Artist Interview With Kaylee Rutland

By Jake O'neil


Kaylee Rutland, an 18-year-old Contemporary Country Singer/Song Writer from Texas, is scheduled to play on the 12th Annual Dallas Music Festival this year. Music has always been something that Kaylee has wanted to do, and it has been a huge part of her life ever since she was a child. Kaylee likes to focus a lot of her songs around material that she feels strongly about, such as her family and friends, faith, and love, and she says that all of her inspiration comes from Reba McEntire, Carrie Underwood, and Sarah Evans.

When Kaylee takes time to attempt to write her songs, she says she holds herself to an extremely high standard of quality, and can often be tough on her self during her writing procedures. But once Kaylee has the lyrics and rough structural idea for a song down, she then meets up with her backing band to hammer out the details of the song, bounce ideas off of each other, and basically "jam through it."

When Kaylee was just starting out in music, she says her biggest challenge was getting on stage and being comfortable instead of feeling out of place. Other than that, Kaylee says she very rarely has any trouble with her band, pointing out that they get along really great. Kaylee and her band plan on releasing their 2nd album in the near future - it has been almost a year since her first EP was put out. Kaylee also recently wrapped up filming a music video and recording a track with country artists, Jamie O'Neal and Colt Ford. "It was a real blessing to record with such nice and down to earth people," states Kaylee.

Kaylee tells us that her favorite show she's every played was a two-hour show right before a Stars game, known as the Pregame Party on the Plaza (the Stars are Dallas's NHL hockey team). She has been lucky enough to play this event two times. "I loved every minute of it, even though it was freezing cold!" she said. Kaylee says that if she could open up for any band or artist in the world, she would want to open up for Reba McEntire - her idol.

Kaylee gave some advice for up and coming artists. Her advice is to not mind the skeptics but listen to loved ones. "Whenever you're an up and coming artist, you will always have those people that will want to bring you down and want to tell you that your music isn't good enough. Don't listen to them, because they are just out to put you down. The ones you need to listen to are the ones who believe in you. Lastly, if you believe in yourself, then other people will start to believe in you. If you believe in yourself, you will succeed."




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