hollywoodtone.blogspot.com Interview with Kaylee Rutland
hollywoodtone.blogspot.com Interview with Kaylee Rutland
Digital Journal speaks to the aspiring young country singer about her flourishing career and asks what she hopes to achieve in the music business.
One of a batch of new and exciting names to look out for in 2014, the beautiful Kaylee Rutland has already announced her presence to the world with a stirring anthem entitled " Into The Circle," a song about a dream the 18-year-old Texan has always had: to sing on the Grand Ole Opry. Joining Ms. Rutland, a student of Music Business at Belmont University in Nashville, on what may in time become her signature hit, is fellow-emigré to Music City, Australian Jamie O' Neal, and friend-to-the-stars, the one and only Colt Ford. Recalling the potentially life-changing experience of working alongside these two firmly- established figures, Kaylee states, "Well I actually got introduced to them through a mutual contact we have who lives in Florida... Once he introduced us, my mom and I flew up to Nashville for a week last year and every single single day, we would go to Jamie's house and hang out for a while and we worked on writing a couple of songs... "Then when it was the day we were gonna record them, Colt Ford came to her house - really nice guy. He probably had his part written and recorded in about 20, 30 minutes and then he sat around with us for a couple of hours and just talked, gave really great advice. They're two of the nicest people I've ever met - they were really, really sweet." Heavily involved in music in some form or another since her childhood growing up near Dallas (playing the piano at the age of six, going on to sing in church two years later), Kaylee, who also manages to squeeze live performances into her busy schedule, released a self-titled EP in 2012. The five tracks on her first attempt at recorded music are "Dark Horse," "My Last One," "Hey Ben," " Daddy's Got A .45" and "Boys Will Be Boys" and impressively for one so young, the lady herself had a hand in writing each of them. My personal pick-of-the-bunch is the rather humourous "Daddy's Got A .45," a warning to potential suitors (the reasons why are clear). I wondered whether there was any truth to the song? Does Dad have a gun and would he use it? "Yeah, oh definitely," laughs the ambitious starlet. "That is probably one of the truest songs of all of mine... I have two younger sisters, so growing up with three girls my dad has always been very, very protective of us... "He's told me on more than one occasion, 'I'm not gonna like any boy you bring home, I'm always gonna watch out for y'all'. It's really sweet, but yes, he would definitely threaten a boy and pretend that he was gonna go get his .45, but I don't think any harm would really come of it." Having collaborated with Jamie O' Neal and Colt Ford, who are Kaylee's other musical influences and who would she like to work with in the future? "I'd have to say that probably my three favourite country singers are Reba McEntire, Carrie Underwood and Sara Evans. Those are probably the three that I've been listening to the longest. They're really the ones who first got me to start loving country music years ago..." "It's definitely that contemporary, newer style of country..." she says of her own sound, "but I definitely think there's a touch of the older, traditional country in it." Though busy studying for her degree (she still has another three years to go), Kaylee still finds the time to write and to go back to Texas and perform on a fairly regular basis, something she finds a little surprising... "It's been a lot easier to balance the schedule than I thought it would be," she admits. "Even with the school work, I scheduled my classes so that I would be done around noon every day. So I usually have the afternoons and the weekends to work on my music." And how's the music coming along? "In the past few months, I've released some of my newest songs on i-Tunes, and since moving up to Nashville, I've been working with writers here. I try to meet with a different producer, artist or songwriter usually once a week and try to get a new song out..." "Like the song says, I definitely want to perform at the Grand Ole Opry one day," concludes the imaginative tunesmith, outlining exactly where she wants this particular roller-coaster ride to take her. "But other than that, really just continuing to get my music out there and letting people hear it... I hope one day to, like I said, 'step into the circle' and be a role model to people, the same way that artists like Reba and Carrie and Sara have been role models to me." Kaylee Rutland's music is available on i-Tunes. For more information, visit her official website.
hollywoodtone.blogspot.com Interview with Kaylee Rutland