Rural Alberta musician reminisces about unhurried rural lifestyle in new music amidst COVID-19
By Nikayla Goddard, October 7 2020—
“In this season of COVID, I’ve just spent a lot of time getting back into my creativity and just working on my craft in songwriting,” Reanna Kyla said. “It’s been really good to just focus on the creativity and the art that I have.”
Kirriemuir born and raised Reanne Schuetzle, who goes by Reanne Kyla in the music industry, has released a new single following a three year hiatus since the release of her first album. The single, Home, was written with a focus on growing up in rural Alberta, and serves as a slice of small town life that Kyla found herself longing for during these times of isolation due to COVID-19.
In between the release of her EP, Chronicles of a Fervent Heart, Kyla has performed a number of shows in Calgary and small coffee shop gigs. She took a break from Canada and spent four months in Thailand, and is back and working for a local company in Cochrane as an executive assistant.
Home is a soft country song full of vivid imagery of the fields and the sense of freedom that accompanies it, also speaking to the sense of community, family and home she finds in rural Alberta.
“I’m actually really excited about this song,” Kyla said. “It was written really with a primary focus of our home out in rural Alberta, by Kirriemuir on the farm. I wrote it with a longing for others to understand this unique and beautiful place in rural Alberta, and this place that really formed a lot of who I am. Out of this song, I long for people to grasp the unhurried lifestyle that we live back home. It’s not only the pace of life that I love, but the vast sunsets and milky way, the birds singing in the morning. Just these unique things that you don’t really get when you live in the city and in this fast-paced kind of lifestyle.”
In terms of where Kyla is going from here, she says that she plans on taking it day by day, but intends to release some merchandise, such as crewneck sweaters. She also says she hopes to continue working towards either another single or another EP, but says COVID has allowed for a lot of introspection and opportunity to hone her work.
“I’m really just focusing on working on my craft,” she said. “I don’t want to just release music to add to the noise of the world right now; I want to make sure that when I release music it is well-done and means a lot to both me and my listeners.”
Kyla ended by thanking her supporters, adding, “And to those back home, I just hope that this song really speaks to what is out there in rural Alberta and that people really relate to the song.”
Home can be found and listened to on Spotify, Apple Music and Bandcamp, along with Reanne Kyla’s previous releases.