MCKINNEY, Texas -- Kristyn Harris, 23, says she’s most comfortable in a pasture and that her family farm on the outskirts of McKinney is more her speed than a stage. But when she sings, she sounds like she was born to perform.
“I was mostly self-taught,” says the naturally talented artist. “When I first decided to learn guitar, I had a borrowed guitar and a book of chords, and I was just loving it. I just found my passion there. I would spend hours and hours practicing.”
She never had a formal singing or guitar lesson. She taught herself to yodel and to train horses, too.
“This is Velvet, she’s probably my most special horse,” Kristyn said, standing outside a ring while Velvet walked around inside. “She was a wild mustang, I adopted her when I was 14 and trained her and she’s been amazing.”
“I bought her for $125 and she was completely wild, no human handling," she said.
Velvet is now a calm, docile animal.
While Kristyn swears she is a shy introvert, she is a daredevil on a horse. She performs tricks such as a suicide drag, which involves placing her head and face perilously close to the ground while hanging on to a saddle with just one leg.
“If I stayed in my comfort zone, I would have never been off the farm, probably,” she explained with a laugh.
Her small-town charm and her big, beautiful voice won over the American Idol judges during her audition and scored her a golden ticket to Hollywood. She performed a western swing song, which is the genre where she’s developed a following. She plays at festivals and western swing events across the nation.
Kristyn will appear on American Idol again next week, and she fully expects to be told to venture outside that comfort zone again, singing pop songs and rock ‘n roll. She says it’s a good thing to stretch different muscles.
“Really, I’m a fan of any music that’s good music,” she said. “I like good quality lyrics or instrumentation or melodies. Music just affects people emotionally in so many ways.”
But, she wants to stay true to who she is.
“Yes, I want to be me,” she says with a wide smile.
She is a young rising star who has authenticity down to an art.