> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.thenewsboylocal.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# For Lily Dabbs, a Good Song Should Feel Like a Good Hang
- URL: https://www.thenewsboylocal.com/for-lily-dabbs-a-good-song-should-feel-like-a-good-hang/
- Published: 2026-09-21T19:32:02.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-21T19:32:02.000Z
- Description: “I was always running my mouth as a kid and making up stories,” she says. Once she started playing piano and guitar, those stories had only one direction to go – they became songs.
- Author: Lacey McDaniel
- Tags: Music

Lily Dabbs has been making up stories for about as long as she can remember.

“I was always running my mouth as a kid and making up stories,” she says. Once she started playing piano and guitar, those stories had only one direction to go – they became songs.

Dabbs grew up in Atlanta and remembers writing her first song on guitar around 13\. In college, she began sharing her music in the folk circles around Athens, Georgia, and was preparing for what came next when she graduated, right as COVID arrived.

As it did for so many young artists, the pandemic threw those plans for a loop. Eventually, her road led to Texas. Dabbs moved to Austin in 2023 and found herself surrounded by a community of songwriters and musicians. Since then, she has been focused on honing her craft and finding more opportunities to get her songs in front of an audience.

Her approach is decidedly unfussy. “My music is pretty homegrown, and my performance is much the same as you’d find if we were trading songs on my back patio,” she says.

It’s an approach shaped by songwriters like John Prine, Iris DeMent, and Blaze Foley, artists who could tell a story without making the storytelling feel like work. Dabbs admires their ability to make a performance feel less like a performance and more like “a good hang.”

Behind that easygoing presentation, though, is the work of being an independent songwriter. Dabbs points out that making music requires two very different creative muscles. There’s writing the songs and finding the melodies, and then there’s figuring out how to package that work and put it into the world. Balancing the two can be difficult.

“Songwriting is a mystery, and there’s always a fear that one day they’ll stop coming,” she says.

Dabbs journals, practices, jams, and listens to music to keep herself open to whatever might spark the next idea, because after writing songs for more than half her life, Dabbs knows inspiration ebb and flow.

“I’ll always write songs, and I know that I want to play music for a long time.”

Preferably with the feeling that we’re all just sitting around the back patio swapping a few stories.

**Keep Up with Lily Dabbs**

Follow Lily Dabbs on Instagram at @lilydabbsmusic. For booking inquiries, contact [lilymdabbs@gmail.com](mailto:lilymdabbs@gmail.com).