Behind the Music Scene – April 2026

“IT’S ALWAYS BEEN in my personality that I’m super entrepreneurial and motivated,” says Sharaya Summers. This is apparent to anyone who’s watched her bring life into the old wine shop at the Jacksonville Inn, but also to anyone who’s followed her path in music.

A sixth-generation native of the Rogue Valley, Summers decided, on something of a whim, to “go on a six-month busking tour with a friend” in her early 20s. She’d grown up singing in church, creating a large following but, like so many artists who started singing in church, eventually feeling the urge to perform outside of that setting. Playing in living rooms of friends, record stores, coffee shops and, eventually, “real venues,” Summers earned her music industry degree on the road while her friend blogged and eventually wrote a book about the experience. Afterwards, Summers decided to move to Nashville—not as a singer, because she felt, at 26, she was “too old,” but as a songwriter.

She secured “a small publishing deal” and worked frequently but after two years and repeated trips to Los Angeles decided California was more her speed. She moved to Echo Park where, she says, she found an active, welcoming indie rock scene, “way friendlier than in Nashville.”

Having found her tribe and having that entrepreneurial streak, she assembled a band, called Banta. “The truth is, it was still kind of a solo act,” she explains, a singer and her backing band. Signed by eOne Records, Billboard’s #1-ranked independent label, Banta released its first full-length album, Dark Charms, in 2016.

“They gave us a good budget, they gave us tour support,” but for reasons within and outside Summers’ control, there was no second album.

Meanwhile, she had gotten married to a musician also striving for success, had her first child, gotten her real estate license and begun considering the struggle of “trying to make it” as a musician in L.A.

“You either grow up or you continue trying to make it happen. At some point you don’t want to struggle the rest of your life.” So the young family came home. Summers and her husband eventually broke up, though they remain close. She opened the Jacksonville Wine Lounge (soon to be reborn as The Gold Room) and began a new phase of her life in music—and in entrepreneurship—as an advocate and promoter.

“I’d like to make The Gold Room a tour stop for smaller artists, younger artists. Maybe that’s my next mission: to raise the next generation.”

Not that she’s given up on her own music.  “A lot of what I do?  It’s all to get back to music,” she muses. She has never stopped writing and singing, has upcoming studio time booked and will be playing at the soft opening of The Gold Room on April 31.

The lesson, she tells local artists who seek out advice, is that “you can’t wait for a manager or label to make you succeed.”

“You have to want it badly enough to do it.” What “it” is continues to evolve, and Sharaya Summers’ pursuit of it continues to follow suit.