The Big Topics: Carrying a tune with slippery fingers

Wading back into the journaling lagoon, and knowing I have damn years to fill in so my future biographers don't say frustrated rude things about my documentation skills, I've got a list of Big Topics to Write About. My plan was to jot them all on scraps of paper and draw them randomly one at a time, but I'm going to start with music because (a) it's very important to me, even though (b) it's also the easiest to cover because (c) there's not all that much to say. (d) Unfortunately.

Brunswick, Maine and the surrounding environs have a pretty active folk/acoustic scene, so my plan at time of moving here was to get my performance sea legs back, start hitting open mics, and see what I can do about getting some actual scheduled sets going, maybe even find a local studio for a solo EP or something. Yep, that was the plan, all right. Oh hey, you know what does wonders for a music career? AN INTERNATIONAL GODDAMN PANDEMIC, THAT'S WHAT, AND THANK YOU FOR ASKING. It not only scuttled my plans, it knocked the wind out of my sails—I think I completed writing all of two songs in 18 months (three if you count a creepy arrangement of Wall of Voodoo's "Mexican Radio") at a time when I should have had time and energy to spare.

This was not the thing I wanted back-burnered. I still play, still practice, still work on songwriting (I've gotten a few more songs polished off this year, with a few other works in progress). But with my momentum spinning tires in a mudslide and my attention being steered and/or dragged elsewhere, I don't know what my next steps are. I don't know if there are next steps, honestly. I mean, sure, I'm not going to give up music as long as I have functioning lungs and fingers, but is this still a "pursuit," or is it now "a thing that happens sometimes"?

That's not to say that there have been no new developments:

• A couple of months into quarantine, when our expenses were low and our eh-fuck-it was high, I invested in a Tonewood Amp, which is like an effects pedal without the effects pedal: it sticks on the back of your acoustic guitar and creates effects by resonating the guitar's back panel, which means you have stuff like reverb and delay and overdrive coming out of your soundhole, and can take those effects with you anywhere without lugging any hardware. I am not dipping into hyperbole when I say it's nothing less than life altering, especially coming at a time when my own guitar work was boring the boxers off of me and I desperately needed something to shake me up. I don't usually get all sweaty over guitar gear, but I tell ya, Monty, this is seriously cool.
• Last year I joined The Society of Grey-Bearded Folkies in Plaid Shirts The Maine Songwriters Association, which during the Plague Years meant a sincere quarterly email newsletter and not hella lot else. That's gradually changing, though, and they do have an annual songwriting competition opening in a few weeks that I'm going to enter, just as soon as I figure out what to submit, and if I need to edit out any F-bombs first.
• I did get to see cluegirl a few months ago, dust off some tunes for living room practice, and had a chat about finally finishing the Murder Ballads album that got abandoned when I moved five-and-a-half hours away. Our producer still has the masters, and I think we're only missing one or two sets of base tracks; the rest can be home-recorded and emailed in. No idea where this is going, but glad to hoist the topic onto the table again.

I know that what I should do is pick a video streaming host and do an online gig or two, but that's, y'know, scary and stuff. On the other hand, I've got some good stuff, like that one where I said to my songwriter!brain, "Hey, we should write a song about quarantine!" and songwriter!brain went, "Great! Here's a song about a bank robbery!" I really don't know what's going on in there, and try not to ask. It's for the best.