Finding Her Voice: Keira Myer’s Country Music Journey

Music has been part of Keira Myer’s life almost since the get-go: she joined a choir when she was four and started learning piano at six. But it wasn’t until the pandemic arrived that she picked up a guitar and started writing songs for herself.

“I had zero interest in playing guitar for a very long time,” she recalls with a laugh. “My dad's played guitar for years, and he was always like, ‘Keira, do you want to try this?’ And I was like, ‘No, not my thing.’"

But one day she heard him playing “More than Words”, an acoustic ballad by Boston rock band Extreme; her curiosity was piqued, and had him teach her the song chord by chord. It was no easy feat, given its finger-picking style, and Myer followed it up with another tricky song: the Beatles classic “Blackbird”.

The difficulty itself seemed to spur her on.

“I always like pushing myself and kinda finding a challenge, and guitar has been that for me for a while,” she says. “This is cool because I can do really hard stuff. And I can push myself to learn it.”

Now, Myer is well-versed in the ins and outs of the six-string: she’s a rising voice in country music, and this year’s recipient of the Youth Artist Award at the St. Albert Mayor’s Celebration of the Arts, in recognition of her dedication to her art.

“I was, for a while, trying to figure out where I wanted to be in music, what genre I wanted to find myself in, what felt the most me,” Myer says. “The thing that I love the most about country music is the storytelling. Country music is about normal people doing normal things on the regular, and it's about sharing stories and connecting with people. That's the part of music that I really love. So I find myself in country music because that's what I want to do: I want to tell stories. I want to connect with people. I want to be in that world.”

Myer’s certainly making a place for herself there: she’s played Big Valley Jamboree multiple times, appeared at the Calgary Stampede, graced the Arden as part of Heartstrings and Honky Tonks, and more, all while starting to release her own music.

She also recently went down to Nashville for a few writing sessions, immersing herself in the legendary songwriting hotspot to hone her craft. One song penned on that trip, “Stick Around”, is just out, with more on the way.

“There's so much music energy in the air,” she says, of Nashville. “Everybody's there and everyone loves this—There's such a cool sense of community there.”

That sense of community and connection is key: as Myer builds a career within the wide world of country music, the genre continues to be where she feels most inspired.

“It's the soundscape that I feel the most comfortable in,” Myer says. “Everything about it is just, well, this is me and this is where I want to be.”

More information about Keira Myer, and the other recipients of the 2026 Mayor’s Celebration of the Arts, can be found at stalbert.ca/exp/arts-culture/mayors-celebration/winners/.

Article written by Paul Blinov

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