Quinn Southall: telling his story through independent releases
Quinn Southall has been writing music for over three years, and now with over one hundred songs finished he is releasing a new track every three days. Beginning his music journey through poems written and then set to music, creating has always been cathartic for Southall.
He says his main inspirations in creating music are Noah Kahan and Zack Bryan.
“I think the main thing is just listening to artists that I really like and trying to study their chorus structure,” Southall said.
Currently he is working on a mass export project to release 50 prerecorded songs over a 150 day period. He began this endeavor on Jan. 12 and currently has eight new songs out. The lyrics to his songs, which mainly surround his life experiences, span across a multitude of ideas – from the time he spent living in the Alaskan wilderness to the Los Angeles fires.
“I feel like writing music should be done with the intention of saying something, having something to say,” he said. “I try to mean something and like to have a purpose with everything that I write. I feel like that’s lacking in the music industry today”.
While his solo project focuses on folk and country-inspired music, he also performs as the lead singer of local rock band, No Outlet. They are set to play at Libertine Brewing Company this upcoming March.
“It’s a totally different vibe,” Southall said. “We’re doing heavy rock, even Metallica covers. It challenges me as a vocalist, but it’s been fun to explore different styles.”
Through this project, Southall’s goal is to use social media to gain exposure to his art and to hopefully build an audience to hear what he has to say.
“I feel like I’ve definitely seen progress already,” he said. “Like at the start of this, I had like 70 or 80 followers on Instagram, obviously not a lot, but I have 110 now.”
As for his future, he always sees music as a part of his life, whether that’s continuing through his own career as a performer or writing songs for other artists.
