You Can’t Manufacture Life Experience: 25 Years of Garrison Starr’s “18 Over Me”
By Dr. Matthew J. Jones
After twenty-five years in the music industry, Garrison Starr is at peace with herself, her career, and her art. That’s a major change from the young, closeted lesbian who escaped an Evangelical Christian upbringing in the south and then struggled to find her voice as a songwriter and performer in the 1990s. Still, Starr has no regrets about her career: fifteen solo albums, a Grammy nomination, performances with pop music luminaries like Melissa Etheridge and Mary Chapin Carpenter, and writing songs for film and television.
Being raised in an Evangelical Christian community left it’s mark. It was an environment that the young Starr found toxic, traumatic, and stultifying. Over the years, she’s worked hard to process the residual fallout. Music has been a lifeline and a panacea.
“Your sexuality is God-given,” she told me, “and it should be fun to explore and experience. I carried that guilt around until I got into my 40s.”
Looking at today’s pop music landscape, Starr admires younger performers like Jake Wesley Rogers, who have centered their gender and sexuality in their art from the start of their careers. In the 90s, she had very few out musicians to look to for guidance and mentorship.
“I wish in the 90s I could have been on stage, open and feeling good about me,” she said when we spoke earlier this month. “I wish I had been more confident about where I was at the time, but that version of myself was hurt, and had a right to be. You can’t know what you don’t know.”
Still, she insists that she wouldn’t be the person or the artist she is today without her lived experiences.
For years after the release of 18 Over Me, her 1997 major label debut, Starr couldn’t listen to it. Her performances were too raw, and she felt too close to the experiences that had inspired many of the songs. But today, she looks back at the album with pride and compassion.
“I was searching so hard for something at that point in my life. I was in a really tough place, very angry, very frustrated,” she recalls, noting that it was also a special moment when amazing things were happening for her career.
Music has been a balm for Starr’s wounds, and she’s reached a point in her career where she can begin to share that with other musicians.
“I’ve reached a sort of mentorship stage, and that’s why I started telling my story… the mistakes I made or didn’t make. Whatever I can do to help people feel free from shame, guilt, and toxicity—that isn’t their burden to carry. It was put there by people who are hateful and fearful.”
Asked what advice she would give to aspiring musicians, she says, “Be smart. Be strategic. Nobody tells you that you better have a vision of where you want to go, but you should. That’s not someone else’s job. Where do you want this journey to take you? That’s the most important question you can answer.”
Part of Starr’s healing journey has been to redefine spirituality on her own terms. She leads a spiritual life that feels good to her without subscribing to a specific faith or defining morality for others in narrow and specific ways.
“Nobody can take God away from anybody. God is God. Evangelicals don’t own the copyright. You don’t have to be in a spiritual No Man’s Land.”
Starr has also found ways to give herself grace in an industry that is particularly unkind to women as they grow older.
“Getting older is getting older, but you better get on board with it,” she said with a laugh. But there’s a serious bias toward older women in the music industry, and that bias can make women artists feel shame, fear, or failure. Starr’s longevity stands as proof that an artist can take the reins of her career and navigate growing older in a youth-obsessed industry, though that doesn’t mean that it’s simple or easy. She finds that aging influences her songwriting, giving her deeper insights into herself and the world she inhabits. As she puts it, “you just can’t manufacture lived experience.”
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of 18 Over Me, Starr is hitting the road for six dates. Four of them will just be Starr and her guitar, but the Nashville and Memphis concerts will feature a full band. The Memphis show—Friday, June 17th—will be recorded for a future live album. For that, there’ll be some surprise guests, including her collaborator, guitarist Mike Grimes, who has promised to sit in on a few songs.
Starr hopes that fans will come out, have a great time, and sing along with their favorite tunes. She’s also just completed a new album, Garrison Starr and the Gospel Truth. The record is filled with what she describes as, “…swamp gospel hymns for humans.”
For more information about Garrison Starr’s 18 Over Me 25th-anniversary tour, click here. Meg Toohey opens all six shows.
Matthew J. Jones is a queer musicologist, writer, performer, Joni Mitchell fanatic, and artistic director of Pride Chorus Houston. He lives in Houston, TX with his cat, Ouiser.