Hi. I'm Anna. During the week I'm a veterinary technician at an animal hospital in Somerville, which means I spend my days holding cats who don't want to be held and dogs who think the thermometer is a personal insult. On weekends I play guitar and sing my own songs in coffeehouses and church basements and the back rooms of places that are mostly about the coffee, around Boston and Cambridge and anywhere else that will have me and has a stool.

I've played guitar since I was fourteen, when my grandfather traded a man a lawn mower for one, and I've been writing songs about as long, though the early ones are locked in a shoebox where they belong. I started doing open mikes in 1995, after a friend dared me, and I threw up before the first three. I don't anymore. Mostly.

This spring I finally made a tape. It's called Kettle Pond, and the words to six of the songs on it are on the lyrics page, with a little about where each one came from. Thanks for coming by. If you come to a show, come say hello afterward. I'm the one packing up the guitar and eating the last cookie off the snack table.

Recorded in March and April of 1999 in my friend Jill Quinn's basement in Medford, on her four-track, between the furnace and the washing machine. If you listen closely to "Room Three" you can hear the furnace kick on in the second verse. We decided to leave it. Stanley O'Mara plays mandolin on two songs and sings harmony on "Red Line, Midnight," and he did it for a six-pack and a plate of my lasagna, which tells you everything about Stan.

It's $7 at shows. If you can't get to one, e-mail me and I'll send you one for $9, which covers the padded envelope and the stamps. I've sold 112 so far, which is about 110 more than I expected, and two of them went to Oregon.

Read the words to six of the songs »

Dar Williams. The first time I heard her tape Mortal City I sat in my car in a parking lot for an hour after it ended. She writes the songs I wish I'd written, and then she makes them funny, too.

Shawn Colvin. For her voice and her guitar playing, which I've spent years trying to copy and can't. I was so happy when "Sunny Came Home" won those Grammys last year that I made a cake.

Ani DiFranco. She plays guitar like she's mad at it, and she put out her own records on her own label because she wanted to. Every time I think about quitting, I remember that.

And I went to Lilith Fair in the summer of 1998 with three girlfriends from work, and we sang the whole way there and the whole way home, and somewhere around the second encore I decided to finally make the tape. So, thanks for that, Lilith.