Of all the stories I’ve written about the Boston music scene over the last 15 years, few have felt as feel-good satisfying as my feature about Amanda Nichols, a talented local rocker, music writer, and lovely soul who just happens to be afflicted with multiple sclerosis. With her husband Nick Blakey, likewise a talented local rocker, music writer, and lovely soul, Amanda is now in her third year spearheading a special series of shows in and around Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville, aimed at raising both funds and awareness for this deadly and debilitating disease.

This time around, the festivities will kick off Sept. 13-14 and then resume the following weekend of Sept. 20-21. In the spirit of this great and worthwhile cause, I’m posting my interview with Amanda and Nick that originally ran in The Boston Globe when they first hatched the cool idea of plugging in and turning up as a way of raising money, awareness of — and yeah, flipping the bird to — MS. What they each had to say — about living, striving, and thriving with MS — spoke volumes about their strength, humor, and perseverance after Amanda was diagnosed in 2008.

Regardless of the circumstances, they’re both witty, smart and thoughtful people to have a conversation with in their own right about any, and all, topics (and I’ve had many music-related ones with Nick, especially, in both official and unofficial capacities). For those of you jonesing for some local live music and reading this within car-shot or T-shot of Boston, I‘ve included all the pertinent details contained in this year’s press release at the bottom of my post. Be sure to check out the who, what, where’s, and when’s (but, er, please don’t skip the story!)

Amanda Nichols remembers waking up one morning in 2003 thinking she had slept badly. “I kind of woke up stiff and sore in a strange way and thought, at first, ‘Gee, I slept wrong in that bed, what did I do?’ ” recalls Nichols, a local music writer and musician who was, at the time, also a nursing student. “And then it didn’t go away and I thought I slept really wrong.”

The stiffness, she says, started creeping up from her feet, to a leg, then to an arm. By the time she had been checked out by a doctor, and then a neurologist a couple of days later, Nichols could barely move. “Getting up and walking around just suddenly became impossible,” she says. “And I had no idea what it was – I felt like I had pinched a nerve. You say, ‘What did I do?’ And the answer was that I did nothing.”

Such is the insidious and potentially devastating nature of multiple sclerosis (MS), a condition defined by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society as “a chronic, often disabling disease that attacks the central nervous system, which is made up of the brain, spinal cord, and optic nerves.” Symptoms can range from numbness in the limbs to paralysis and loss of vision.

Nichols was officially diagnosed in January 2008, after a series of trips to hospital emergency rooms after strange symptoms flared up again in 2007. She was barely 30 years old. “I couldn’t write, I couldn’t type, I couldn’t work, I couldn’t do anything,” she says, over the phone from where she now works at a Harvard Medical School laboratory. “I couldn’t even brush my teeth.”

Thanks to treatment and medication, Nichols is doing a lot more than that these days – and she’s not alone. Roughly 400,000 Americans have MS, while about 200 people are diagnosed every week, according to the National MS Society. Moreover, MS is thought to affect an estimated 2.5 million people worldwide. So far, there is no cure. But Nichols, like so many others, is aiming to change those statistics.

Aided and abetted by a slew of some amazing rock & roll friends, Nichols and her husband, musician and music booking agent Nick Blakey, have begun organizing a series of benefit shows around Boston they’ve dubbed “Crash Safely” (named after a song by Nick’s old garage-punk band, the Takers). The shows are aimed not just at raising funds for MS research but, perhaps more significantly, aimed at eradicating the confusion, secrecy, and stigma that persists around the disease.