ABOUT

On the cusp of releasing her second album, Helen Ryder has created her very own world, drawing on both the personal and the political, but always with the possibility of love’s redemption at the heart of her lyrics.

There is a taste of country soul, an inkling of the blues and sparkling pure pop ballads recorded with lush atmospherics to surround Helen’s sultry vocals. Co-produced with Ryder and keyboardist Bruce Haymes (Paul Kelly, Archie Roach, Vika and Linda) and engineered by drummer Roger Bergodaz (Lost Ragas, Tex Perkins) the studio dates also enlisted bass player Stephen Hadley (Paul Kelly, Tex Perkins) and guitarist and pedal steel player Shane Reilly (Beck, Lost Ragas). Reilly also orchestrated string arrangements, while Stephen Grady and Katie Bates provided backing vocals.

Helen Ryder’s debut studio album Someday Love, released in 2015, was also a collaboration with Bruce Haymes, an Aria Award winning producer for the soundtrack of the feature film Lantana. The album consists of eleven tracks of country soul pop penned by some of the great songwriters of the mid ‘60’s to the late ‘70’s and features a duet with the late Spencer P Jones (The Beasts Of Bourbon, Paul Kelly) on the Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra classic Lady Bird. A second single True Love Travels On A Gravel Road originally recorded by Elvis Presley and latterly by Nick Lowe, features Kevin Bennett (The Flood) on soulful backing vocals. The album enlisted some of Australia’s finest musicians and received airplay on RRR FM, PBS FM, 2SER FM and nationally on ABC Radio with the hauntingly sparse version of Hushabye Mountain often a favourite album track.

In 2017 a stand-alone single Birds, written by Neil Young in 1970, was recorded with Shane Reilly on pedal steel and Stephen Hadley on double bass and again received local and national airplay. 

As a side project Helen Ryder also produces a show honouring the extraordinary music of Bobbie Gentry, one of her favourite singer songwriters. In 2019 the show performed at The Caravan Music Club as a 10 piece line-up with the best of Melbourne’s musicians and singers and sold out. In 2021 the show performed at the Americana music festival Out On The Weekend and is currently being further developed as a one woman show for theatre in 2024.