Don't Be the Cactus

Singer-songwriter Megan Combs — now an Ocean Beach resident — was 24 when she left Virginia on New Year’s Eve in 2007. She blogs about leaving her home, job, and husband behind:

“I didn’t have enough money for gas to get to my parents’ house in Pennsylvania. I didn’t have even one cent. I was bawling my eyes out, while my best friend, who was in Pennsylvania, was on the phone with the gas station attendant trying to get him to let her pay for gas over the phone with a credit card.”

She writes that she wasn’t able to pursue her music career in Virginia.

“You know that little voice in the back of your head that tells you that something is right or wrong, ever so slight. Some people call this a conscience. I think of this as a personal GPS…I had been ignoring it for a while. Way too long, in fact.… Neglecting it like a cactus that finally dies of thirst. I was that cactus. I was dying. Every day, I would drive to work and drive home, and the only thought that consumed my mind was ‘What if?’ ”

Combs landed in O.B. last summer, she says, “to broaden my music opportunities. I constantly wonder where my songs come from. Where does this shit come from? I don’t feel the right to call it my own. I didn’t write it. I merely wrote it down.

“I’ve been playing about five times a week since I got here. Started at open mikes and have been booking shows from those almost every time. The scene here is a non-pretentious one. People really dig original music, so I don’t have to play as many covers as before, which is amazing. You don’t get paid around here unless you have a massive fan base built up, which being the newbie is not happening yet. But I didn’t come here for the money. I’d be just as happy living in the People’s Republic [in O.B.] in my van and playing music every night.”

According to her MySpace page, Combs is scheduled to play the Bareback Bar and Grill on January 27 and at Lestat’s on the 31st.