Gabrielle Mooney has been an established songwriter in Nashville for years, but now she is stepping out with her debut single ‘Come On In.’
Hello, how are you doing?
I’m doing so good!
Congratulations on the new single, it must be so exciting to finally have ‘you’ out in the world and your music.
I’m so freaking excited honestly, it’s crazy the amount of support I’ve gotten from all kinds of people, I didn’t expect it. I just wanted to share my story and get it out there and I think a lot of people have related to it, that’s been super cool that people see themselves in the song.
That’s the magic when people can relate to a song. Can you talk a bit about the story behind the track and why you decided to put this one out as your debut single?
Definitely. So honestly, my biggest thing when I started writing this, I was in such a mood, a reflection type mood. I had just driven back from Arkansas to Nashville, it’s such a long drive – it’s about eight hours from my parents’ house. I woke up really early in the morning and drove all the way to this write, I had been looking at a ton of family pictures and we had gone through a bunch of pictures that we had in my old closet and a lot of them were of my grandpa and him holding as kids. It just made me realise how stinkin’ blessed I was to have such an amazing grandpa and grandma, my granny and poppa and my parents. All these memories were just stuck in my head and so when I arrived at the co-write, I went ‘hang on, I just need to write this down.’ With the verses, I just literally wrote about my life, I’m a punk rock kid and I had My Chemical Romance and I was into the punk rock scene, so everything in the lyrics is me, that’s me.
Even sonically, you’ve got a little bit of Southern Rock peeping through which I love, it’s a fresh new sound.
Yes, I’m a huge fan of The Cadillac Three, those are the people that I relate to the most, so just wait until you hear the other songs.
How did you decide that this was the time to kind of step out of your songwriter self and embrace being an artist in your own right? It’s a big decision.
It’s a big deal, especially when you are very used to supporting your friends and supporting everyone else. I’ve always been used to performing and loving to perform. Ever since I was little, I wrote my first song when I was twelve years old, it was a way for me to get my words out – I was really bad at expressing my feelings and how I felt. I started writing it down, all of it was super emo to be honest.
I feel like that’s the way you have to be as a teenager, if you’re not like that you didn’t have the full ‘teenage’ experience.
Honestly, my brother’s in music and I never want to ride his coattails and so I changed up my writing name because I wanted to have that separation and to support with him without being like ‘I’m his sister.’
You want to be recognised as an artist in your own right.
Exactly, so I wanted to write first before I came out as an artist. I wanted to be able to write with and for other people and kind of establish myself in that way first, I feel for me it’s very important that people know that I write my songs and that they’re very close to my heart. I’ve been a songwriter for a really long time and I feel like this is the moment, this is the song that I wanted to come out with. I know that I can come across as super edgy and people think I have an RBF, then when people meet me they say I’m super different to what they thought, number one I’m super short.
Do you also feel like because you had that time co-writing that your writing has changed a lot and you now know exactly what you want to say as an artist?
Honestly, when I first moved to Nashville my songwriting got first. When I was writing alone, which was most of the time, I had to be in my dark room – I did some co-writes with other hip hop artists and stuff like that in Pittsburgh – and then when I moved to Nashville, I was so starstruck by some of these incredible writers – like Jimmy Robbins and Nicole Gallyon. My first write in Nashville was with Jeffrey Steele, I still think about this, I hardly spoke a word the entire time. I was so embarrassed at how I reacted, I couldn’t even say anything because I was so starstruck.
Well it’s one thing to meet someone like that and another to bare your soul to them in a co-write.
All I wanted to do was listen to all of the songs he’d written, so that was just a bust. I started really second-guessing myself super hard because everyone seemed to know what they were doing, they had so much confidence. It’s so strange because I took so many writes where I found out after that person’s not that great, they just know what’s hot at that moment. They’re just trying to write that and it took me so long to realise that you don’t have to write about what’s hot – that’s what destroyed my soul because that writing detached myself from what I was feeling and experiencing. I learned that I can write pop songs but my personal songs, I want to be about me.
I came into myself and that’s the reason that I’ve been so pleased at this whole project because I finally found myself as a songwriter and me as an artist. That’s where the magic started happening. When I wrote ‘Come On In’ it was just so special and I think that it gives a little of my soul – showing she’s not this crazy rocker chick, she actually seems kind of nice.
You draw a lot of influences then from the likes of My Chemical Romance and then country music too, you wrote 90s Country with Walker Hayes, so was that era a big influence on your music?
Oh definitely, I think my biggest influence when I was younger – this sounds so funny and so embarrassing – but we were in a Southern Gospel group, so I heard The Gaithers and The Hemphills, a few of that era more than anything else from the age of about seven to ten. My Poppa Mooney was obsessed with Southern Gospel and I play harmonica so that was my influence, it was my dream to go to Branson, that was the thing. I’m glad we didn’t have any photos of us doing that. We used to do county fairs all the time.
So, will this single be a part of a longer project and when can we expect more music?
Yes, so my next single is coming out really soon, which we’re super excited about. I’m actually currently getting glammed up for my pictures for the next single cover. I love all the things and I like being extra so I can’t wait. And I get to wear real clothes! I pretty much live in gym clothes these days.
So do you think that 2020 has affected your songwriting and the direction of your music?
It has let me have some time. We spent several months in Arkansas which we hadn’t got to do in a while, to be honest I didn’t take many writes – the Zoom thing really wasn’t for me. It’s more been a case of me preparing for this single. It was a time to reflect and taking the time to reset really helped me mentally because this is really hard, especially with all the social distancing. I’m very much an introvert in terms of liking to be home, but I’m an extrovert in life. I’ve learned that being an introvert more than I’m used to is very unhealthy for me.
We could just do without 2020 really, we can’t wait to get you to the UK when this is all over.
Yes! I would have so much fun over there, I’ve been to Sweden and Holland and Germany but I need to get to London – I’ve always wanted to go there, because it’s so romantic. I’ve also heard you guys food is amazing. You can be my tour guide and we can go to all the places and it will be great.
Thank you so much Gabby for taking the time to chat with me!
No thank you!
