They say many newspaper people have novels or screenplays they've written stashed in desk drawers at home. In Peter King's case, he has been storing songs instead.

Many who follow the local music scene know King for two reasons -- his longtime career as a jazz and pop music critic, writer and copy editor at the Post-Gazette and the former Pittsburgh Press. King left the PG in May, although he still continues to contribute articles about music.

He's also known on the local music scene as a performer, and his second CD -- "Dancing on a Long Leash" -- has just been released.

King didn't make a mid-career switch from journalism to music. His guitar training started at the age of 4, and he studied classical music as an undergraduate at Penn State. After college, he drifted away from playing music. But when the Press folded in 1992, King went back to graduate school and earned a master's degree in jazz guitar performance at Duquesne University. These days, he teaches guitar and works as a freelance writer: Early next year, he'll be teaching an adult education course on the music of James Taylor, Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon.

"Dancing on a Long Leash" is a collection of 12 songs -- some joyful, some wistful. They're darker and more complex than the ones on his first CD, "Road to Ubutuba" (2006), the songwriter says. There are 11 originals, along with a cover of Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl."

While many singer-songwriters are rooted in a specific tradition -- folk, country or Americana -- King's songs draw from many sources. There's a strong jazz influence, with dashes of Brazilian pop and musical theater.

"My stuff is a little bit hard to classify, if you had to put it in a bin in the record store or online. Is it pop? Is it acoustic? Is it folk? I think that's good in a way. But it does make it a little bit harder to market."

There are also non-musical influences, such as literature. "I increasingly see songs as short stories," King says. "They start in one place, and then they might travel in time or in space or just travel emotionally to another place. I like lyrics that tend to start somewhere and end up somewhere else."

A good example of the story within a song is "Connoisseur of Lawns." On first listen, it's a sweet tale about a man walking his dog late at night, but there's more going on: "The mystery of life/The mystery of time/My best friend's dancing on his long leash/Like I'm dancing on mine." In the last verse, man and dog are long gone, but their ghosts still stroll the nighttime streets.

The song was inspired by his own dog-walking experiences. "I'm a late-night wanderer, me and my black lab Oliver," King says. "When you're out there late at night, just the two of you, and maybe a deer rustling in the woods, and a million stars up above -- you start to think about time. It's so common and ordinary, and yet life is very strange and very magical. It's that feeling you get that there's something more than you can put your finger on, and you want to try to express that in music and words if you can."

The presence of time hangs over a number of songs on the CD, King says, including "Time Is Watching," the final track.

The darker material mines the currents that run through love and loss, like "Somebody Else's July" and "Hold You Too Long."

But King also displays a sense of humor in "Number One in Liechtenstein" -- a song any aspiring musician will instantly relate to. The character in the song is telling anyone who'll listen that, OK, he may not be rich and famous, but he's a big deal in tiny Liechtenstein -- "Liechtenstein/Where my record is certified gold/Liechtenstein/That's 250 copies sold."

On "Dancing on a Long Leash," King is backed by many well-known figures on the local music scene: some will perform at the CD release party on Friday at Club Cafe, including Marc Reisman (harmonica), Mark Perna (bass), Jeff Berman (percussion), Mark Weakland (drums/vocals) and Heather Kropf (vocals/keyboard), plus Don Aliquo Sr. on sax and Lou Schreiber on clarinet. Kropf will open with a short solo set.

Being based in Pittsburgh has had its advantages, King says, because there's a diverse pool of skilled musicians to work with. "I feel like if I hadn't moved here 25 years ago to take a job with The Pittsburgh Press, and if I hadn't been a music critic, maybe musically my life would have been a little different. It's a great scene here."

"Listen Up With Andrew Druckenbrod" and "The Beat With Scott Mervis" are available exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.