There's a Rock Star in My Office "I'm a victim/of the very song I sing." - Candi Staton Everything is different now. When Measure for Measure took its protracted break a couple of years ago, I did a real number on myself - a songwriting blank consumed me for months. It had been a great experiment, writing posts documenting the creation of a new song via the electronic pages of The New York Times (and in such formidable company). But the analysis I made of my song "All Talk" as it came to life seemed to have divested my brain of skill by laying bare a process I had taken for granted since I began writing songs at 8 years old, on through to my 50s back with the dB's. Seeing what I was thinking about, written down, had interfered with the organic nature and was off-kilter - at least that sounded right as a simple blanket excuse. I felt self-conscious about every chord change I tried, suspicious of monstrous notes and stupider words. Verses did not beget worthy choruses. The harder I tried, the deeper I sank. Nothing came together. The muse was no longer at rest, but had possibly departed. Then Kate Jacobs got in touch with me. Kate had toured around Germany when I was with the Continental Drifters, and we became friends. I admire her deft skill as a songwriter immensely. Kate let me know that there was a monthly (more or less) podcast being organized, a "song club," which would have a dozen or so songwriters each contributing a new tune for each episode. Would I like in on this? I panicked. This opportunity sounded positively like the last thing I was qualified to do in the throes of my interminable song void. Then I wondered if I should maybe just do this. Could it break the block? Could I ever keep up? I'd never done anything like a schedule for songwriting before. Radio Free Song Club debuted in December 2009. With Nick Hill from the well-loved Music Faucet on WFMU as compère, the first podcast had contributions from Freedy Johnston, Laura Cantrell, Jody Harris, Peter Blegvad, Freakwater and Victoria Williams. Kate had a song, as did Dave Schramm, another old comrade who was also the de facto bandleader; world-class songwriters all around. And I had a song, too! It was called "Oh My (I Gotta Write a New Song)," and it was completely meta. It was a close and cathartic examination of having taken the plunge to join R.F.S.C. I castigated myself in it for having lost the thread somewhere after Measure for Measure. Like me, the song starts out desperate and miserable and ends up optimistic and relatively satisfied. It's hard for me to tell how good "Oh My" is (I like it fine, especially the guitar solo), but when it got written, I simply didn't care if the song stunk or not: the spell was broken. Radio Free Song Club's core membership has changed little along the way; guest spots and live tapings have been part of its success and endurance, besides the superb musical contributions from the regulars. Every episode of the podcast since has had a song of mine on it, and we're up to number 25. Not every song I've contributed has been fantastic. A couple of them I would say are not very good at all. However, there have actually been a few really decent tunes, which I like a lot; I'm grateful for them all. After psyching myself out, I managed to psych myself back in, with help from Kate and my Song Club friends. Decision time was at hand, however. My own career as a solo act had begun sagging around the middle, and it was becoming precarious for my family's existence to depend too much on my infrequent musical contribution to the pot. BMI checks were growing smaller quarterly. Songs were still trickling out via the Song Club, and I even had a short run of CDs etched with the first year's worth of tunes; a wonderful new dB's album was completed, released and approved by fans but sales did not overwhelm anyone. I despaired that our home would be in bad shape if finances continued to ebb much longer. So what can a poor boy do? I got a job. It began as a part-time affair but graduated to full-time with benefits. My boss realized that I was a working musician, even though by then, I really was not doing much gigging, per se. And so despite my having questionable modern office skills, he took a chance and hired me. So I'm returning the favor and am dedicating myself to appearing indispensible to the gig. It's a great job, by all means; it forces me to use parts of my brain, many of which have lain fallow since school. The people at work sweetly think of me as the resident rock "star" but Creed Bratton, I am not. This late entry into the workaday world has been oddly straightforward after a life of moderate rock debauchery. All those decades of roaring around the country in a van full of gear, beer and sweat didn't particularly prepare me for sitting at a computer for 8-plus hours a day, except maybe for the sitting part. Full-time employment now means that I have to somehow recalibrate my involvement with music, moving my designation from "career" to "hobbyist" for the time being. That's been more difficult than I'd thought - my body gets me to work, but sometimes my mind swings backward and I fill with regret. Regret that I never had "that hit," that I didn't try harder, that I didn't stick it out, that I stuck it out too long. Then I get an e-mail that needs an answer, and all that other stuff submerges for a while longer. The prospect of not depending on my songwriting for any appreciable contribution to the family coffers has both elated and depressed me. While I wish I'd been commercially successful years ago, I wasn't; so the pressure is now off, not that it was ever really "on" on. Considering also the new business model for music publishing, there's not a lot of money to be earned without hitting the road anyway. It is fortunate that I continue to be able to write songs, even if they only see the light of day on a podcast. The songs I write now come from an internal need rather than as any sort of attempt to have the hit. I realize that I had everything I needed to be a professional musician except the key element: ambition. Once upon a time, I was introduced to a longtime employee at my then-wife's grandfather's shoe factory. He happened to be Harold Dorman, the writer of "Mountain of Love." Despite numerous hit covers of that song over several decades (Beach Boys, Charlie Pride and the big 1964 Johnny Rivers cut), he wasted no time in exhorting me to get a real job regardless of how bright I thought my future as a songwriter was going to be. I didn't, of course, until I was at the edge of the precipice. (Note: many reading this have probably had a good laugh at my stunning lack of preparation for a day job lifestyle. Why didn't he have a plan? Actually, I did have a plan, but the job was going to be as a semi-successful rock musician making a consistent living wage. Silly me. I'm glad I learned to type!) It's going to be O.K., though. Change is good, and the security of the employment and its benefits has improved the family's situation considerably. I did a gig for fun a couple of nights ago at a place I'd never played solo, to an audience I thought would be unfamiliar with my work but made like they knew it. So I played my best songs and my heart out which they also liked. It didn't make me much more than gas money, but it was a fine performance. I chalk that up to the onus being off. This would appear to be the best way to keep a foot in the pool while clinging to the deck chair. Everything is different now: the songs will come when they're ready, my home remains secure and I can't ask for more than that. Can I? Peter Holsapple is a songwriter and musician living in Durham, N.C., best known for his work in the dB's, Continental Drifters and Little Diesel. He has toured and recorded extensively with Hootie and the Blowfish and R.E.M., and is a contributor to "Making Notes," an anthology of the music of the Carolinas.