I was looking through a clothing catalog and saw a picture of a girl modeling this piece of clothing called a space-dye vest. And, so, I fell in love with her [laughs] for some strange reason & so the minute I did that, the minute I was just like obsessed with this person, I was like, ‘why am I doing that?’ and I noticed that I was doing it a lot lately. And I think the prime reason that I was doing that, and this is what I figured out at the time, was that I had just come out of a relationship where I’d gotten dumped, basically, and so I think the situation was that I wasn’t finished giving all that I was ready to give, so I was just, like, throwing it around, you know, just aiming it in different directions. It was a total case of projection. And this song is just trying to sort it out and just kind of admitting that I’m just kind of lost. So it’s kind of a dark song. It was very cathartic though.
– Kevin Moore
Kevin Moore saw this photograph in a fashion magazine of a beautiful model wearing a space-dye vest and he fell in love with her. He carried that magazine around with him for ages, but he realized that the only way the innocence could be kept, so that he could retain that love for her, was if she stayed on the page. If he’d met her, all that would have been lost.
– James LaBrie
Space dyeing is a technique used to give yarn a unique, multi-colored effect. While a typical skein of yarn is the same color throughout, a skein of space dyed yarn is two or more different colors that typically repeat themselves throughout the length of the yarn. Space dyed yarn is sometimes referred to as dip dyed yarn.
“Space-Dye Vest” was long left out of any live setlist – the first appearance of the song was in 2011. Mike Portnoy stated that had he known Kevin Moore was about to leave the band, the track wouldn’t have been on the album, and for that reason refused to play it live without Moore on stage.
