Country Next: Noah Rinker

Rising star Noah Rinker has been quietly building something special over the past few years, and it all comes to fruition on his new EP, The Pines, out now via Warner Records. The six-song project delivers a mix of country storytelling and folk-rock warmth that captures the beauty of where he grew up and the emotions that come with the ups and downs of life.

Through this collection, Rinker taps into his upbringing in Yosemite, California to give fans a peak into where he’s come from and the kind of artist he’s evolving into. Listeners will hear him share raw stories of love, loss, growth, and reflection, all tied together with the earthy, natural sounds inspired by his roots.

From the piano-driven opener “Restless Eyes” to the hopeful closer “Don’t Give Up on Me,” and the heart of it all, the title track, The Pines EP captures Rinker’s knack for turning simple moments into something profound. These tracks, plus “Rodeo,” join previously released tunes, “Tumbleweed” and “Matches & Gasoline.”

Rinker’s rise has been steady but organic and full of excitement. He’s attracted hundreds of thousands of followers online, generated multiple viral moments and earned over 8 million likes across TikTok alone. His career then jumped to new heights last year when he signed with Warner Records.

He recently crossed off a milestone when he made his sold-out headline debut at the Troubadour in L.A., and is now set to hit the road for tour dates with Wyatt Flores and Sam Barber, separately, plus has a slot at Stagecoach next spring.

In this Q&A, Noah talks about finding himself as an artist, how The Pines came to life, how growing up in Yosemite shaped his songwriting, and more.

 How old were you when you began leaning into your passion for songwriting?

 I started writing pretty bad songs when I was 16 and just like anything, you kind of figure out you can start to do it out of free will. Like, oh, I guess I can make a song, put some lyrics to a melody and I just started listening to a lot of music and deepening my musical knowledge. And so from 16 on I started and I think that I really found a lot of who I am as a songwriter after I had the big one, the relationship that had ended that really triggered a lot of my first kind of real emotions. And that’s when I really started to find myself as a songwriter.

You got your voice out into the world through social media. What has that journey been like for you?

Social media is such an interesting thing because it’s such an amazing tool and I have such a great relationship with it as a tool to expand, discover and have new people learn about my music.But really, I was posting for a long time and I didn’t really know what my thing was. Then I remember a couple falls ago, I came back home and I set up my phone outside in my backyard, a place that I’d never thought to record a video, and started giving people a little bit of an insight onto what my life was and playing songs that I had written just literally outside in my environment.Thatseemed to have grabbed people’s attention a little bit more because I think it showed a lot more of who I am and where I’m from and what it all feels like and put an energy to the music as well. So it’s been really fun to expand that world.

Posting those videos led you to signing a record deal last year. How has impacted your career in just this short amount of time?

 It is so awesome to have help with things, I think. I started making everything myself. My first EP was entirely self-produced, mixed and mastered. And so, you know, having the help of Warner Records and everyone on the team really makes it a lot easier for me to finish the songs and work with producers and mixers and great mastering engineers that help bring my visions to life in a bigger way than I could have done by myself, which is such an amazing thing. It’s been such a crazy journey to learn the music business and how it all works coming from where I come from.

@noahrinker Uh oh. #outdoors #nature #guitar ♬ Red Bandana – noahrinker

How has growing up in Yosemite, California influenced your music in general and shaped the way you wrote for your new EP, specifically?

When you grow up in such a quiet, lonely place, you know, there’s not a lot of friends and peers up here. I worked for my parents’ propane company up in the mountains for years before I got into music. And you just start noticing little details. And obviously I write from my perspective of life, you know? So through that I see little details. Just like thinking about if we lived as long as a huge pine tree, you know? What are the things we would see and what would it be like to live a few hundred years and in a romantic context, thinking about how with the right person, even that is not enough time. And just little details like that really shaped so much of writing for this project.

What was your ultimate goal when working on The Pines collection?

 So this project really is the closest thing to home that I’ve really felt, and that’s why, you know, it’s titled The Pines. I’m from a town called Shaver Lake, California, which is in the Sierra Nevada mountains, and most of the music was made up here in the mountains where I live. It’s just very special to be able to collect a bunch of songs over the past couple years that just really felt the most like me and the most like home into a little EP.

The project starts off on a deeply emotional note with “Restless Eyes.” Can you share a bit of background on this story?

 Yeah, that one’s deep. That, I think, is my personal favorite on the record, and I wrote that one actually two or three falls ago. I don’t remember, but it was this time, a couple years ago. And I remember the first thing that came into my mind was that first line, “I’ve been walking on the edge of who I am and what I’ll be,” and that to me meant so much ’cause I was just starting to post a bunch of videos on social media and things were kind of picking up from me and labels were reaching out over the course of the next couple months. And I really felt like this emotional terror between who I am, what I’ll be, and how it pertains to the breakup and the relationship that ended, that inspired a lot of the songs that I’ve made and just describing that tension was really, really crazy. And that song really doesn’t have a form. I took a risk because it’s a very, you know, simple song in the beginning that explodes into this big massive wall of sound at the end, which I wanted to design that just, I mean, it felt like how I felt in that moment.

This song is also one of a few solo writes on this project. So how does your process differ writing along verses with other writers?

 There are two very different sides of my brain. I love writing with other people. It’s a lot more like mechanical in my brain. It’s putting pieces together with other great creative minds and kind of aligning on certain things I wanna dive into. But writing alone in the mountains, whether it be on the tailgate of my truck out in the middle of the forest, or you know, in my hometown bedroom that I’ve lived in since I was a little kid. It’s just, that’s a flow state. It’s unpredictable. Whatever comes, comes out and flows and whatever I’m feeling in that moment gets to be painted that day and I try to capture it the best I can.

 How would you describe your sound for this project in particular and how you feel like it has kind of evolved from your past projects?

 I really enjoyed putting this project together because I feel like there’s something for everyone on the EP. The song “Rodeo” is such a, I mean, it’s pretty much just like an indie pop song, essentially. I produced that by myself in Logic Pro and it’s very different from everything else, but it still has these themes that are so real to me in my life and I wanted to make it sound different and very like vibey. I think across the whole EP I wanted to color it as what my musical taste is, which is a mix of country elements, a mix of pop stuff, a mix of folk and Americana, and really my first instrument that I’ve played since I was four is the piano so with this project really being able to include a lot of my roots in the piano elements was really cool and shapes it kind of beyond the scope of country music. But also has so many themes that I love, “Tumbleweed,” “Rodeo,” all of these kind of images of a rural country life that I’ve lived my whole entire life.

What else do you have on the horizon that you want to share with fans?

 I just shot my first ever full production music video with Gus Black the other weekend.  That’s gonna be like a movie. So we’re expanding the visual world using this place and using it all for the greater good…It was my first one ever so obviously it was really nerve wracking kind of being an actor for the first time, but it was so beautiful and it came really naturally. Gus Black has done a bunch of stuff with the Warner Records team, and he came up and he scouted for a few days and we spent a bunch of long, long days just capturing the beauty and the story of a couple songs that, I can’t say which ones we did, but it was a really beautiful experience to make it with a crew and just feel like we were all responsible for making something really, really beautiful that I had never made anything like before.

You headlined the Troubadour recently, which was another big moment in your career. What was kind of running through your head as you took the stage that night?

 It’s so surreal. I’m still processing it because it’s been such a busy week. I couldn’t believe that we sold it out. It’s such an iconic venue. So many amazing people in the folk world have made their LA debuts there and just knowing the history and knowing how much it meant to me, literally the entire Warner Records staff came out and a bunch of people from UMPG, my publisher and all the fans were singing the songs back. It was just so surreal to play this music and get to feel that with the energy of people that have been living with my music for a while, and I can’t wait to go on tour or more next year.

Fans can keep up with Noah Rinker on Instagram.