Profile I started writing songs at about the age of fourteen. I didn’t know how to play an instrument but I would write lyrics, come up with a melody, and sing the songs into a cassette recorder. In time I accompanied myself by plucking out feeble one string bass lines on my brother’s guitar. At around the same time I started writing essays on whatever topic consumed me at the moment. I called them “Potosnak On…”(whatever the topic might be). As you can imagine neither the songs nor the essays were very pretty but so began a life-long pursuit of attempting to communicate life’s “big picture” (as I understand it) through original songs and essays. It wasn’t until my early twenties that I bought my first guitar and began learning to play. Inspired by the “story-songs”, performing style and life of the then recently passed Harry Chapin (Taxi, Cats in the Cradle) it became my passion to become a performing singer-songwriter who, like Harry, touched his audience with thoughtful and entertaining songs and stories. All of this of course before I even learned my first chord... Since that time I’m proud to say that I’ve been able to weave writing, recording, and performing into the context of a life primarily dedicated to more traditional pursuits. In other words, music and writing hasn’t been a full time thing for me. Over the years I’ve released three recordings (two available on CD), performed at clubs, coffeehouses, house concerts, schools, churches, weddings, and even for a friend at an AA meeting! I co-founded and performed at the Leukemia Society “Concert for a Cure” at the Hatch Shell in Boston, MA which ran for eight years and featured outstanding artists such as Barbara Kessler, Martin Sexton, Catie Curtis, and Don White. A song I wrote and performed for two young leukemia survivors (“You Bring Us Hope”) was used as a sound bed for a Leukemia Society video, and I’ve performed in-studio and received air play at Boston folk/acoustic radio stations. I outline my modest accomplishments not to impress anyone, but rather to impress upon everyone the simple truth that it is possible to do justice to something you love within the context of a busy life. The key thing to remember is that it’s not an all or nothing proposition. And by choosing to ignore your passion instead of exercising it in whatever form it takes you run the real risk of letting what might be the best of yourself slip away, leaving the door open for certain regret and resentment So in the words of Harry Chapin, the man whose example moved me to action all those years ago: “Do something!” Tom Potosnak | 
