Haley E Rydell

Fargo-raised fiddler, singer, and songwriter Haley E Rydell releases her highly anticipated solo album, Midwestern Daughter. After almost 20 years of making music with the Midwest’s top folk and roots bands (Buffalo Gospel, The Lowland Lakers, The Johnson Family Band, Angie Stevens & Haley E Rydell), this is her first solo project since her college days and her first since coming out.

“I married a man when I was just out of college, not understanding that I was queer,” Rydell says. “I didn’t know anyone who was gay. I didn’t really see lesbians in the media or in real life, so it didn’t really cross my mind until I got out of my small town and saw that how I was living was not who I was.”

Embracing her whole self as a lesbian wife and mother, these new songs are specifically rooted in her own experience growing up in a small midwestern town and learning to live and love authentically. “I had always heard that to write a good song, it should be relatable to everyone; which to me would mean writing about either a man, because that’s what most people are comfortable with, or an ambiguous love,” Rydell says. “Instead I wanted to be purposeful and honest about the subjects of my songs being women.”

From the autobiographical title track to the love song “I Can’t Get Enough of You,” the album is a collection of everyday vignettes of growing up and surviving a small town that are indeed relatable and radio-friendly. With lush guitars, twangy pedal steel and some first-rate singing, the songs feel like a handknit sweater – warm, comfortable and crafted with care.

Rydell took her time making this album, writing the songs over a period of ten years and recording most of the basic tracks back in late 2021. Producing it with Buffalo Gospel’s Ryan Necci, she recorded with Grammy award-winning engineer Brian F. Joseph (Bon Iver, Indigo Girls) at his studio in Eau Claire, WI, bringing together a dream team of musicians including Kyle Keegan (Watchhouse, Hiss Golden Messenger, Ben Howard), Dave Mehling (Gaelynn Lea, The Fontanelles), and Matt Donoghue (The Lowland Lakers) and of course Necci, who lent some of his signature harmonies. In between laying down these initial tracks and going back into the studio in January 2022, Rydell got the call that she and her wife were chosen to be the adopted parents of a baby boy.

“It was a surreal experience returning to the studio in January to finish the song as a new mom,” Rydell says. “I started writing the last song on the album ‘My Sunshine’ when my wife and I had just begun the very long process of adoption. We were still months from being ready and eligible to be chosen by a birth mother, but I was hit with visions of all of the things we would do together once we met.”

Now being a mother, Rydell brought all that emotion into the studio when she recorded that and all the other songs on the album. Full of heart and honesty, Midwestern Daughter is an album that is full of truths and shows just a glimmer of what Midwestern fans have known for a long time – Haley E Rydell is a powerhouse who will quietly tear you down and build you back up all in the space of a three-minute song.