citizenscitizens

DETROIT’S COUNTRY GALPAULINA JAYNE FUSES ROCK AND COUNTRY TO GET ON THE MUSIC MAP

Paulina Jayne is Detroit’s offering of a new brand of country music that

she has coined “urban country.” It’s an edgier, Detroit-rock style of country

music that this wild, golden-locked 18-year-old ingénue writes and

performs herself.

Now in her last year of high school, Paulina Jayne – as she is

professionally known – has opened for Sheryl Crow at the DTE Music

Theater with an audience of 6,000 people; shared the marquee with

country legends Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert for the Watershed

Music Festival at the Gorge in Washington State; has opened for Chase

Rice to a packed house at Live Nation’s St. Andrews Hall; is the subject

of a documentary feature fi lm currently in production; and was gifted an

invitation by Grammy Award-winning producer Toby Wright to attend

a private audition for NBC’s hit show The Voice in Music City, U.S.A. –

Nashville, Tenn.

Paulina Jayne, the student from Grosse Pointe, has a 4.0 grade

point average and was captain of her basketball team. She was elected

to homecoming court and has two proactive and involved parents, Deb

and Harold, who keep her grounded. A typical evening at the family

homestead? Homework followed by household chores. When musical

inspiration strikes, chore duties are put on pause and an instrument

– piano, drums or guitar – can be heard from across the house as Jayne

works out a riff or bridge. Once the muse has been satisfi ed, mom reminds

her daughter where the broom is and chore duties continue, though the

playful teenager might choose to mix it up a bit by putting on her mother’s

dress coat to do them in.

“I have a constant soundtrack in my mind,” she says, and it often

gets her into trouble at school. “I get passes to the girls’ bathroom during

school, so that I can record new songs on my iPhone,” she says. “I need to

get the song out. It’s distracting me from paying attention in class.”

She credits her mother, who is also a singer and a classically trained

pianist herself, for her love of music. “I really fell into music because of my

mom. It was more of a forced stay. My mom made me play piano,” Jayne

says. “I originally hated it, but then I grew to love the instrument, and the

guitar became my favorite.”

Jayne has been writing music since she was 9 years old and has

over 200 songs in her arsenal. Her fi rst professional gig was the Stars

and Stripes Festival in downtown Mt. Clemens. “There were a bunch of

different acts there. I was 13, and it was a blast,” she explains. She signed

with a management team at age 15 and has been playing locally as well as

a few national shows – the rest, she says, is history.

With three music videos under her belt, the fi rst, “Get Back on Your

Feet,” garnered nominations for a 2013 Detroit Music Award and the 2013

Uptown Film Festival. It also received a 2013 Student Emmy Award as it

was produced by Madonna University’s Capstone Film Class.

Jayne recently returned to Nashville where she has been working

with Emmy Award-winning songwriter and music producer Trey Bruce

on her upcoming EP and her audition for The Voice. Her position on the

opportunity? “Whatever God has planned will come to be,” she says.

What resonates for everyone who meets Paulina Jayne is her calm,

down-to-earth demeanor. “I think a defi ning moment for me was learning

from Sheryl Crow that it’s extremely important to be authentic. We were

back stage at the DTE concert. I was being introduced to Kid Rock,

Sheryl’s band, music people, and when I was brought to Sheryl, she was

Skyping with her kids. She didn’t have any makeup on. She was wearing

sweatpants and a T-shirt,” Jayne recalls. “It was a real moment for me. It

showed me that these people are just people. Authenticity is the most

important thing.”

Next up for this fast-rising Detroit country singer? Paulina Jayne is

looking forward to this next semester at school where she is taking a class on

music production; her upcoming performances with Live Nation; working

with her new management team at The 513 Agency; shooting a music video

for her song “Hello Saturday Night;” a spring break trip to Florida with her

girlfriends; graduating this summer; more writing with Trey Bruce; coaching

with Herschel Boone; fi lming with her documentary crew and attending

Belmont University in the fall where she’ll study music business.

Oh, and fi nding out if she made it to the next round of The Voice.

Jayne reports that if chosen, it’s “Team Blake all the way!” — Jennifer

Champagne

paulinajayne.com

Paulina Jayne

citizens

phot

o: C

opyr

ight

AP

Imag

es (A

ssoc

iate

d P

ress

)

citizen

| 21

AMB47_17-32 with seafood and red seal.indd 21 2/20/14 1:49 PM