Good thing Kate Gaffney was a 400-meter girl back at Lansdale Catholic. Good thing it wasn't that long ago. At 26, she still has the stamina to keep up with constant gigging, touring, booking and everything else a self-starting singer/songwriter must juggle. She's got two self-released albums under her belt, some glowing words for her press kit, a new love in her life and a lot of wind in her sails. But the intense, blues-tinged artist named her production company Tired Wired for a reason.

She lets her feelings, the stronger the better, do the navigating. Her idealistic urge to help others led her to social work in Sacramento for several years after college. Her frustration with that career—taking her clients' troubles home every night—drove her to music full-time.

Music had been an outlet for her before. "I picked up the guitar in college to mend a broken heart," says Gaffney. She credits her friends at Penn State for teaching her music of the 1960s and '70s, and her former lead guitarist Jesse Lundy, of local booking company Point Entertainment, for teaching her about the roots of rock.

But it was during those post-college years in California, the ones where she started hanging out with bluesman Jackie Greene, that had the most profound impact on Gaffney's life. "I'd see him everywhere in Sacramento. We got to be friends. He and his girlfriend even let me crash at his place while I was breaking up."

While she enjoyed her time in Sacramento—she had an apartment with an unobstructed view of Folsom Prison and a good friend named Ryan West for an upstairs neighbor—Gaffney moved back to Pennsylvania in January of 2004. But it wasn't just to hang with the family.

"I'm an artist," she says. "I came back from California to work."

Gaffney cold-called Lundy when he was booking the late, lamented Point. She gratefully recites a long list of connections he shared with her. Following up those leads still keeps her busy. She also credits Jackie Greene's manager, Marty DeAnda, for business inspiration. "For years in Sacramento, I studied every move they made and I came back to Philly and followed the formula."

It seems Gaffney learned well. In two years she's chalked up two recordings on her Tired Wired label, a gig at the 2005 Philadelphia Folk Festival—the envy of many artists with more years in the business—and creative control of a regular monthly showcase at World Café Live.

Recently, she got the itch to visit her friends in California, so she called up DeAnda to see if she could open for Greene on New Year's. No dice, the lineup was already set. Then, three days before the date, she got a call: The other act cancelled; was she still interested? What the heck, she figured, it must be fate. The flight cost twice the opener's fee, but hey, she sold 70 CDs.

This past New Year's was also a reunion with her old pal Ryan West and here's where our workaholic protagonist finds herself the star of a good old-fashioned romance. "I love to fall in love. It's what drives me, my art, and sometimes I just have to feel it and go with it and revel in the heartache that often accompanies heavy love. I love hard, I play hard, I live to the fullest, I feel most things to the extreme, but that's me, it's who I am, and I've come to realize that nothing will ever change that."

Back when Gaffney lived downstairs from West, both were otherwise involved. But even then, though neither would admit it, they'd had a mutual attraction. "Ryan and I are the rebellious kids of conservative Irish Catholic Republican families," she says—but still conservative enough to believe in serial monogamy.

"Ryan tells me that he wanted to hold me and keep me from leaving [in 2004]. But if he had, this would never have happened." On Gaffney's return to Sacramento both she and West were unattached. The two fell so insanely in love on New Year's, some 19 days ago, that they threw together what Gaffney calls a hippie wedding and are set to spend the rest of their lives together.

Once he moves here, that is.

"I'm not moving to California and uprooting my career. Ryan knows that this is it. He is going to come here. It is just amazing to have somebody who doesn't play music and isn't jealous of it. He is totally proud of my career and tells me he is ready to be a rock-'n'-roll husband."

That said, Gaffney figured being bicoastal might make sense, career-wise. In the East the folk community has embraced her, but she's hoping that in California the jam band scene will also make her welcome. "Bottom line, I'm an effing hippie. I can no longer deny it. My music is floating and feel-good. The festival scene loves music that they can just groove to. My biggest disappointment in that scene is the lack of good vocals. There are great musicians, and great jams, but there is no voice in that scene. I know I can be that voice."

Gaffney, as exhausting as it sounds, seems to be thriving on the stress of constant work and a long-distance relationship. "My parents and friends are saying that they've never seen me so happy."

Kate Gaffney will play Sat., Jan. 21, 7 p.m., $15, Grounds for Sculpture, 18 Fairgrounds Rd., Hamilton, N.J., 609-586-0616. The next Tired Wired Showcase hosted by Gaffney will be Tue., Jan. 24, 8 p.m., free, World Café Live, 3025 Walnut St., 215-222-1400, www.kategaffney.com.