Peytan Porter Interview
By Big Al Weekley for Country Music News International Magazine & Radio Show
Peytan Porter was raised at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Dawsonville, Georgia. Born in 1998 to a school teacher and a UPS man, she’s the self-proclaimed “weird, artsy middle child” in a lineup of three girls. Peytan found an early interest in music as a child and recalls memories of singing for friends at sleepovers as early as age 10 or 11. While most kids were backseat bobbing to radio hits however, she took a particular interest in the deep-cut tracks from her CDs and even more specifically, the people that wrote them. Peytan got her start singing in churches and at fairs and festivals around the northeast Georgia area as a teenager before moving to Nashville, TN after high school graduation. There, she attended Lipscomb University and started flocking with other birds of the same feather in the music community.
Peytan has been many things in her 26 years on this earth… a basketball player, an intern, a waitress, a sporting goods store employee, a beverage cart girl – the list goes on… but she identifies most proudly as a “songwriter”. Jody Williams gifted her the official title when he signed her to her first publishing deal in December of 2020, making her a songwriter for Jody Williams Songs and Warner Chappell Music. In February of 2021, Peytan’s career as an artist got wings of its own when a TikTok video of a “song she forgot she wrote” gained traction overnight, introducing her to an audience of 3.5 million. Since then, she’s been exploring and honing in on her own artistic lane, releasing a pop-country leaning project – In My Head – in 2023, then soon thereafter realizing her style is more rootsy like the Appalachian country she grew up around than the polished, pop sound she’d been trying to achieve.
Peytan resurfaced in 2023 with a new look, a new sound, and a new grasp on who she is as a person and as an artist that’s entirely her own. After over a year without releasing music, she came back to fans with “God’s Hotel” – a bluesy, breezy testimony of finding her own crowd of people who welcome her for who she authentically is, despite the traditional beliefs she once clung to. “God’s Hotel”, followed by singles, “Speaking of Georgia” and “Lemonade” are all featured on Peytan’s EP – Grown -.
Peytan can be found on the road, touring and meeting as many new faces as she can, traveling with friends (most often in an RV with no destination in mind), at local breweries trying craft beer and wearing no makeup, or somewhere new, chasing down fresh experiences to write songs about.
Catch her if you can…