Everything I like about Molly Ledford and the awesome band she leads, Lunch Money, can be summed up, I think, in that photo to the left, which Molly titled "cookie eclipse of the head." The self-effacing nature, the humor, the goofiness, the well-thought out design -- all of which Lunch Money and that picture have in spades. So without any further ado, here's Molly on the first time she was banned from singing something, her peppy song about a horror movie from the '70s, and why having fun (and looking like it) is an important part of being in Lunch Money. There is also some gauntlet-throwing, so please watch your heads. Zooglobble: What music did you listen to growing up? My parents always had records playing - Paul Simon, Roberta Flack, Neil Diamond, Billy Joel, Ray Charles, Kingston Trio, The Spinners, Vince Guaraldi. Most of it I enjoyed, except that I think I got subjected to Barbra Streisand's Guilty (the Barry Gibb collaboration) a few too many times on long trips to Pennsylvania. In the car, my brother and I would perk up when Glen Campbell's "Rhinestone Cowboy" would come on the radio. Or the chorus of British children singing in Pink Floyd's "The Wall." Or I even remember being delighted by Monty Python's "I Bet You They Won't Play This Song on the Radio" with all its funny sound effects. I think kids have always listened to their parents' music and panned for something they could relate to. But one moment that truly rocked me was the night my dad blasted Meet the Beatles shortly after I had gone to bed (maybe he thought he had headphones plugged in? It was unusually loud....). I think I was about seven at the time. I came running out, enthralled. My parents would not let me play their copy on my own relatively crummy record player, but I luckily found one at my neighbor's garage sale for a quarter. It was totally scratched, and I listened to it over and over. So really I became way more familiar with my personal scratched copy. I could sing along to every skip. I also listened to Casey Kasem's Top 40 every weekend in my room on an old clock radio, and I remember falling into a happy trance when Olivia Newton-John's "Magic" came on the first time. When did you first start getting interested in writing music (generally, not for kids)? My mom got me a guitar when I was nine and I took some lessons, but I have to credit my ever-scheming friend around the corner with getting me started on songwriting. One day she said she was writing a song (she was always up to something), so I tried my hand at it too. I came up with something especially for us to perform at the school talent show (we were in 6th grade). For some reason my chorus contained the lines, "I run away and throw away these chains. It doesn't solve my problems, but it helps to ease the pain." But to my surprise, when I gave my mom a sneak peek at my talent show song, she forbade me to play it. So we ended up covering "Take It to the Limit" instead. In high school I really started writing songs (still with angst, this time only semi-imaginary) and have been in bands ever since.