Racyne Parker

It took a little while, but Racyne Parker seems to have finally figured out where she should really be. She’s found her identity as a singer-songwriter after pushing as far as she could in other areas of her life.

The seeds of her current musical life were planted firmly when she was little, mainly by her singer-songwriter dad. “He was part of a local band in Klamath Falls for 20 years or so…My mom wasn’t a musician but…the radio was always on. It just seems like my whole life was soundtracked by something…” The role her dad played in planting the seed was a bit more active than passive. “My dad had been gigging around…I watched him and I thought ‘I want to do that’. And he was so kind and he’d bring me up on stage and I’d get to play tambourine…I’d sing my little heart out up there…As a kid, I wanted to be a rock star…” She took guitar lessons during her elementary years, and says, “I never really got that good, but it was something I could always go back to…”

Racyne moved away from the rock star dream as she got older. Her community held sports in high regard and she excelled at track & field and basketball. She also worked hard academically and thought a career in medicine might be in her future. Meanwhile, although it seemed dormant, by the time she graduated college, the seed of her own singer-songwriter career finally sprouted.

“My senior year of college, I wrote a few songs that, for the first time, I thought, ‘I think these are OK. I think I could share these with people’…So I sent them to my dad and he was like ‘You gotta go record those.’” As graduation was approaching, Racyne had been struggling with what she wanted to do with her life, so she started writing to help process her emotions and thoughts. “That was not only cathartic, but also I think just a sign of like ‘Oh, this is kinda maybe what you should do, since this is what you’re turning to in these moments of doubt…”

Now Racyne is actively cultivating her music career, writing, releasing singles in anticipation of a full-length record, playing a lot of solo acoustic gigs, and looking forward to developing a full band presentation in the future.

To find out more, visit www.racyneparker.com. Listen to the interview here.