Jordan St. Cyr recently returned to southern Manitoba from a Nashville trip, but he didn’t come back empty-handed. This month, St. Cyr was crowned the winner of Nashville Rising Star. This was the ninth competition of its kind and has seen other well-known names rise to the top, like Colton Dixon and Kelsey Ballerini.
The way the whole competition came up for St.Cyr was on another trip down to Tennessee in April.
“I was recording new music with my producers,” St. Cyr says of a trip he took to Nashville in April. “I knew [producer] Keith Mohr put this event on, but I didn’t really know what it was. I needed something to do that night. So I went and played.”
The eight-round competition had almost 200 competitors. Only 16 artists made it through to the semi-finals, including Jordan, so less than two months later he and his wife made their way back to Nashville for the end of the contest.
The same song—“Girl Stuff,” which he co-wrote with songwriter PJ Ju—brought St. Cyr through both the preliminary round and the semi-finals. The finals took place only a week later.
“We got to do a standard Nashville songwriters round. [The four finalists] each got to play four songs. I opened with the song that took me there, ‘Girl Stuff.’ Then I played songs that were progressively better and deeper. I ended with ‘Wind Blows Hardest.’ It’s a song about holding true to what you believe inside yourself and the dreams that you have and you believe you were meant for them. Which means that it’s going to get a little rocky, but you have to stay true to the journey.” St. Cyr smiles, recalling the moment when his name was announced as the winner. “There is only one way to be authentic and that is to lay it all out there.”
Among the prizes is a co-write with Sandi Ramos, one of the judges who has had written songs on many albums. He also gets to record the winning song with producer Jason Wyatt. Other prizes include a year’s subscription to the Global Songwriters Network, which is essentially Facebook for songwriters, a couple of slots at the Smokey Mountain Songwriters Festival in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, happening in August, and a tentative meeting with Universal Music.
St. Cyr calls himself not only an artist, but also a songwriter, which means he writes songs for himself and others. “Winning this competition opens doors that weren’t available to me before. That’s the ultimate prize.”
Although St. Cyr would love to put out an album soon, right now he’ll simply be releasing singles every few months. His latest single, “Victory,” launched June 5 and hit the radio nationally on June 12. Local stations have spun the single, including CHVN 95.1, Mix 96, AM 1250, and Country 107.7. It is available for download anywhere you can purchase music.
In the near future, St. Cyr will be playing a lot of local shows and you can find out when and where by checking out his website (see below).
“I’m excited to continue this trend with this new sound,” St. Cyr says. “It’s a real positive vibe and a message that resonates with my heart.”
