Starkville musician Julianna Brown is expanding her role in the local music scene with a new band and a renewed opportunity to pursue her dream job.
“Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve loved how music makes me feel,” Brown said. “[It’s] the most passionate part of me. I don’t know why it took me so long to share it with other people.”
Though Brown plays shows about once a month now, she only began performing live about a year ago. Up until recently she played mostly solo shows with an eclectic cover repertoire featuring Dolly Parton, U2, Fleetwood Mac, Audioslave, The Pretenders and other bands of various genres. Brown is currently undergoing the transition of starting a full band which will focus largely on writing music.
“By myself, I only have about five or six original songs, but with the new band, we’re really pushing to be more than a cover band,” Brown said. “I don’t see how we can go wrong, as talented as [the new band members] are.”
The new band, Pictures of Thomas, is made up of Brown, co-frontperson Drew Dieckmann, bassist Justin Childers and drummer Justin McKenzie.
“Drew has a son named Thomas that’s just a few months old,” Brown said. “I always ask him for pictures of Thomas, but he still hasn’t shown me. That’s where the name [of the band] came from.”
The group is currently preparing for show-readiness, practicing both covers and original pieces of music. Dieckmann and Brown share vocal and writing duties, allowing their different influences to mesh and form a new sound.
Though Brown cites many influences, her favorite band is The Beatles.
“I know [liking The Beatles] is clich‹¨, but if you ask anyone that knows me, they’ll tell you how I feel about them,” Brown said. “I like everything. I have all the books and all their albums. I’m hoping with the new band we can work in some of the more obscure Beatles songs into our set list.”
Brown, 24, is gaining ground in the local music community but did not actually begin playing an instrument until she was 18, at which time her aunt and uncle gave her a guitar.
“[They] asked me ‘if we buy this for you, will you learn how to play it?'” she said. “I, of course, said [I would].”
Though her foray into the playing of music did not begin until this stage in her life, she had always been surrounded by music, thanks to her family.
“My uncle plays [guitar] a little bit,” she said. “He’s also very into country music. He’s practically a walking encyclopedia of it. My dad played a little, too, around the house. I could also just sit with him and listen to music for hours because we like the same stuff.”
From this exposure to music, Brown developed a desire to either write music or about music. This passion led to a major in journalism at MSU, where she wrote for The Reflector as an entertainment writer before her graduation in 2004. During her time at the paper, she acquired interviews with performers such as Sister Hazel and Dierks Bentley, allowing Brown to live vicariously through her subjects.
“I figured if I wasn’t going to play music [live], I could at least write about it,” she said.
During her time at MSU, Brown steadily learned the art of guitar playing, but as a student never pursued performing for a crowd.
“I studied all the time,” she said. “Did all my homework. I don’t really fill the typical musician profile, since I’ve kind of got that nerdy quality to me.”
After graduating, Brown interned at The Greenwood Commonwealth newspaper and landed an interview with Morgan Freeman while he was in town shooting a public service announcement.
After that internship, she quickly received another one in the travel department of Southern Living in Birmingham, Ala., which allowed her the opportunity to have a few stories published in the magazine. After this internship, though, she moved back to Starkville to her current occupation as an editorial assistant for the MSU’s Southern Rural Development Center, as well as beginning her music career.
“I’m focusing more on the band,” Brown said. “It’s the reason I moved back to Starkville. My only goal right now is to get the band ready to play. [The band is] beyond confident with how it’s going so far.”