Rayland Baxter

“This is just the beginning for me. I'm pretty new to this game,” Baxter said. “I've just started playing serious shows Nashville six months ago.”

In the music industry, of course, it helps to have roots, and Baxter's father is Bucky Baxter, a multi-instrumentalist and steel player who's recorded with Ryan Adams, Steve Earle and Bob Dylan. Bucky Baxter toured with Dylan for seven years, and contributed the pedal steel and mandolin that helped transform Dylan's sound on the Grammy-winning 1997 album “Time Out Of Mind.”

As a kid, Rayland Baxter spent lots of time watching his dad play with these icons, who, Dylan in particular, he cites as influences. Still, he didn't immediately go in for a music career. After leaving Loyola University in Baltimore two classes short of graduation, Baxter headed west for Colorado, where he “lived in a tent and all that stuff.”