Interview with Jaida Dreyer

JAIDA DREYER's unmistakable country voice, bubbly personality, and eclectic, insightful songwriting scored her a publishing deal with Grammy award-winning producer Byron Gallimore (Faith Hill, Tim McGraw, Sugarland) at the age of 19. In 2012, Byron announced the creation of his own label called Streamsound Records, and threw his full support behind Jaida’s career. “I’m proud for her to be our flagship artist,” says Byron. “She’s the real deal. I couldn’t feel stronger about anybody.” The album entitled I Am Jaida Dreyer has featured the popular radio singles Confessions (Of An Ex-Girlfriend) and Half Broke Horses. She credits her eclectic taste in music to her mother, who introduced her to classic artists like Kitty Wells and Hank Williams, Sr., as well as then-current hitmakers like Tanya Tucker, Keith Whitley, and Patty Loveless. As a pre-teen, Jaida also found herself drawn to a variety of singer-songwriters like Emmylou Harris, Kris Kristofferson, Merle Haggard, Lyle Lovett, and Steve Earle. Recently, she has had three of her songs (Dreams, This Town and Tell Me) used on the ABC hit TV show Nashville. “I originally had no aspirations to be an artist,” explains Jaida who was born in Thunder Bay, Ontario and raised in Latimer, Iowa. “Not because I didn’t want to be, I was just a realist. I knew that I didn’t sound like the female country singers I was hearing on the radio at the time, and I just figured my place was as a songwriter. I was okay with that. Little did I know that someday people would actually like my voice for the exact reasons that I thought they wouldn’t.”