I pretty much quit performing when my kids were born. I didn't stop doing music, I just did nearly all of it in a less-than-300-square-foot room in a commercial building a few blocks east of downtown Austin. I was writing music for other people, so between that demanding most of my creative energy, and having no particular outlet for performing, there didn't seem to be any great pressing cause to write any new songs of my own. But then, when my kids got to be around 3 and 4, my buddy George hipped me to something he had just discovered called February Album Writing Month, or FAWM. FAWM is an online songwriting challenge with a very simple premise – sign up, create a profile, then write and upload fourteen new songs between February 1 and February 28. That averages out to a song every other day for four weeks – theoretically, you  aim for 14.5 songs during a leap year, har har har.

That's a pretty rapid clip, for sure, but I was hooked from the very first morning,...