This rainy Valentine’s Day evening, Mississippi musical talent performed to an intimate crowd at Exploradora Coffee off North Lamar Boulevard for the Hill Country Songwriters’ Showcase. Bringing a combination of new and traditional sounds, these Mississippians serenaded the coffee shop with their original work, telling stories of love and heartbreak.
The showcase, in partnership with the Mississippi Songwriters Association and the Red Clay Music Society, was formally hosted by Luke Fisher, co-founder of the Red Clay Music Society, alongside Brady Rees and David Anderson, who introduced each of the three rounds of artists.
Round one featured Ryan Miller, David Cornelius, Alanna Mosely and Brian Harrison.
A storyteller, Ryan Miller spoke about writing music when first attempting to woo his now current wife and of a challenge he gave himself to write a song in an hour during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I asked my wife what I should write about, and she said to write about where we’re from,” Miller said. “I asked my middle child, and she said to write about a wedding. I asked my eldest, and she said something about criminal activity. I asked my youngest, and he was just covered in red clay.”
Using these elements, he would write one of the songs performed that night.
Cornelius sang a particularly memorable song, dedicated to his father.
Mosely, as Fisher said, “probably knows every song ever recorded,” and started her set with a song about love gone wrong.
“You gotta play a heartbreak song because, screw love,” Mosely said.
Mosely also sang of the solace in finding one’s identity, as well as a redeeming song about love.
At the end of the first round, Fisher introduced Harrison.
“Brian is country,” Fisher said. “He writes country songs. That’s all that needs to be said.”
In the past, Harrison has made guitars, including one of his own, and that night sang about God and love, including one song inspired by what Winnie the Pooh said to Piglet: “How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”
Round two, also known as the duo round, featured Joe Austin with Brian Sherwood, Singlewide, The Posies and The Kites.
Austin and Sherwood brought traditional Southern sounds to love songs and hometown sentiments. The Posies sang about moonshining and romance. Singlewide, a brother-sister duo, sang about summer heartbreak and one memory of “Mountain Dew green” colored clouds. Indie group The Kites sang about insatiable love and remembering one’s humanity.
Round three featured solo artists Sean Gasaway, Will Stults, Tricia Walker and Jeff McCreary.
Gasaway, known for his involvement with the Mississippi Songwriters Association, spoke on the anti-bullying initiative of the program, using two stories he often tells the kids he teaches. That is the backstory behind two of his most popular songs, “Stomp” and “Porkchop.”
In the instance of “Stomp,” Gasaway was in his truck with his young daughter, who was throwing a fit.
“Everytime you stomp, I’m gonna shake my rump,” Gasaway said, trying to annoy her. “And she sang that the whole way home on this five-hour trip.”
Gasaway tells these stories to kids, he said, to show that even if an idea sounds silly, no one knows what it could turn into.
Stults sang a mixture of funny and sentimental, including one song about his butt followed by a humorous anecdote about visiting his grandfather’s nursing home, which inspired a song about hoping to never forget but inevitably doing so.
Walker sang about a woman’s best friend — a good purse (with a pistol in it) — that received laughs from the crowd. She also strummed about the homegrown South and, of course, love.
The show closed with McCreary, who focused on suffering, grief and addiction. Between the other musicians’ sets in this round, he laughed quietly.
“Here’s another one of my uplifting songs,” he said before telling the story of a friend who served in the military, as McCreary himself did.
