An Interview with Lily Ryder

Hailng from the small town of Santa Barbara, Lily Ryder is semi-new to the official music scene, with only one EP out (Movement Four). However, listening to her music, it is impossible to tell. Taking her own spin on folk music and the concept of singer-songwriter, she draws in listeners through her production, and solidifies fans through her intricate and thoughtful lyrics. After taking a break to write and produce her new album, she is back. Lighter Magazine Music Editor, Emily Martin had a chance to speak with her about her newest and first official album, Song Fish.

Emily: Explain the process of this album and how it came to fruition.

Lily: This project is a record called Songfish, and this has been a pretty abnormal process as far as, like, my stuff goes. I started working on it with one of my friends like last year, and we got, like, 70% of the way through arranging, recording, like we had a track list, and the whole time I was not really sold on it. I kept waiting for it to come together and to feel good and how I wanted it to feel, and it just never quite got to a place where I was like, oh, this sounds like my music, this sounds like what I was imagining in my head, this feels good in my body, this feels good in my brain. It never quite got there. So, we were kind of working—it was the last semester of college—and I was working to try to finish it before I graduated. I had like a week of work left and I got COVID. It was the last week we had access to the studios in the school and I got COVID. It threw the project completely off the rails and I was kind of floundering. My friend was MIA and he wouldn’t give me my session files, and I was kind of fucked. I didn’t know what I was going to do. Around this time, I met this dude in a performance class I was taking. I performed for the class, and he was like, “Can I produce a song for you? Can I produce something for you? I would love to work with you,” and I was like, okay, like I don’t have anything on the docket right now, like I need help. If you have a vision you’re passionate about, it would help. So, we started working, and instantly I was like okay. This is something else. This is something different. This is a completely different project. Like, I feel so good about it, we work really well together. It just was like, we started working, and we kind of started over on the whole project. I changed the tracklist. We completely changed the objective we had for the record. It was a completely different project. That is still kind of a year in the making. We’re still finishing. We’re still wrapping up, but I have kind of made this record two times, and I am kind of glad I got to do that because I got to be like, okay this is not how I want these songs to sound, and now I have a better idea of what I would like to do here. Yeah. That’s kind of been the process so far, and we’ve been recording kind of everywhere we can. My partner/collaborator, he works in a studio in the financial district. So we’ve been recording vocals, drums, and guitars there. We record in closets, in bathrooms, under duvet covers… we’ve been doing a lot of weird shit trying to get it to sound good. It’s really fun. I’m really excited about it.

Emily: Nice. So, this is Caleb, right?

Lily: Yes, who is also my boyfriend. Notable addition. So, I am also thankful for this album because I, you know, got a boyfriend out of it.

Emily: Two birds with one stone?

Lily: Exactly.

Emily: So, you said the tracklist is different. Is it completely new songs? Or did you rework the old ones a bit?

Lily: A good mixture of those two things. There are--because I was writing while we were making it the first time we went through this--I was still writing, so I had a bunch of stuff. When Caleb and I started dating, I started writing a lot. I had a bunch of these songs that were actually kind of good, and I was like oh, these are actually kind of better than a few of the songs I originally had on here. Caleb was like, “yeah I agree. I think they’re stronger,” so it ended up being, yes a few of them got swapped out, and new stuff got put in, and then I have some older songs that have been on the project since I had the idea to do this that I kept and that are reworked to make them make sense in this context. So, a good mixture.

Emily: So, I have listened to a few demos, there is like “Yellow Light…”

Lily: Yeah, that’s the oldest song I have on this project.

Emily: Yeah, because I remember listening to that a while ago.

Lily: That I actually made--like, the arrangement and, like, the approach--I actually did that the first time we did this, with my friend Chris. I did most of the work on that with him, and then Caleb and I just added a bunch of shit and redid the vocals. But yeah, I did that, I wrote that for a songwriting class my sophomore year of college I think? But it just didn’t really fit on the last project. But it has always been a song that I play live, and that everyone really liked, and that had become part of my live show sound and whatnot, and so it made sense more in the context of this project, like it kind of fits, so I am going to keep it. So, new stuff, some really, really old stuff, and some kind of lukewarm, medium stuff.

Emily: Is there any back story you can give us to any of the songs? I’m trying to think about which ones I heard… you sent me three.

Lily: I sent you “Salt,” and I probably sent you “Sightless.”

Emily: Yes.

Lily: “Salt” and “Sightless” are going to be singles for the record. So those ones are coming out, like, September/October, respectively. There’s a video for salt that we’re working on right now, which is going to be really, really cool. It’s going to be really, really awesome. I am super excited about that. That’s going to be really fucking fun. We’re shooting that like the first week in August, I think. I’m working with all my friends, and yeah. I think it’s going to be really fun. I think it’s going to turn out super well. I am super excited about that. As for like story…

Emily: Inspiration, maybe?

Lily: Yeah, I tend to, like, not… I don’t know. When I write songs I tend to, like, try to not think about what they’re about, and sort of like, let the song be a full… let the song be a full picture instead of a story for every line. So, when you listen to the song, you kind of come away with a whole picture in your brain, instead of like, a narrative sort of structure. I think with a lot of my music it comes across that way, purposefully or not, I definitely feel that. “Salt” and “Sightless” definitely have more of a story. I wrote salt because I was feeling really… I originally… The first line of that song, “I dreamt I saw Jenna walking down Eighth Street; I had something to tell her, but I couldn’t speak.” That is about one of my mom’s oldest friends, who, like, I grew up with her kids, she was someone I really looked up to when I was growing up. Just like, a very potent person. I always just thought she was really cool and had a special thing. And when all this stuff happened, you know, with the 2016 election, and 2016, she became this crazy right-wing, like, anti-vax, super radical, aggressive, right-wing spout. It made me very disillusioned with the ideas I had growing up about what I wanted to do with my life and what people look like when they’re kind of turned inside out. That song is a little bit of me being like, you are not who I thought you were, and so now I am not who I thought I was in relation to you. So, like, where do I base my sense of self? Where is my home base here, if I don’t have these roots and touchpoints that are important? So that song has, kind of a story. And “Sightless” I wrote begging for scraps in a situationship that was really bad, and that song was like… I think I, like, describe that song as being pretty pathetic in a vulnerable way, I think. That song is kind of just being like, please give me something. Give me some sort of emotional sustenance here. Give me a reason to like, stay in this. Because like, it’s important to me, but I can’t keep doing what we’re doing.

Emily: Been there done that…

Lily: Yeah, it’s a rough spot to be in. But I love that song. That’s the song I performed in class when Caleb was like, I want to make music with you.

Emily: Oh my god, that’s so awesome. Is that one of the ones, like, which are you most excited for us to all hear?

Lily: that’s a good question. There’s a song in the middle of the record; it’s called “Burnout.” And it’s the most different… it’s the biggest departure from the folk sound I fall back on. I wanted to push myself at the midpoint of this record and have something kind of unexpected, something kind of big, and weird, that kind of jolts you and takes you out of the sad guitar song thing, which I love to do. You know I love a sad guitar song; I’ll do it until I die, but I wanted to have something that was such a different color and texture from all the other stuff, that really makes the project kind of be in a different place. So, I’m really excited. It’s a really big, upbeat, drum heavy, belty, yelly song. So, I’m excited for that one to come out. I never thought I would put that song out, ever. It was just one that was kind of a voice memo when Caleb and I were going through, and he was like what is that? And I was like, I’ve written a verse and a hook and that’s it, and he was like, we’re going to record this, and it's going to be amazing, and I'm going to make you put drums on it, and it's going to be great.

Emily: Is it pretty drum-heavy?

Lily: Um, yeah. One of Caleb’s friends who is mixing the record--his name is Pat Fruehling--he played drums on it. And we were kind of like go ham, go insane. And it sounds amazing. It’s so cool, I am so excited about it. It’s one of my favorite moments on the record because it’s so different from most of the things I get to do and most of the things I’ve done.

Emily: I’m excited. I’m jumping out of my skin to hear the rest of this album. I’ve had a little bit of a teaser with the three that you sent, and Dillon and I sat down and listened to it and were like oh my god. This is it.

Lily: I hope so, I’m doing everything I can.

Emily: I am already sold. Even just the demos that weren’t fully finished when we listened to them… When you sent them to me a month ago, I wrote down all the lyrics so I could really get into it. I listened to them like ten times back-to-back and I am still not sick of them.

Lily: Well, that’s good, because the record isn’t even out yet. I need my streams. I need my rent.

Emily: You’ll be getting it from me! Don’t worry about it. Is the song you’re most excited for us to hear the song you are most proud of?

Lily: That is an interesting question. I think… I think there are some vulnerable moments on the record that I would be more proud of than “Burnout,” that I think have been challenging, or in the past would have been songs that I sat on because they’re a little bit too personal. I kind of had a little bit of a fight with “Sightless” about this, because I never wanted to put that song out. I was so embarrassed about that situation, and I never wanted to have to address it or revisit how awful it was. I honestly never thought I would put that song out. Having it be in a place where I can listen to it and not want to cry is something that I am really proud of. Not wanting to cry and not wanting to, like never speak to anyone again. So, I think I am most proud of that song, and, you know, it was just a very vulnerable moment. It was a moment where I looked kind of dumb. I think that leaning into those uncomfortable moments is what connects the most, and what I hear people connect with more. So, I am trying to push myself and do that more.

Emily: So, you said the singles are coming out, like, September, October-ish. When can we expect the album, rough estimate? I remember, not this past New Year's, but the one before, we were throwing rocks down in the mountain, and we asked, what’s your one wish for this year? You said to be able to pay for the album.

Lily: Yeah. Which ended up working out because—this is horrible—my aunt died. Rest in peace. We weren’t that close throughout my life, but it was still incredibly sad. She kind of died pretty suddenly and pretty young. But she left all her money to her sister and me. It wasn’t a ton of money, like we weren’t like, oh we’re going to buy a ton of random shit now, but she left my sister and me a pretty significant amount of money. So, I had a little bit of financial freedom. That wish came true. Like me not having any money, me saying I don’t want to do this unless I can do this in the way I want, in a way I am proud of. That’s what I am kind of going through with the music video. My worst fear is putting out a music video that looks like a student film. Like, I just… If I am going to put out a music video, it’s going to look exactly how I want it. It’s going to look like a video, which means it’s going to cost money. But I have had a little bit of wiggle room just because of that gift from the universe.

Emily: You’ve been able to completely scrap and restart a new album. Which is something not many people have the freedom to do. Or I guess the willpower. Because that’s so tough. You know? Really disheartening, I feel like.

Lily: Making this record has been the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. I am not going to lie to you today. It hasn’t been an easy thing. To keep the energy and excitement up on a project you have been working on for two years is tough. And I have really struggled with, like, doing that, and being motivated to keep working on this when it’s like, why am I working on this? What am I doing this for? Literally just spending hours of my life locked in tiny rooms looking at a computer. It’s pretty difficult. Yeah. I definitely have had a lot of trouble with this record. I am sick and tired of it living at home. I’m ready to send it out in the world. It’s really annoying. It’s driving me crazy… In a good way.

Emily: So, you think by the start of 2024 or the end of 2023?

Lily: Oh my god, I never answered the question. I’m shooting for November. I want it out on my birthday. So, I am trying to do first single September 5th, second single October 5th, record November 5th.

Emily: Perfect, because this is coming out in late July, so people can get excited about it and not have to wait forever to listen to it.

Lily: Yeah. And “Salt” is the first single, and the video is going to come out at the same time, so that’ll be like a thing.

Emily: Is there going to be a tour or something? Please, please, please. Like a casual tour.

Lily: I don’t know. First of all, if there is a tour, it’s going to be a small… A lot of stuff is still up in the air about this. The thing about releasing music independently is you kind of have to source people to help you. From the last project, there were a lot of people who reached out who wanted to help and connect me with people, so this project, I am just going to try to utilize that. Yeah, I don’t know, it just kind of depends on how it goes and what happens with it. We’ll see.

Emily: What else can we expect from you? What do you have to say to the people? What else can we expect? The music video coming out in September, the two singles… Are you making any music videos besides “Salt?”

Lily: We may be making a “Sightless” music video depending on whether we can stay on budget with the first one. If we can get it done within the allotted amount of resources then there is a possibility to do something a little more, but, uh, maybe is my answer. Unclear at this time.

Emily: Okay. Well, thank you so much Lily Ryder. It has been such a pleasure.

Lily: The pleasure is all mine.