Creativity sometimes comes out of the juggle between paying the bills and expressing yourself: this WSJ article (sub reqd) talks about why and how “Laura Cantrell, a VP in equity research at Bank of America in New York, and Elizabeth Cook, a (former) staff auditor at Price Waterhouse in Nashville … have recently put out albums that any country singer, much less ones whose left brains get as much use as their right, would be proud of.”

Note: I realize the WSJ doesn’t have a lot of street cred in terms of identifying good country music, but I do...I was once described in a newspaper article as “a former Dallas magazine editor who is trying to forget everything she learned in graduate school in order to sound more like an unlettered honky-tonk-girl hellion that her real friends know her to be.” I’ve heard both Cook and Cantrell and think they’re great.

From the article:

An offer [by Elvis Costello to open his U.S. tour last fall] Cantrell couldn't refuse, it meant she had to ask for leave, and so had to ‘come out’ as a country singer to her big bosses at Bank of America. She knew it was a lot to ask, but was determined to make it work, even though it's meant taking cell calls on the road, doing paperwork in hotels and dragging herself into the office when the tour came through New York. But the director of her department was pulling for her. ‘You have to seize the moment!’ he said.