Jules Shear’s Got a Group Again . . . Edie Brickell’s Got Feelings . . . Sam Brown’s Got Good Genes : Edie Brickell--Shy & Moody

Singer Edie Brickell will always have a soft spot in her heart for Jack Daniels.

Not that she’s a serious boozer, because she’s not. But without an uplifting shot of Daniels bourbon, she wouldn’t be where she is today--a budding star with her and her band the New Bohemians’ debut album “Shooting Rubber Bands at the Stars,” an impressive collection of quirky, starkly poetic pop-rock songs.

Three years ago, Brickell, now 22, was an art student at Dallas’ Southern Methodist University--indifferent to classes and deep in debt--when a friend talked her into going to an after-hours show at a local rock club. In that anything-goes atmosphere, Brickell was asked to sing a song with New Bohemians.

“My deepest, darkest desire was to be a singer,” recalled Brickell, who, with that slight, wispy voice and conversational, free-wheeling phrasing, vocally resembles Rickie Lee Jones. “But I didn’t know where to start. I didn’t have the courage. I was too shy.”

To get up on stage, she needed a shot of courage--better known as Jack Daniels. To her surprise, the audience was receptive to her ad-lib songs. So was the band. A few months later she dropped out of college and into a singing and songwriting career.

She and band--still regulars on the Dallas club circuit--were signed two years ago by a Geffen Records talent scout who found out about them through a friend at rival MCA.

“I haven’t turned into a new person,” insisted Brickell the other day, idly toying with a strand of her long hair. “I’m still shy. Sometimes I’m so scared I can’t even say a word.” Strangely, though, during the interview in the Geffen Records office in West Hollywood, she was chattering away.

Her explanation? “I’m very moody,” she replied.

Her moodiness, she said, is evident on her album, which has caught on in alternative-music circles and has spawned the rising single “What I Am.” Brickell wrote all the lyrics and helped with the music.

“The album is up and down, happy and sad--very moody, like me,” she pointed out.

An instinctive, untrained singer, Brickell swore she’s not copying Rickie Lee Jones: “When I was shaping my style, I knew very little about her. My style, which I guess is talky and a little weird, is all me.”

Some people think her achingly personal songs, like “She,” “Now” and “Nothing,” are weird too.

“I write about how people feel, react and respond,” she explained. “I don’t want to make people think or give them a message or even impress them. I only want to touch them where they live--in their feelings.”