You may recall that when I last wrote, I was eyeballing the slippery slope of tossing my hat into the ring of “singer-songwriter.” Well, the view from some way down that slope, flat on my keister and gathering speed, is fascinating.

Port Gamble was a hoot. Jay, Emily and I played well. Sounded good, I think, and got a great reception. The solo performance of my prizewinning song (watch it here), went off without a hitch, and I was gratified by the sound of those in the audience who knew it singing along with the chorus. Got to lead one of my favorite contemporary maritime songs – Rod McDonald’s “Sailor’s Prayer” – with the whole musical complement of the festival at the end.

Then the swirl into two gigs the following week – splitting the bill with Marna Williams and friends at Rosie’s on the Wharf in Port Angeles, and the next night opening for Quimper’s Watch at The Vintage in Port Townsend. Tomorrow, Devon, Emily and I head east for a couple of days at the Tumbleweed Acoustic Music Festival, where Em and I will be performing a full set of my maritime songs on the South Stage (Sunday), and I’ll be soloing another song on the Community Center Stage, as a finalist in their songwriting contest.

Whew. Not content with only slightly overextending myself, I’ve leaned in a bit more and have been spending every morning this week on this month’s Fearless Songwriting Challlenge. I’ve written about it before: every morning, Timmy posts a prompt, and those of us who are participating have 24 hours to compose, record and post a brand-new song built around that prompt to the group. We check in, revel in each others’ creations, lament tricky lines, celebrate brilliant contributions and generally egg each other on. And then the next morning, Timmy posts the next prompt, and we do it all again. Some of the songs are amazing, some are just…fine. But they’re all songs, brand new songs that didn’t exist in anybody’s mind before, and are now real, and out there. I just posted Day Five, with two more to go, holding onto my hat (here are Day Three and Day Four, if you’re curious).

Anything else? Oh right: I’m still nominally running the farm and that open source software project, both of which seem to be blossoming more under my neglect than under my close tutelage. Does that give me permission to lean in more?

Finally, if you’d like more of a taste of Emily and me playing, here’s the entire set from The Vintage last week: