On ‘Soft Blood,’ musician Lyn Rye becomes a storyteller
It is easy to tell one’s own stories. It is much more difficult to become another person’s storyteller. And yet, musician Lyn Rye has embarked on this creative journey on their latest album, “Soft Blood.” Released early last month, “Soft Blood” is a powerful and evocative collection of tracks detailing personal and collective journeys in an ever-changing and difficult world. For Rye, this new collection of music channels their individual journey as an advocate for change and empowerment.
Rye has been playing music for most of their life along with their mom and sister. In high school, Rye began playing bass with their school’s jazz band. It was that experience of making music as a collective that helped fuel Rye’s pursuit of music professionally.
As an adult, that love of the collective — of working and collaborating with other people, whether through music or otherwise — has helped define Rye’s story as a creator. “I never envisioned that I would be a musician,” Rye offered. “I view myself primarily as a cultural worker and music has taken on such a role in my life.”
As a cultural worker, Rye wants to contribute their own cultural voice as well as listen to the voices of others.
“I think that it’s the way that I understand how all the pieces of my life fit together,” they said. “So much of what I do, community-wise, is kind of inextricably tied to my musical life. There’s some pretty interesting stories of how they weave in and out together. And I think cultural work is the term that I’ve settled on to kind of understand how it all fits together.”
When articulating what this means, Rye described a serendipitous chain of events. Their mentor’s chance encounter with a stranger led to Rye joining the Salaam-Shalom Music Project, a group of musicians from the Maxwell Street Klezmer Band as well as Chicago’s Arab and Muslim musician community.
Later, a member of a queer men’s chorus in Seattle reached out to the Salaam-Shalom Music Project looking for a musician willing to work on a song cycle based on the experiences of LGBTQ Muslims who had resettled in Seattle. Rye, who describes themself as a “radical, queer Muslim,” was asked to write a composition. But in addition to the music, they were also interested in assisting queer Muslims in Seattle.
For the last three years, Rye has worked as a point of contact for a queer couple from Syria as they sought asylum in Canada. This work is part of a network that supports queer and transgender Muslims fleeing their countries of origin. Locally, in 2021, Rye cofounded Casa Al-Fatiha, “an autonomous sanctuary house for LGBTQ+ asylum-seekers and people coming out of prison.”
All of this work comes full circle for Rye. The music is intertwined with their social activism work, with one leading to opportunities in the other and vice versa. Most recently, Rye’s experiences with Casa Al-Fatiha have transformed into music on their new album. The closing track “House of the Empty Chair,” a gorgeous and dynamic indie rock number, describes the experiences of everyday life in Casa Al-Fatiha: “I’m no saint, I just sit at a table / But I’ll be damned if your chair gets stolen / the place you rest when your soul is weary / Come love, sit down, drink up, let go.”
Rye’s rich musical background as a bassist, composer and songwriter weaves its way through other tracks on the record. Album opener “Two Points Make a Line” is another moment of storytelling for others, of stories “bubbling to the surface.” Rye’s mother comes from a family of farmers in Nebraska. In 2019, massive flooding ripped through their community. “Two Points Make a Line” tells the story of a man who volunteered to drive his tractor through the floodwaters of unknown depths to deliver supplies.
“And what he did is he set his sights on a satellite tower. That was the straight line,” Rye recalled. The man made it through, but before his journey, he took a photograph from the seat of his tractor and sent it to all of the families who would receive his supplies. “That photo stuck with me. Like a year later, something about that experience — of being faced with this flood of despair or crisis, and that sort of quiet resolve that he had — just really stuck with me. Something about the pandemic triggered that to come out as a song.”
“Soft Blood” doesn’t rest in the aesthetics of one genre, blending elements of jazz, folk, R&B, country and funk for a sound that is uniquely its own. While Rye cites influences like Joni Mitchell and Lianne La Havas, their work sounds distinct and effusive. This is a musician who knows who they are, knows what they want to say, and understands the power and possibility of music as a force for change.
They next perform in Chicago at Golden Dagger on Nov. 10.
“It feels like the stories have wings of their own now. And one of the most rewarding things for me is hearing people’s reactions to the stories and the way that they connect to their own lives,” Rye said. “I’ve loved hearing people’s responses from those listening experiences, so I couldn’t be happier.
8 p.m. Nov. 10 at Golden Dagger, 2447 N. Halsted St.; tickets at $10, 21+. More information at ticketweb. com