The Sound of Garrison Starr

ANN ARBOR – Some musicians want a lavish mansion on Miami Beach. Some dream of playing at Carnegie Hall. But Garrison Starr just wants to get out of debt. "That's the main thing I want to accomplish," the singer-songwriter says by phone as she chills in her tour van outside of a St. Louis venue.
In minutes she'll do soundcheck, say a prayer, take some deep breaths, do some vocal warm-ups and head out on stage. But she's not nervous. Not anymore. "I had to conquer that," she says. "It just becomes another place. It's just another stage somewhere."
Just like the various stages she plays on, Starr treats her sexuality as a minimal part of the musical equation. "It's the same as anybody else making it," she says. "I hate categories, I hate labels … I certainly don't think that gay people should be any different. The more you focus on it, the more other people focus on it."
Starr treats it as a "fact of my life right now." And while she believes she leans toward women, she wouldn't rule out the idea of romancing a man. She also consciously doesn't make her sexuality part of her music, making her lyrics more universal and generic.
"I don't ever want anyone to feel alienated by my music," she says. "And that may sound codependent, but I want anyone that listens to a song to take what they want to take from it. I don't feel the need to specify much. I'm more comfortable writing from a more open perspective."
Life in Los Angeles amounted to more candid lyrics for her most personal album, "The Sound Of You And Me," released in March. After packing her bags and dashing out of hometown Hernando, Miss., Starr spent seven years stuck in traffic jams and experiencing loneliness in L.A. before moving to Nashville last year.
She says she channeled her emotions – heartache, desires and loves lost and found – into the album. "I think it's a lot more organic. I think it definitely has a sort of open vibe that some of the other records don't really have," she says.
On "Big Enough," an honest illustration of two lovers slipping apart, Starr wears her heart on her sleeve. "It's definitely a heartbreak song," she says about the tune, which examines frustrations from one person who contemplates the reasons for the end of a relationship.
After a friend revealed that her alcoholic father abused their family, Starr was inspired to write the dark, haunting closing track, "We Were Just Boys and Girls." "It was a really intense story that she told me," she says.
For Starr, lyrics come like flashes of lightening. "I'll hear something somebody says, or I'll read an email I got or I'll just have a thought or I'll be hit by an experience," she says.
Translating these words, though, into music in the studio is painstaking. "It's not my favorite part of the process by any means," she says. "Just being in the studio is kind of a pain in the ass all the way around. There are definitely parts that are magical but for the most part it's work."
The magic comes out on stage when Starr, guitar in hand, blends her earthy vocals with stirring, rock-oriented instrumentation. "I just get a lot more out of connecting with an audience," she says. "I get a lot more out of connecting with people and feeding off their energy and getting a chance for me to sort of have an album and express my feelings at whatever place I'm in that day. It's more special to share it in the moment."
After Starr's Ann Arbor gig she'll do one of three things: crash in the van, unwind in her hotel room or hit up /aut/Bar. "I like to unwind after a gig," she says. "I've been there [Ann Arbor] once but I didn't really get a chance to hang out much. It depends on how many shows I have in a row and how tired I am."