Imade my singing debut last weekend. That should be enough to scare even those who claim

to be open-minded music listeners.You may be partial to jazz, rap, heavy metal, classic rock and/or country, but I'm not sure you are quite prepared for Kirkland.

Almost a year ago, I was asked to develop a show to be presented at the Watermark Writer's Conference at a resort in western Washington State. I called my friend, singer-songwriter Greg Greenway, It's been said that Greg has "one of the strongest, and finest voices in folk music." Boston Globe says, "Confessional one moment, rambunctiously disarming the next, few modern folk singers can own a coffeehouse stage as completely as Greenway."

Greg's songwriting ability is incredible. He takes his audience through a roller coaster ride of emotional responses to his words; one moment laughing, and the next moved almost to the point of tears. Basically, Greg is to music what I am not.

We decided to write what we began calling a folk-rock opera, detailing every phase of a writer's career in song.

Greg and I were faced with one rather significant obstacle that none of the great songwriting duos have had to deal with in their careers. The Gershwins could sit together in a room and churn out their songs. I live near Vancouver, British Columbia. Greg is just around the corner and a short 3300 miles further down the road on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. It doesn't exactly lend itself to getting together for an afternoon of songwriting.

Despite that, after many attempts to singlehandedly revitalize the financial condition of the North American telephone industry, including one lengthy call while Greg drove across Ohio and Western Pennsylvania between concerts, we managed to write eighteen songs.

We still desperately needed rehearsal time.We arrived at the resort two days before the show. Greg flew cross-country from Boston to get to the resort and I drove the couple hundred miles from mile place. Thanks to construction and hitting Seattle just in time for the start of rush hour, I think I was in transit longer than he was.

It turned out that we would not have a piano for Greg at the resort until just before we took to the stage. Hearing of our plight, one of the resort employees offered us the use of her home, which conveniently included a fully equipped recording studio.

I've visited a number of recording studios over the years. They usually have some form of insulation covering the walls to absorb the sound. Often it looks like a collection of egg cartons covering the walls. This studio also had a collection covering the walls to deaden the sound and prevent echoing.

I counted well over 60 pieces of taxidermy, ranging in size from a fish head to a fully grown black bear standing erect on his hind legs. Around the room were deer, elk, lynx, cougar moose, a buffalo, and more. One black bear head had antlers growing from it, making it look like the issue of some kind of backwoods interspecies sexual encounter.

It was a bit unnerving having over one hundred and thirty eyes staring down on us while we rehearsed.

We started out with a song about someone wanting to become a writer, and moved through other steps in the career ranging from desperation to see work published, getting that first big break, and on to the joys of book tours and being stalked by a deranged fan.

One song, more of a medley of songs, looked at all of the various genres someone could write in for publication.We covered the romance novel, the psycho-thriller and the cowboy western. In a line that Greg and I are particularly proud of, we gave some serious advice to anyone wanting to write science fiction, when we sang, "Never end a fantasy with a cyborg and a Wookie. It's an ugly, scaly, oily, hairy mess."

I'm happy to tell you that the lyrics and Greg's singing were a hit in front of our audience of writers who had either experienced the phases of the career we were singing about or were hoping to in the near future.

My singing... well, that's another story.