Back when he was a film student at Temple, Devin Greenwood was offered a bit of bad advice from a faculty member: "Find one thing and focus."

The Philadelphia music community should be grateful that he ultimately ignored the tip.

These days, Greenwood is a multi-instrumentalist, a singer and a songwriter, with a penchant for jumping from one project to the next. He was an early collaborator with Amos Lee, playing keys long before the major labels came calling. He mixed Denison Witmer's The 80s EP and backed up his definitive Philadelphia Songs in 2002. Greenwood's first full-on production project came last year on The Faraway Flying of Broken Beating by The Weeds, with whom he sometimes performs as a bassist. This led to further production work for folkie Birdie Busch and the soulful John Francis. And that's not to mention the studio sit-ins with Townhall and The Nite Lights.

A: Devin Greenwood B: The Weeds C: Birdie Busch D: Amos Lee E: Denison Witmer F: Cowmuddy

Not only did the advice keep him from focusing — at least not in the reductive sense — it launched him in the opposite direction.

"That really affected me," he recalls over fajitas at Sabrina's, a short walk from his South Philly home. As he tells it, the young teacher sat him down one afternoon and explained that while he might be good at a lot of things, he had to choose one or he would never be great. He'd just be mediocre.

"I paid attention to it for years. I tried to make my focus on the piano," he says, clearly burned by the notion of mediocrity. "Ultimately I had to wrestle myself out of that mind-set in order to be more fulfilled, because it just wasn't working out for me at all. I felt pigeonholed every time."

Today, Greenwood seems much freer than the younger self he describes. He's carrying a dusty hardback volume that looks like it was purchased at an antique bookshop, smiles warmly and happily reports that, for the first time in a long time, his current project is himself.

Production wrapped up on Francis' Strong Wine and Spirits in August, an experience that turned Greenwood's house into a studio, with the living room soundproofed and microphones strung across the kitchen. ("The one roommate who wasn't involved in the project was wonderful about it," he chuckles.)

Greenwood has about a dozen of his own songs to work with, most from a recent writing stint, and plans to start recording in November. But ask why he waited until now to commit his own material to tape and you'll be met with a quiet, ponderous expression, as though he has to think back and remember the reason.

College brought Greenwood to Philadelphia in 1994 after a youth spent in Browns Mills, N.J. His upbringing in the small town at the edge of the Pine Barrens had been consistently marked by music — piano lessons beginning at age 3, singing in a church choir, teenage soliloquies recorded to four-tracks — and he gradually rediscovered music upon settling across the state line.

After doing time in a cover band and attempting listless solo projects throughout film school, graduation left him ready for a change. "I had a very insular group of friends and I just decided to break out of that," he says. "I wanted to branch out and meet people."

This was in 2002, back when open mic Monday nights at The Fire in Northern Liberties were bustling with talent. Greenwood started regularly attending and fast developed a rapport with Lee, Busch, Emily Zeitlyn of The Weeds and Michael McShane of Cowmuddy.

"That formed this core group where every Monday we'd come out and play our songs," he says. "To me, I had never had so many friends who I admired so much musically."

Lee, Greenwood and McShane began performing as Local Honey, using the trio arrangement to back each other's songs, but the band was scaled back when Lee signed with Blue Note records and began touring nationally. Greenwood took a break from his own work to play keys in Lee's touring band. But upon returning home, he decided to back away from the piano, learn guitar and bide his time using home recording gear to capture Zeitlyn's debut.

"That was, for me, a huge step forward because I had never been able to accomplish something of that magnitude," he recalls. The album was laid down over an endless series of Monday sessions at his house, a period when he was still recording on his computer. Today, vintage leanings have brought him back to tape.

Busch's The Ways We Try was more intricate, and Greenwood refers to it as a 102 course. And the house-transforming project with Francis was his biggest challenge so far. "It was the most like filmmaking that this has been so far," he says. "You're taking a blank space, creating your work environment out of nothing, really intensely working in that environment and then tearing it all down. It boosted my confidence in what I can accomplish."

Which brings us back to today, the forthcoming capstone course that will be his debut solo record and his reasons for waiting on it.

Greenwood is still pondering.

Pursing his lips, he finally says, "I wasn't willing to embark on it until I was confident that I was able to pull it off. It was a combination of all the things: becoming a better singer, a better performer and my production experience. I wasn't ready throughout all that, I was still learning the lessons I needed to be learning."

The songs he has been playing out and releasing as demos show a keen ear for finding beauty in gentle, understated melodies. "The Dangerous Face" is warm like whispering breath, with subtle guitar strums slowly complementing classic romantic sentiments like "I'll sing while I'm able/ keep wine on your table/ baby I'll keep loving you."

Greenwood finds the soft, from-the-heart delivery to be a common thread among his core group of Fire friends.

"If you can achieve that in a room, it is so much more powerful than being loud," he says. "Which I also love to do — I love seeing a really loud, dangerous rock band. But if you can get a whole room this close to you and get that kind of electricity, that is magic."

However, each has his own style, and not necessarily an easy one to simplify. Greenwood hates the "singer-songwriter" label, and cites an eclectic crop of influences that ranges from Nina Simone to The Police. (He promises his record will have some darker new wave moments). Perhaps the most apt comparison would be Jeff Buckley, not because of sound or style but because of the trembling emotionality at the music's core, as well as its obvious references to a gamut of forebears while being an end product that's so distinctively his own.

The album title under consideration is Piney Power. Growing up in the shadow of the Pine Barrens left Greenwood fascinated with the history and folklore of the area — the tales of the energy within the preserve, the legends of its forests being a massive subsurface organism of mingling roots.

It's an idea he wants to incorporate into his music, but also other projects. We haven't even begun to talk about the novel he is working on, his painting pursuits, his hope to eventually return to film — all that will have to wait for another day.

It might be apt to call Greenwood a bohemian, but we're not going that far. After all, it's a label, and labels have constraints. "That's one thing I will always do," he laughs. "I will squirm out of any pigeonhole I get put into, even if it seems to be shooting myself in the foot."