Jordan Rainer performs in E-Town

ELIZABETHTOWN – A young girl with the sparkle of a child’s wonderment in her eyes stands before a crowd that may or may not know that this 35-year-old woman has felt as if she’s lived many lives and through the hurts and the setbacks, she’s still so willing to bear her heart to an audience of strangers.

Jordan Rainer – known for catching her big break with a shot to be a part of the blind auditions for NBC’s The Voice, she joined Team Reba (McEntire) and traveled one show short of the finals where Season 24 saw “Huntley” win first place in the competition.

Her distinctive gritty Oklahoma voice was a popular hit with all the judges on that first audition, but resonated the loudest with Reba McEntire who was chosen by Rainer to be her coach. Rainer did a song written by Bobbie Gentry in 1969, but McEntire later made that song her own and made it popular after its release in 1990.

Perhaps a series of coincidences, but that was the year that Rainer was born and she decided to sing that song long before she knew that Reba McEntire was going to be a judge on the Voice. Sounding very “Reba-esc” in her voice – it stunned all four judges and she had all four turn around to try to recruit her.

That year when Reba McEntire was reworking a song that one day would be judged at #65 on Rolling Stone’s 200 all-time best country songs, Rainer was learning to breathe and see and smell and most of all, she began to learn to trust.

Some might say her ability to trust as a child was a gift. But, like all good gifts, it was challenged – again and again… and again, until she learned how to keep it all inside and what little she had left, she kept only a pilot light burning.

She sang a song in concert Saturday night at Cape Fear Vineyard & Winery in Elizabethtown, North Carolina, as she let her two band members, her drummer, Steve Wolfe and her bass player, Mandy Shucher take a breather. Her personal between-sets breather was made up of storytelling and singing songs straight to the heart as she opened herself up. Again.

She told the audience that it was a song about growing up in Oklahoma – but if you listen carefully and hear between the lines, you will realize that it was her testimony of a sad time. The exact year things were beginning to change for her. The right of passage to grow up to transition into the separation. The song makes you yearn for the innocence of childhood and yet you listen in the forging of the reality of becoming a grown up.

“We played all day till the street lights told us it was suppertime. We were Wendy and Peter Pan and that summer was Neverland,” she sang soft and longing for the day. “No sense of tomorrow – no ticking minute hand. Only Dixie cups of mama’s homemade lemonade and watching lazy clouds roll by under a willow’s shade; Fireflies in Mason jars, makin’ wishes; counting stars while growing up seemed like a world away… But even in Neverland – we all grow up someday.”

She grew up in Atoka, a town that has a restaurant called “Reba’s Place” only because of Reba McEntire’s Oklahoma roots. Their website says that it was “brought to life by country music star Reba McEntire.” The little town that Rainer grew up in was tipping the scales at almost 13,000 people by the time she was born and those born there have a pride in the fact that the town was named after Captain Atoka – a Choctaw warrior. And… by the way, the town that was influenced and developed by Joseph Murrow who was a Baptist missionary. Remember that fact as you read on.

“I had a Spielberg childhood, or at least that’s what I call it,” Rainer said. “I think I grew up in one of the last generations of kids that experienced just playin’ outside and having sunburn on your shoulders. My grandparents had a big farm and a big barn and I grew up around horses and waitin’ on all the spring foals to be born. I can remember huntin’ for kittens in the haybales because they were born out there. I just had a good old country girl raisin.’”

Rainer’s grandparents were a big influence on her life and she remembers that she was a “grandma’s girl.” Although her grandfather taught her how to ride and how to handle horses and her grandmother taught her how to appreciate that “good ol’ southern cookin,’” as she most aptly puts it.

“My grandfather was a horseman,” she said. “I got to sit in his lap and we would look at his horse books. He raised and showed world-class Palomino horses. He bought me my very first horse. We showed up after church on Sunday afternoon to have Sunday dinner and he just couldn’t quite hold it in. He said that he thought I’d better go to the barn – there’s something in there that I needed to go see. I ran to the barn and peeked over that stall and saw that little gray pony mare and that changed my life. I’ve been a horse girl ever since.”

The horse’s name was “Sugar,” because… you never forget your first horse that you can call your own. In her late middle-school years she said that her family moved away from her grandparents and although the love remained, the horse-riding has not been as regular. She attended Coalgate High School which is in the middle of the Choctaw Nation. Go Wildcats.

“My competitive side came out when I developed a love for softball in high school,” she said. “I wasn’t very fast, so I had to drag bunt and hope I made it to first. It was my only play, but I sure liked it. And I was a very competitive and aggressive catcher, so if you were going to cross my plate, you were going to pay for it.”

After high school she tried college for a semester and realized that there was another path and she was heart-set to find it.

“I was a good responsible kid who thought that after high school you were just supposed to go to college,” she said. “I faced up to the fact that I am not an academic. I was terrible at math and terrible at science. The only thing I excelled in was lunch and recess. I figured out pretty quickly that academia was just not going to be the ticket. But… I was real good at that guitar. And I was pretty good at writin’ songs.”

Now in her 30s, she is an accomplished guitar player as well as a vocalist and the trifecta is that she can write lyrics. That’s a hat trick in the music industry. She grew up with parents (Jeff and Robin Self) who were music ministers in a church where her father pastored. As a bonus growing up in the church, she sang in the choir and her parents taught guitar and voice. At times you can hear some John Denver in her slower licks and perhaps a little Phil Keaggy. When she rips it, though, she is a combination of Eddie Van Halen and Django Reinhardt playing Minor Swing. One of the things you will notice about her is that she is versatile and has not feared any genre that she has faced.

One moment she will rip into the swamp with Black Water Rise and then do a duet with “The Heart Won’t Lie,” and follow it up with a ballad that leaves you in tears like her original song, “Painted Horses.” Then she does “When The Crow Comes Down,” and you almost hear echoes of “Lightnin’ Slim” or Belton Sutherland’s “Kill the Old Grey Mule.” It might be worth finding out if she listened to Kaiser Mansfield as a kid – but maybe not as she doesn’t play the harmonica.

She has been playing guitar since she was 12 and got her roots as so many country singers do – singing in the choir and playing solos in the Baptist church. She sometimes looks in the mirror and hears the song “Footloose” in the back of her mind.

“I grew up on the front pew of the Baptist church and somehow I wound up wearin’ black and playin’ bars – I don’t know what happened.” she said with a wry smile. “I actually started in gospel and was there a long time – and actually thought that’s where I would end up. My beliefs changed over the years and I found kind of my own path that is different from my parents. I lean more to the storytelling of country music. There are things the church won’t talk about that I feel the need to be talked about. Divorce, cheating, abuse and you know… the real struggles. Life. Real life.”

Since COVID, Rainers has had some extreme obstacles and some would say she is simply “paying her dues,” but going back to a gospel thread, she has been forged in a refiner’s fire. And the maturity that has developed as a result is something that comes out in her songs.

She writes like a very polished and veteran songwriter. She has come out of the pain like a house of fire. Perhaps… spitfire. She has become a mentor, a teacher and an encourager to those who haven’t got a dime, haven’t got a home, haven’t got a hope and haven’t got a prayer.

To those who feel that they can never find home – her songs offer a compass to their true north.

Some of her songs are loud and will bring a rebel yell, but other are anthems for battered people, abused men and women – either emotionally or physically. She has, without applying for the position been an anointed champion for the underdog and those who have given up the good fight. It was no mistake that Rainer was in Elizabethtown honoring mothers on Mother’s Day.

One thing about Rainer is that there is “no quit” in her.

“The new song that just dropped this week called “The Girl You Left” (speaks volumes to the hurting and the broken),” she said. “A friend of mine and I wrote it from a hodge-podge of men we had encountered. Also, women that we’ve encountered. People. That have been through things with narcissists and gas lighters. All of a sudden 10 years later, here we are and the song has finally come forth.”

She says that although she is not coming against Christianity or some of the good that it stands for, there were things that she heard and things that were done that didn’t match up nor did they make sense.

“One of the things that didn’t serve me well growing up, especially as a female; I didn’t grow up with a lot of power,” she said. “Empowerment and females being encouraged to speak up; I didn’t grow up that way. I grew up to be submissive, be subtle, be meek – which at my heart, it’s not me. In my case, separation brought me distance so that I could try to find myself. The more distance I had, the bolder I became. The woman in black that you see onstage – that was the evolution of realizing some things might be nice for some people, but not for me.”

She has done something amazing. She has found her voice and it’s ironic that her big break came on “The Voice.” And the voice she’s found encourages, brings hope, brings healing and helps those knocked down by the real things in life – get back up again. It’s in that way she is more of a psalmist than just a singer.

“I don’t want to seem domineering,” she said. “I want to see a world where we can all live in our prescribed roles in a beautiful harmony that is meant to be. For me, the way I counteract pain is to stay busy. It’s not airing my dirty laundry or using my songs as a journal entry. I like to write other people’s stories.”

As far as her initial break that proved all the naysayers wrong, it came after months of extreme songwriting.

“I just put my nose to the grindstone,” she said. “Finally, I wrote a song called ‘Workin’ on That.’ It got picked up by a guy named Sundance Head (a semi-finalist on the sixth season of American Idol; also he went on to The Voice and won first place in season 11). It was first notable cut for me and he performed my song at The Grand Ol’ Opry. I thought to myself sitting there in that hallowed hall on the front row Opry pew… OH, this is goin’ somewhere.”

And go somewhere she has. Elizabethtown has had that rare and unique opportunity to see a really big star in the making. It’s amazing to see her spirit; feel the energy and work ethic all mixed with her talent, her passion and her purpose.

It’s a destined calling and folks ought to start buying their tickets early. It’s time for an Outlaw Revival.

To join Spitfire Nation, to check upcoming concerts and to hear the current recordings, please visit Jordan Rainer at her website: https://www.jordanrainerofficial.com/