I’m pretty certain I met Rigby Summer in 2017 in connection with the Monday@ Modella songwriter pop-up and the All Music Starts Local Initiative she started in Stillwater Oklahoma after a 5-year hiatus from the music scene. Our paths have crossed numerous times since then in Kansas City but also on the road in Oklahoma and even as far away as Montreal, Canada. While returning from the 2019 Folk Alliance Conference in Montreal and suffering from debilitating back pain, Rigby helped me navigate customs and connecting flights including pushing me around in an airline wheel chair.
Rigby is one of the hardest working, independent, do it yourself roots musicians I know. She has a lovely, mature voice and writes songs that are relatable and thoroughly engaging…reflecting the road she has traveled from Kansas to California to Wyoming to the red dirt roots of her current home in Stillwater, Oklahoma. In these intervening years she has shared the stage and has learned from a myriad of local and touring artists.
In the Fall of 2020 she produced a short cover EP "Dancing Alone" with Kyle Reid and released it in November 2020. Production is now complete on her first full-length album “Geography," recorded at Naptime Studio in Norman, Oklahoma, with Kyle Reid at the helm. She recently joined me on the radio on Geography’s release day. Enjoy my conversation with Rigby Summer.