Vocalist/keyboardist Karalyne Winegarner is the face of Flight Attendant, a Nashville-based indie-pop band that is somewhat of a rarity in a city, and an industry, that now mainly gravitates towards solo performers. With violist/vocalist Nikki Christie, guitarist Vinny Maniscalco, bassist Peyton Rodeffer and drummer Derek Sprague, Flight Attendant is a bit of an anomaly in Nashville, with a sound that is definitely not the typical Music City norm.
“Our influences range from Cage the Elephant to Caroline Polachek,” Winegarner said, “with current influences like Chappell Roan or Harry Styles affecting our pop melodies and deliveries, and bands like Aerosmith or Steely Dan affecting our tones and groove. We meld the sounds of American pop, rock and everything in between.”
Winegarner said that, even though today’s industry is more solo-centric, she prefers the camaraderie and creativity that come with being in as band. “The business definitely has shifted to more solo artists,” she said, “and I think from that business manager perspective, solo artists are easier to package and sell because it’s a single brand. But the thing about a band, and the reason I got into music, was to sort of build and foster community, and I think that’s something not only the music industry, but a lot of the world, is lacking.”
“I’ve been in a band not just to play music,” she said, “but to foster friendships and to build something that creates meaning for not just our band but for the people that come out to our shows, to just have a safe space and a commonality through the language of music. It’s not as much about as selling my face even though my face is on our t-shirts and our website. But it’s about selling an idea that you can belong to something that’s creative and has a global mindset, it’s about art and music and friendship and nothing else. I think that that’s easier to do with a band than it is an individual, and I like it better.”
While the band does perform in Nashville, Austin, New York and other cities, they also have built a substantial following in Europe. “There’s so many ways to cook an egg,” Winegarner said, “and when it comes to being an independent artist I feel like there’s a few different tiers. And at the tier we’re at, being able to do 30 shows that are all two hours away from each other, in places that are always gonna be packed out when they hear an American band is coming, is really appealing to us. So we’ve kind of finagled it so it ends up being lucrative enough to help pay for our albums, and offset some of our costs and it’s making sense for us. And they want us over there, so we’re going back. This will be our third European tour.”
“In 2020 when we first started and we kind of became a band,” she continued, “the world looked a lot different. So we were like, What if we toured somewhere that wasn’t America, and we just kind of put out feelers and asked around and randomly got our first music video on MTV Berlin. Then we attracted the attention of an Austrian agency and they sort of were our first friends in the music business, the first people that sort of were an agent for us. And that’s where we put our first roots down as an international band was in Austria, in Germany.”
Winegarner herself handles most of the band’s business obligations, and she doesn’t seem to mind steering the ship. “We’ve played around with other managers and agents,” she said, “but so far I just enjoy doing it, and the band trusts me to do it. We have our weekly meetings and our biweekly rehearsals and yeah, I definitely am taking some of the behind-the-scenes reins when it comes to advancing tours and finding us deals and keeping it all going. It’s definitely a full-time job, but it needs to be done if you’re serious about it.”
You can follow Flight Attendant at flightattendantband.com.
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