Crowell met her husband through mutual friends in the 1990s.

“After graduation, we were just friends and then we dated for two years and were engaged for one year, so we knew each other five years before we married,” said Crowell. “Being friends in the first is the reason we get along so well. He likes to listen. He is the first person I play for when I’ve written a song. He is a very good first audience. He’s also an excellent cook.”

Calhoun instructor

Crowell currently teaches music appreciation, class piano, and private piano lessons at Calhoun Community College. She also teaches yoga at the Wellness Center.

But it isn’t all filk for Crowell. She loves playing Rachmaninov, Gershwin and Bach.

“Poison Ivy,” her octet for flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon, French horn, trumpet, and trombone was performed at the UAH Local Composers Concert in March of 2004. In August 2004, Crowell joined the band Three Weird Sisters. She also plays with Atlanta based jazz band, Play It With Moxie.

Crowell finds inspiration in diverse places to write her original compositions.

“I wrote my first murder ballad, ‘Patchwork,’ a month ago,” she said.

In “Patchwork,” a man has an unfaithful lover who leaves him for another man. However, the other man murders his lover and the first man avenges her death by killing the killer, then winds up getting blamed for both deaths and executed. His spirit becomes the incarnation of everyone in the tragic lovers’ triangle, “Both the bereaved and the murderer made. There is a monster in everyone.”

“It’s an odd one,” she said of her latest composition. “I’ve written some mainstream and I’ve written some odd. It keeps it interesting.”

Crowell recently finished recording “Courting My Muse, “her solo CD with Greg Robert. “Courting My Muse” is available through various filk dealers, Amazon.com, and CDBaby.com. It is also available at Pablos on Market.

To learn more about filk and Crowell’s compositions, visit her Web site at: www.magnusretail.com, or her MySpace page: www.myspace.com/magnusretail.