Bedazzled in a sparkly purple dress, singer-songwriter Kaylie Lynn brought out ‘80s classics in a recent show at Valhalla in downtown Austin on Sunday. Following the performance, Lynn, who performs under the stage name Lynndigo, sat down with The Daily Texan ahead of her concert to discuss her time with the UTalent record label that ended this past spring.
The Daily Texan: Could you dive into how that experience was, working with UTalent?
Kaylie Lynn: It was awesome. … Not a lot of schools offer something like that, so as soon as I heard that UT offered a music label for local artists, I was super intrigued. … I remember the first day I walked in for their first general meeting, there were well over 100 people in that room, and a lot of them are independent artists. … From there, they narrowed it down to 10 artists to audition in person. … From those ten, they picked three to sign on to the label for the full year. I was one of the three this year, and it was such an awesome experience. The big thing about UTalent is their opportunities for networking and real industry connections.
DT: How do you think being a part of UTalent helped your more recent shows, including this one on Sunday?
KL: Playing shows through them has been a big help, because it’s landed us (shows at venues like) Cactus Cafe. They put on a lot of shows this past year where we got to perform locally and also through UT, so it helped us get our name out there a lot (along with) all the networking events that we went to. … It’s been a big help for the most part. It also helped us book Stubb’s back in November, because we played Stubb’s for a C3 internship showcase, and they found us through UTalent.
DT: What are you most excited for (at the Valhalla) show?
KL: I’m honestly just excited to perform with a lot of friends. There’s a lot of good buddies on the bill. The Austin music scene is such a tightly knit scene. What I love about it the most is most of the time, you end up playing with people that you didn’t even know played in certain bands. … Everybody knows each other. It’s a big web of musicians, and we’re all like family.
DT: With Valhalla, what makes this show unique for you?
KL: It’s going to be one of our smaller shows. We’ve never played Valhalla before. We’ve been asked, (but) it’s never lined up. It’s another one of those local venues that we want to check off the list to say that we’ve played at. We’re going to be back at Stubb’s for Hot Summer Nights next month (in) mid-July, so that’ll be a lot of fun, (but) this will be a family bill with friends and other local bands.
