(Pictured left to right) Molly Thomas, Neilson Hubbard, Gene Edwards, and Garrison Starr

“Don’t Throw Your Head.” That’s the first song Garrison Starr ever wrote. “I was probably about five—or four,” she claims. “I started writing songs in my bedroom, crazy songs with drumsticks on my bed.”

 

Neilson Hubbard waited a little longer to begin composing. “It was a really bad song,” he laughs, “about a girlfriend in 11th grade.”

 

Molly Thomas may not remember her first song, but she claims, “For me, it’s very difficult to write a song.” Since she’s a trained musician—and a self-proclaimed melody person—when she does write, she says it’s weird that the words come first.

 

Hubbard is just the opposite. He says, “Music and melody have always come first.” And Starr expands, “I do have to have a melody to sing to.”

 

Like all writers, the words come from their feelings. “You know,” says Thomas, “feelings that I feel or experience or see other people experience.” Hubbard adds that observing is important. “Learning how to listen and hear things” is vital. Starr takes the premise on note further. “Be honest. Try not to fool people.”

 

The music business is changing. While a literary writer may still need a publishing house, a song writer doesn’t “need a distributor to go out and put it in record stores across the country,” Hubbard claims. “Now there’s so much power with the artist.”

 

Starr put out her latest CD with a partner. “We can push this record. We can try, do anything. We can work this record for two years if we want to because there are no rules. Anything you can dream up, you can do.”

 

The digital revolution impacts more than just distribution. “It’s a time of great creativity,” observes Hubbard. “Some kid in Idaho can make a record for $2000 if he buys a little computer.”

 

At the end of the day, the three Mississippi-born songwriters say that being real makes the difference—listening to their hearts and being honest their writing. And “learn about your business,” Starr concludes.