Rhyan Sinclair

Kentucky native Rhyan Sinclair released her debut album, Barnstormer, last month which has a great classic country sound full of twang, heavy with guitar and bluegrass instrumentation. The album was recorded both in Nashville with Sean Giovanni at The Record Shop and in Lexington, Kentucky with Jason Groves at Sneak Attack Recording Co.


At the young age of 17, Sinclair has already accomplished quite a bit. She started a band All The Little Pieces at the age of 11 with all adults performing what they described as a combination of roots country, jazz, and blues. Over the years, they toured all over and released three independent, self-produced albums with Sinclair writing all of their original music.

Drawing upon influences from the 1987 album Trio, recorded by Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, and Linda Ronstadt, Sinclair felt herself being pulled in the direction of classic country music. With that, Sinclair launched her solo career and started writing songs with a desire to connect personally with listeners. The end result is the 14 song debut album Barnstormer.

“I hope people know that I can be counted on to share raw emotions, whether it’s heartbreak or joy,” she says. “I just want it to feel as real and intimate to someone listening to the album as it felt to me when I wrote it.”

RELATED STORY: Rhyan Sinclair Announces
Debut Solo Album, Barnstormer, Available June 22

You have been writing and performing with your mother Toni Karpinski since you were 11. Tell us about your how you and your mother began your musical journey.

I started singing with my mom in church when I was around five and sometimes my Nana would sing with us, too. I can’t remember a time when we weren’t singing. I started the band, All the Little Pieces when I was 11 and it was more roots country, rock, and blues. My mom didn’t sing with the band back then, but she managed the band and did the booking. When my writing started going in the more Country/Americana direction, the music really begged for harmonies and that’s when Mom joined the band.

How do you and your mother approach the songwriting process? I read where you like to write on an acoustic guitar, but that your lyrics come to you while riding in a car.

My process is a little different for each song. It depends on what comes to me first, a lyric or a melody or a guitar riff, whatever the idea may be. I’m most lyrically inspired while riding in the car from place to place because that ends up being a quiet time to reflect on life and decompress between things. It’s hard for me to force a melody though, I kind of have to wait for inspiration on that. I don’t really have one method, I’m pretty random and I like to let inspiration lead. Before Barnstormer, I had never co-written, and my mom had never written. When I got a little stuck on a song last year, I asked Mom if she’d want to try writing on it with me. We’re super in sync, so the writing dynamic worked out so well. That song ended up being “Barnstormer.” We also ending up writing another song together on the record called “Kentucky Night Sky.” - Guitar Girl Magazine

t’s the decaying of what once was that gives life to what will be. In Kentucky, the decay of the coal industry and the husks of communities, lives, and families it has left in its wake has made life hard for many in the Bluegrass State. Even for those lives and communities not affected directly, they still feel the weight of hardship and broken hearts that hangs in the air.



If there is one silver lining, it’s that the hard times of Kentucky have gone on to help inspire some of the most meaningful country music we’ve heard in the last decade. The mournful romanticism captured by artists like Sturgill Simpson, Chris Stapleton, Tyler Childers, and Kelsey Waldon are fueling the country music insurgency. Times may be tough for many, but the spirit of Kentucky lives on, and manifests itself in music like it has since the early settlers first put stakes down in the state.

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The 17-year-old Rhyan Sinclair proves this Kentucky wave of country music is no anomaly. It’s broad-based, and multi-generational. She like a chute of new country music life rising from the soil. But don’t slot her as just another name in a gaggle of artists emerging from Kentucky. She has the voice, the style, and songwriting to stand out, and at an age when most are busy navigating the throes of post adolescence, not penning songs that put them in superior standing compared to many writing songs in that state just south of the Kentucky border. - Saving Country Music

Following a handful of releases leading the band All the Little Pieces, Lexington-based singer-songwriter Rhyan Sinclair has stormed onto the scene under her own name with her solo debut album "Barnstormer."

Combining touches of Americana, country and pop, the 17-year-old Sinclair shows a maturity well beyond her years on the record, having written or co-written all 14 tracks along with co-producing the record with Jason Groves of The Sneak Attack Recording Co. in Lexington and Sean Giovanni at Nashville’s The Record Shop. However, that’s not where the album’s ties to the Music City end. - Kentucky.com