Country music star Alexandra Kay returns to Sioux Falls for first time since 2019

Independent country music artist Alexandra Kay triumphantly returns this month to Sioux Falls, with her Dive Bar Dreamer Tour after one of Sioux Falls' venues did not pay her during her independent tour in 2019.

“It’s a very special thing to get to come back four years later, and do it again at this level,” Kay said.

She's expected to perform at 6 p.m. July 25 at the Icon Event Hall and Lounge, 402 N Main Ave.

During her first concert in Sioux Falls, a fan who overheard a conversation involving the venue manager not wanting to pay Kay because too few people showed up for the event, came up to her and put money in her pocket. That allowed her to get a meal and a hotel room that night, Kay said.

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“It’s just really crazy that I went from struggling that hard and having things like that happen to me so many years later in 2023 to selling a 1,000 tickets and having everybody scream my original music back to me,” Kay said.

At that time, Kay said she was selling five to 10 tickets for a concert, and she thought of giving up. But even then she knew she was writing a lot of great songs, and there was something special about her music.

“I knew that I just wasn’t done. I knew in my heart – it’s not over, and I am not going to quit, and I didn’t,” Kay said.

Now her concert ticket sales are in the 500-1,000 range, with an average of 900 a show, And she said she is grateful for every night she spent crying herself to sleep because venues were not paying her.

“I had no money, and I was wondering where the next meal was going to come from, and I love what I do so much, that it kept me going, and I am so glad I didn’t quit, 'cause I wouldn’t be here,” Kay said.

She said her music career started from singing in the church. She also did musical theater, acting and modeling. She started writing songs at 13. Kay recalled how as a child she always tell her mom, who advised her to have a backup plan in case a music career did not work out, that she did not need a backup plan.

“I was like, 'I do not need a backup plan because this is going to work, and I am just going to keep trying until it does,'” Kay said.

Kay entered the music scene working with several rappers who allowed her to put her voice to their songs for free.

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“I was doing it for free, so they passed my name around from rapper to rapper, from artist to artist," Kay said. "Before I knew it, I got my first record deal in 2013."

She ended up going independent in 2014, but at that time, she said she and her producers were not creatively seeing eye-to-eye on who she should be as an artist.

Kay said even though it was not mainstream at that time to create content online, it was something she wanted to do, but her first label was actively against her making covers of her videos and posting them on the internet.

“I told them, 'This is how I am going to gain fans,' and nobody really believed me, so I left the label,” Kay said.

After that, she said she was sitting on her parents’ stairs with one of her guitar players recording videos of '90s country songs. Before she knew it, she went from 3,000 followers on Facebook to about 100,000.

“Doors started opening up for me,” she said.

It was about that time that Kay made her biggest cover,  “Jolene” by Dolly Parton, which brought in about 1 million views on Facebook and allowed her to sign a new record deal in 2018.

“After that I kind of hit the ground running, and I haven’t stopped,” she said.

The second record deal, however, was terminated after the Netflix show “Westside” featuring Kay failed, and the recording company dropped all the artists who were part of that show, Kay mentioned. That was when Kay went on her independent tour and started to gain popularity on TikTok.

“That’s when things really-really started to happen for me,” Kay said.

Now, when new artists ask her how she became popular and started to put on larger concerts without any songs on the radio, Kay says she toured nonstop initially paying for the tours from her bartender earnings.

When they answer her that they would love to do so, too, but they will probably not sell any tickets, she says it is probably true.

“You probably can’t, but you’ve got to go out there, and you’ve got to try," Kay said. "And that 10 people, they will turn into 20, and that 20 will turn into a hundred. Before you know it, you will be doing the same amount of people that I’m doing, and hopefully more, but you’ve got to hit the ground running, and you’ve got to take losses.”

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With her next album release pending, it seems like she won, but it was a hard road to success, she said. While most of the people work 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., her work never goes ends. Pursuing her dream also means being away from her loved ones, missing family vacations and birthday parties, she said.

“I work from the moment my eyes open 'til the moment my eyes close every single day,” Kay said.

But hard work also taught gratitude. Kay said going from having three people at her shows to about 1,000 is what makes her feel grateful, and it is gratitude and God that make her keep going.

“The thing that gets me through all of those hard times is just gratitude,” Kay said. “If you never experience having three people at your shows, how are you ever going to experience the amount of gratitude I have today to those thousands of people standing in that room?”

Correction: A previous version of this story had the wrong byline. The story has been updated to reflect the right author.

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Alexandra Kay returns to Sioux Falls for Dive Bar Dreamer Tour