Last May, Greg Bell and I started a company called Orange Peel Media. It was an exciting time, because I have always been an entrepreneur at heart.

At that point in my life I made the decision, to let my music take a backseat to my career. At the time, Adrian Glynn and I had been doing a monthly gig at Backstage Lounge, where I enjoyed some of my favourite shows as a performer. I will always look back on those times as exciting. However, because of my career, I started to find that they were becoming a chore. I didn’t have the time to put into them like I used to. So, after two years of good times at Backstage, Adrian and I decided to give it a rest.

For a few months I put my guitar in a corner (the first time in about 8 years) and didn’t even think about it. I even really enjoyed the time away from it.

Anyway, in the last few months, I have picked it up again and have made a few passes at writing some new songs.

Nothing seems to be working though: I have one rhythm, and that’s all I seem to know how to play; I can’t come up with a half-assed lyric for the life of me; and I’m far too stuck to know what’s wrong.

In a way I feel like I’ve just sobered up and realized that I was never a very good songwriter… well, not really, but that’s what I tell myself to get depressed so that I can write.

When it comes down to it, like most songwriters, most of my best songs have come out of depression and melancholy moods. It has always worked for me because I’ve always been depressed in one way or another, but now things seem to have changed. It’s not because I’m blissfully happy… because I’m not. And it’s not because my life too good to be depressed about it… because it’s definitely not. But I am just too busy to be depressed, and I just can’t afford to be melancholy!

Now that I’m quite sure that I know what the problem is, I’m not sure I want to go there. It makes me wonder if a songwriter can really put out good music without the manic lows, and fleeting highs…

So the question is: where does music fit in my life now?