Garrison Starr ready to kick open doors

Garrison Starr’s greatest gift is her gorgeous, full, rough, passionate voice that can be alternately pensive, intimate, hurt, consoling, libidinous or scornful — sometimes during the same verse. Her raw phrasing would take Sarah McLachlan’s and Neko Case’s lunch money.

She’s a little bit country. And she’s a little bit rock and roll. She’s also a little bit folk. And ’80s jangle-pop. And a bit of a torch singer. With some punky attitude thrown in.

So of course she’s had the door closed on her by multiple radio formats. Too much of this, not enough of that. I can sell this, but not that. Right sound, wrong trend. Where does the single get played? This despite four excellent albums, the latest of which is “The Sound of You and Me.”

Starr had an alternative-rock quasi-hit, “Superman,” during the late-’90s post-Lillith Fair hangover. Her alt-country pedigree comes from opening for Steve Earle, her mainstream one from singing backup for Mary Chapin Carpenter. But she’s had an unfortunately typical story of lousy record company support and indifferent, cowardly radio programmers — albeit while being supported by a small, intense fan base.

Does she feel she falls through the cracks?

“I do, and it’s like, people want to pin you down. I do what I do,” she says in her gentle Mississippi twang — which makes her more-than-occasional expletives sound as natural and endearing as “shucks” — as she explains how radio limits listeners’ options.

“Not that I’m the Stones, but when anyone heard ‘Sticky Fingers’ were [the audience] going ‘Oh, they have country influences, and they’ve got some blues. And maybe they’re a little punk. What do we call this?’ No. They just said ‘This is really good.’”

The description is, at once, over the top and sort of apt. Among the songs on “The Sound of You and Me,” “Sing it Like a Victim” is a pensive, syncopated No Depression singer-songwriter ringer. “Big Enough” is a torchy, folky big cry. If Joni Mitchell ever hears “Black & White,” she might sue for theft of persona. “Cigarettes & Spearmint” is a breathy lock-the-door come-on Prince would endorse should he become an Americana fan anytime soon. “Beautiful in Los Angeles” is a rocking kiss-off to a coulda-shoulda ex.

Starr is a very capable lyricist. And while past albums have had her exhorting others to take chances, or painting personality sketches, “You and Me” is noticeably tougher, bruised and personal — in a good way.  On “Beautiful in Los Angeles” she shuts down — and encourages — a former lover with “Between Eastern time / And really predictable lines / You make a pretty good case / For that lost look on your face.”

Previous albums had never quite got the effect of her voice in live performance. Starr said she and her producers went out of their way to right that on “You and Me.”

“Their focus was on my voice and getting people to know me and getting them inside the songs and inside me. That’s what they wanted to do and they made sure that it happened this time.”

There’s no requisite best-record-I’ve-ever-made speech from Starr about “You and Me.” You get the sense that she thinks she still has plenty of good material still inside her. But she does venture a few favorites. “I really love singing ‘Sing it Like a Victim.’ I like where that song puts me. I like being inside that song,” she says.

Chances are you’ll have a chance to see her sing it live this year. Usually touring six months a year, this time Starr feels she has an album she can champion with a new group of ugly-side-of-the-music-business-specialists (manager, booking agent, etc.) that will help her do that.

“This year it’s going to be like nine months. I’m committed to making a [fan] base this year. And I’m going to do it. I don’t think I ever connected the dots. That’s been a problem with my career. I haven’t had a team. I haven’t had one in the past. I have one now,” Starr says.

Starr tours mostly just with herself and her guitar, though “You and Me” has smart, fairly economical, full-band arrangements. Onstage, she’s as fun to watch talking between songs about the travails of touring as she is singing.

“I can’t remember ever not singing. I was always performing, telling jokes. I was always the center of attention from birth,” Starr says before laughing.

For more information on Garrison Starr, visit: http://www.garrisonstarr.com/ or http://www.vanguardrecords.com/garrisonstarr/.

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