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After recording “The Sound of You and Me,” an emotional masterpiece that left her feeling exhausted, singer-songwriter Garrison Starr knew what she wanted to do next.

She wanted to have fun. She wanted to plug in and turn over creative control to a producer in whom she trusted and just enjoy the moment. She didn’t want to worry about bleeding lyrics or crafting an intensely personal journey into the inner reaches of her heart.

In other words, she just wanted to rock.

“It was a similar sort of feeling as when I went in to do ‘Songs From Take-Off to Landing’ (her 2002 album) — I was just ready to make more music, and it was time,” Starr told The Daily Times this week. “It wasn’t about a label or a timeline; it was just, ‘Let’s make some music, dude, because I’m ready.’ I just wanted to go in and have a good time and do something meaningful, and it turned out to be a cool experience.

“I just wanted to go in and be in the moment, in the process. I wanted to be inspired and totally not be in control. I wanted to try some new things, and it felt like the right time to do that. I was totally ready to be a part of whatever came about in that process.”

The culmination of those sessions is Starr’s new album, “The Girl That Killed September,” independently released last month. It’s the continuing story of a girl who’s played the major-label game, who’s had a tumultuous relationship with her labels, her music and herself, but who ultimately wins out in the end because of what she’s willing to do — never give up.

The emotional journeys she takes on her albums mirror her physical ones. From Memphis, she moved to Los Angeles, where she spent seven years making records and touring the country with such artists as Melissa Etheridge, Mary Chapin-Carpenter and Steve Earle, for whom she opened at The Tennessee Theatre on his “Jerusalem” tour.

It was a change from the native of Hernando, Miss., who had released a couple of independent records while in Memphis before plunging into the LA scene. There, she put out “Eighteen Over Me” on Geffen Records, and the album yielded the radio-friendly hit “Superhero.” When Geffen was absorbed by Interscope, there was no place for Starr, but she didn’t call it quits and pack up for home. Her next album, “Songs From Take-Off to Landing,” was done on a shoestring budget herself, and she landed on the Vanguard label for its follow-up, “Airstreams and Satellites.”

In 2005, she came back East, to Nashville, and recorded “The Sound of You and Me,” released a year later on Vanguard. But despite the earnestness of her voice, the praise she received from her peers and the devoted following of fans she’s accumulated over the years, the music industry still hasn’t figured out what to do with Starr.

So she terminated her partnership with Vanguard and struck out on her own. “The Girl That Killed September” is the first album she’s released on her own since her college days in Memphis.

“The main sort of catalyst for this is that I realized, first of all, that I had gotten tired of having the label kind of be in the way of getting things done,” she said. “I got tired of that initial rush of them doing their job and that be the end of it; of them not doing anything beyond that. I’ll be honest — I can’t stand Vanguard. I knew they put out ‘The Sound of You and Me’ because they had to, and they weren’t going to do anything beyond that.

“What was frustrating was that I couldn’t get any records from them! The day it came out, they put my account on hold because I owed them money for ‘Airstreams and Satellites.’ So I had people wanting copies of the record, and I couldn’t even get anybody on the phone. It was just a nightmare, and it led me to a place where I was tired of having my hands tied.

“And really, it’s not so much Vanguard as it is just the label environment,” she added. “They’ll tell you all day long what’s happening, but that’s not what’s really going to happen.”

For independent artists, she said, the opportunity to sign with a label — even ones that cater to critically acclaimed musicians who lack mainstream appeal — can be mesmerizing, to the point of blinding artists to the pitfalls.

“My whole career, I’ve been in this position of needing something, with my hand out,” she said. “The music industry has been set up that way for a long time, I just got tired of feeling that way. For my whole life, it’s been about me needing other people, and I just decided that I don’t need anybody to get things done. I can do it myself.

“I felt that way when I first got into this business, and then I lost myself. You get caught up in all the drama, the sort of superficial aspects of the business — the insecurities, other people’s opinions — and you kind of lose yourself a little bit. And ever since that point, you’re trying to find your way back to the truth.”

Starr’s truth has always been about one thing — her music. On “The Sound of You and Me,” she took listeners on a tour of her soul. On “The Girl That Killed September,” the mood is lighter — less somber, less emotionally raw, more upbeat in mood and playful in sound. It’s still got that Starr-esque quality of yearning; her voice is too distinctive for that to ever go away. But instead of heavy content, it’s the sound of a woman who’s throwing caution to the wind and staking out her claim — as an individual, as a businesswoman, as a musician.

“I had signed a deal with a publishing company, and my publisher kind of threw this loose idea at me of partnering up with a small label (Media Creature), just as business partners,” Starr said of the new album’s evolution. “At first, I kind of resisted, because I thought I could find a label that would do it better than I could. But I shopped it around, and we could never reach terms we agreed on, so at that point, it had been done for almost a year.

“There were hardcore fans out there who knew about it and wanted to hear it. And I thought, ‘What’s the point of waiting?’ Because here’s the thing — if I make only a 75-cent profit off of every record sold, I’m still making more money than I ever have with any label I’ve ever been on. I just wanted some kind of ownership of my own art. I’m 32 years old, and I have a lot of great records, but I don’t have (anything) to show monetarily.

“I wish I’d had the sort of presence of mind and forward-thinking as Ani DiFranco, who took the bull by the horns and built an empire, but I just didn’t know because I was so young,” she added. “I wanted to just keep going, and I didn’t want to stop for any amount of time to think about it.”