Smokey Joe was one of my last pack goats.  At this time both his old buddies were unable to pack, and this was a shakedown trip to see if he would do ok packing alone.  He was magnificent.  ...The music for this is "Bo and Theo Welcome Warren to Heaven."  It was one of the first pieces I wrote with my new equipment back in 1994.  I recorded a toy drum onto my Ensoniq sampling keyboard, and constructed everything around the simple rhythm of its delay.  There's a little whistle late in the piece which is a snippet of a meadowlark I recorded.  ...Warren, my father, had just died.  He loved my old dogs, Bo & Theo, who had also just previously died.  A rather radical thinker, I know he didn't believe in "heaven" as such, but I think he would have appreciated the sentiment of being led home by these two dear friends.