Jordan Rainer was confident in her song choice when she auditioned to be on this past season of The Voice – a music reality competition show aired on NBC.
The Oklahoma native took the stage in a wide-brimmed black hat and started strumming Bobbie Gentry’s “Fancy.” All four of the show’s judges turned their chairs for Rainer, but she knew her pick had to be Reba McEntire, who covered the same tune in 1991 and took it to a double platinum success.
Rainer stayed with McEntire all the way through the competition, ultimately finishing in the top 9 of the season.
“It's the most unnatural setting you can imagine playing in,” Rainer said. “There's pressure, there's competition … all the things that don't belong on the stage and I was very uncomfortable the entire show and sometimes you could see that sometimes. I hid it pretty well, but very tough.”
Since the season ended in December, Rainer has launched the “Straight Shot Tour” – which includes a stop at Paducah Beer Werks this Friday, Jan. 26. The show starts at 9 p.m. and tickets are available online.
The Nashville-based country music singer songwriter and guitarist drew her inspiration from many places, including family.
“People ask me that sometimes how'd you get into music and I always tell people music got into me, and it got into me very early,” Rainer said. “I come from a musical family. My whole family plays instruments, and so that's just naturally where I gravitated in life.”
One of Rainer’s biggest musical influences – aside from McEntire – is Paducah native Steven Curtis Chapman, a GRAMMY Award-winning Christian music artist from the far western Kentucky city.
“[He] was my number one guitar hero, and when I was running into my living room to show my dad something … that was usually a Steven Curtis lick,” Rainer said.
Nearly 10 years ago, Rainer decided to move to Nashville and try her hand at a music career. While success didn’t happen overnight, she was proud that she made enough money to support herself as a full-time artist.
“I'm what you’d call ‘a 10-year overnight success.’ It was by no means a quick takeoff. I landed myself a little publishing deal about six months into moving to Nashville [and] it paid me about $1,000 a month, which was enough to just keep me going,” she said. “The next thing I knew I got a little bit of a better publishing deal paid me about $20,000 a year, and that was definitely enough to get me out of my day job.”
Several original releases from Rainer are available on all streaming platforms, including Spotify and Amazon Music.
More information on Rainer, including upcoming tour dates and videos, is available on the singer’s website.
