Rhyan Sinclair knows how to handle herself on the road. In 2018, she released her first solo full-length, Barnstormer. Later in 2018, she released the holiday EP, Marshmallow World, which was featured on the Americana Music Association’s Holiday Playlist. But recovering from a car accident suddenly extended as lockdown settled in. In the spring of 2022, this impressive new voice in country returns with Letters to Aliens, which continues the theme of a woman on a journey, but this time the vibe is cosmic, seventies-esque folk rock with whispers of traditional country.
“Barnstormer was about finding my place and voice in relation to the world around me and expressing lots of raw emotions. Letters to Aliens is about the spiritual process of getting to the root of those emotions and breaking through them,” says Sinclair. “All of my roots show through in this music. Sonically, it draws inspiration from all of my greatest influences. Lyrically, the songs address my lineage and pieces of my story that I haven’t really shared before. I feel like the narrative of this album is particularly empowered, even in the most vulnerable moments.”
Today, Sinclair releases her cosmic sea shanty of empowerment.
“I think ‘Interstate Sailors’ is about reclaiming your power, in whatever way the listener wants to receive that. I don’t like to take away someone’s individual experience of a song by over-explaining my point of view,” she writes. “For me, when I wrote the song, it was about my career in music and reclaiming my identity, reassessing values. There’s always going to be someone out there trying to coax you out of sticking to your course, claiming their way is better. I wrote the song with the mentality of ‘I’m going to be over here, in this lane, sticking to my course, and you’ll be doing your thing over there. We can all coexist here. This is my ship and I can steer it in the direction I see fit.’ I think that can apply to a whole bunch of different areas of life.”
If the song sounds like a prog rock fantasy, you would be forgiven: it was born of a midnight reverie.
“I was on the road one night after a show, late, so maybe I was delirious,” she recalls, “but I started seeing my situation and the things around me through a sort of magical, fantastical lens. I envisioned myself as a southern-gothic sailor on a cosmic voyage, steering a ship with tattered sails, overcoming obstacles and casting out adversaries, on the way to reclaiming my personal power. I wrote the initial outline of the chorus and the first verse that night.”
Album production credits:
Produced by Rhyan Sinclair and Jason Groves
Engineered and mastered by Jason Groves at Sneak Attack Recording Co. in Lexington, Kentucky
Track Credits for “Interstate Sailors”
Rhyan Sinclair – Vocals, Acoustic Guitar
Danny Flanigan – Electric Guitar, Background Vocals
Jeff Binder – Bass, Background Vocals
Cary Shields – Drums, Percussion
Toni Karpinski – Harmony Vocals
Fats Kaplin – Fiddle, Theremin
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