Jaida Dreyer

Jaida Dreyer didn’t grow up intending to become a country music artist, but to hear the story of her crooked road to Nashville, it’s clear she was meant to be here all along. Her unmistakable 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 precocious age of 19; this February, Gallimore announced the creation of his own label, Streamsound Records, and threw his full support behind Dreyer’s career. “I’m proud for her to be our flagship artist,” says Gallimore. “She’s the real deal. I couldn’t feel stronger about anybody.” Building on the success of Dreyer’s spunky, self-reliant debut, “Guy’s Girl,” her second single, "Confessions," goes to radio this month.

Dreyer was born in Thunder Bay, Ontario, and raised in Latimer, Iowa, where the population sign still reads 303. “We didn’t have a stoplight, we had one stop sign,” she says. “Literally.” Her dad worked the family grain elevator, and her mom was a horse trainer; naturally, young Jaida gravitated towards the latter. She was a “horse-crazy” little girl who grew up showing competitively and won her first of many world championships at 5, getting an early education in the sort of work ethic required to reach success. And although her family wasn’t musical, per se, music was always a part of Dreyer’s life. “Early as I can remember,” she says, “from church to school honor choirs to singing along with the radio at three in the morning trying to stay awake on long-haul drives cross-country to horse shows, it was always just there.”