Liz Stahler on her CD "Stitches in My Sleeve"

There's no stopping Liz Stahler

Just two years after graduating college, folk/roots musician Liz Stahler has released her second CD, toured the country, won a songwriting contest and had her songs heard on national television. It seems like a lot of success in a short time, but Stahler has been preparing for this since she was 11-years-old.

"My parents had a piano, and I basically taught myself to play things off the radio," she explains. "A full gamut of Bruce Springsteen and Carly Simon, and everything in the key of C. I wrote my first song when I was 11. Not exactly Mozart, but I've always had a passion for lyric and melody, and pop music."

Despite the darkness lurking in her just released CD Stitches in My Sleeve, Stahler's voice sparkles with humor. When I ask her when she picked up the guitar, she sounds a little abashed and a lot amused. "I think I started playing guitar because I fell in love with the Indigo Girls in high school," she chuckles. "For about three years, that was all I listened to."

Stahler is aware of the clich?s of lesbian singer/songwriters, but she's not too embarrassed by them. Explaining how she continued writing songs in college, although she had no ambition to be a professional musician, she pauses to add that she attended Smith. "That might be of interest to Bay Windows," she laughs.

"I started getting these amazing opportunities," she continues, "that only come when you're in college. I got to open for some amazing artists coming through Northampton, even though I really had no business doing it. But I loved it and discovered I loved performing. So I knew I needed to get better, and I decided to go to Berklee."

Stahler abandoned a double major in sociology and education to apply herself to music full time at Berklee College of Music. With characteristic drive, she recorded her first EP, Turn the Lights Down, before she graduated.

"I just felt like it was time," says Stahler, who realizes now how little she knew about cutting a CD. "I put it up on cdbaby.com and went back to school. I realized, almost too late, that you have to do a CD release party and go on tour and ... you know, tell people that you made a record."

Her business skills needed some work, but Stahler was on firm ground musically. The EP attracted lots of positive notices, including a glowing review in Northeast Performer that compared Stahler to Sheryl Crow and said she was "blessed with gold for a voice." She speculates it was that article that led to getting a call from a producer looking for indie musicians for the soundtrack to Fever Pitch. That connection didn't pan out, but it led to Stahler's music being used on the TV shows The Ghost Whisperer and The Unit. In 2005 Stahler graduated from college and was chosen as one of six winners of the John Lennon Songwriting Contest.

Things were heating up, but for once Stahler took something of a breather, focusing on touring and allowing her first full length album to germinate. "This album is really personal," she says. "It was written over a period of two years, and an unbelievable amount of stuff happened in my life over that time. Each song is a piece of something that was going on in my life between 2004 and 2006. I had a friend who had an overdose, another committed suicide and a friend lost a child and my brother got married and I left a bad relationship ... all those things got a song."

The release of the album kicks off another season of touring for the musician, who says she usually enjoys life on the road - "I'm a master of U.S. geography at this point" - but finds this latest departure bittersweet because the tour was booked before she met a certain someone.

"I'm writing love songs now!" Stahler says in amazement. "Before now, the only love song I wrote was for my brother's wedding. It's so hard to start a relationship and then say, 'I'm off to see the world.'" Talk about her love life leads Stahler to wax philosophical about being out in the music industry.

"My sexuality has been a funny part of my life, because I've moved back and forth on it for so long. And I've been really open, I came out to my entire high school. But the term I identify most with is queer, because it encapsulates a lot. I even went through this period over the summer where I was saying, 'I think I'm just going to date boys,' and then I met this woman I'm with now. I called my best friend and said, 'Well, I'm definitely not straight.'

"I'm chatty on stage, and when I'm in, like, Portland I'm not self conscious about pronouns. When I'm in Alabama or some red state, I feel more guarded. I love that I'm doing an interview with Bay Windows, but I want to span all audiences. I want to be able to be silly on stage and talk about anything, in a way that anyone can relate to."

The promising young musician will probably have plenty of time to figure out how to find that balance. Although she attributes a lot of her opportunities to "luck, total luck" there's a fine line between luck and preparedness. And with her drive and talent, she's ready for a long and successful career.

Liz Stahler plays Club Passim at 8 p.m. on Thurs., Sept. 27. 47 Palmer St., Cambridge. Tickets $12. For more tour dates visit www.lizstahler.com.