Moonlighting

So, by day I'm an English professor at East Tennessee State University, and for the next year, I'm also the Director of the University and Midway Honors Scholars Programs. Although I've had my ups and downs with this career recently, the job remains something that I'm thrilled to be doing. In addition to teaching courses in early American and Native American literature, I research and write articles on our culture, hopefully contributing in some small way to our understanding of ourselves. For much the same reason, I also write fiction and poetry.

Having come to a happy and stable career, I've been glad to be afforded the time to revisit a previous happy and not-so-stable career: that of songwriting and performing. I don't do any songwriting these days, but I'm enjoying the opportunity to perform my songs--and my versions of the songs of others--in various venues in the area. The more I do this, I think, the more likely it is that I'll beging writing a song or two again sometime soon.

I've not been doing enough of this to call it actual moonlighting, but I'm going to make a push in that direction. Not that I want to be playing a lot. I think I would enjoy playing somewhere in a 50-100 mile radius a couple of times a month, especially in the summer months. To that end, I'm trying out a site for performers called REVERBNATION, which is a space from which I can promote the music a little bit and seek out friendly places to play. I already have the wonderful Good Stuff Grocery in Marshall, North Carolina, so I'll be looking for a place or two in Asheville, a place in Greeneville, maybe somewhere up in Virginia or Kentucky. Geographically, this seems as if I'm traveling far afield, but that's one of the advantages to living in an area that is close to so many borders.

Check out the REVERBNATION page at http://www.reverbnation.com/michaelcody.

I'm also trying to decide if I want to try to play a regular public gig here at home in Johnson City/Jonesborough. I think I'd like to, but somehow that almost seems like it brings my day job and my moonlighting in too close proximity. We'll see.