can check how he plays it. I think I've seen him do it in drop D even. I actually got a chance to ask Steve Earle about it once after a show in AZ but that was 10-15 years back and I forget what he said exactly. :-( Great site man. Glad I found it. I have been beating on guitars for years and mostly strummed till I studied classical for awhile. But that was a decade ago and now I'm trying to get back to finger picking Folk/Country/Americana. You have covered a lot of the TVZ songs I want to learn finger style. Steve, Townes and Guy are my top three all time favorite singer/Songwriters. Probably ought ot add in Billy Joe Shaver too just for good measure. Oh and Joe Ely. And I suppose Robert Earle Keen. So I suppose that's a bit more than three. Anyway, I was wondering, can you maybe do a lesson on the Steve Earle song "Fort Worth Blues". It is the song Steve wrote when he found out Townes had passed away. That and the Joe Ely version of "Gallo Del Ciero", which was originally written by Tom Russell (but I like Ely's treatment of it much better) would be great additions to your site - IMHO. Oh and if you are not familiar with Tom Russel go check out his album "Song Of The West: The cowboy Collection". "The Sky Above and the Mud Below" is a great story/song. Absolutely love your site. Keep up the great work! 6GD

Oh and yea, never found a recording in Dm/C. No idea why that is the official published version.