Seeding new soil
Thylan Le's music rooted in the landscape of the Four Corners

Greetings, dear readers! This week I sat down with local musician Thylan Le, whose songwriting is deeply rooted in the landscapes of the Four Corners. What began as a move guided by the land has grown into a blossoming musical path now stretching beyond Durango – all the way to Los Angeles. Thylan’s latest single, “Take Me to the Sun,” is available on all streaming platforms and is a must for your spring playlists.

SS: How did you find your way to Durango?

TL: I was doing a lot of outdoor playing in Moab; romping around in the desert, highlining, climbing. I found an opportunity with Southwest Conser-vation Corps in Durango doing trail work. I fell in love with this landscape and the high desert and those really crazy cliffside red rocks that I’d never seen anywhere before. I knew no one. I didn’t even know there was a scene. I just was purely following the thread of loving this land so much. I was like, “I’m going to jump.”

SS: Were you writing music during this time?

TL: I was in a huge creative block. I started writing when I was 15 or 16, poetry and songs, and then I stopped. When I was in my tech job, I was very focused on making money and making my parents proud. I would always play my ukulele and sing, but I was not writing at all. My parents are immigrants from Vietnam. The American dream is to have a house in California and be rich. My friend bought me a guitar for my 21st birthday. They were like, “you need to get off that little ukulele.” They were my first believers. And when I moved to Durango, I started writing songs again.

SS: How did you integrate into the Durango music scene?

TL: My plug into Durango was the outdoor community. I was spending every weekend outside. There were a lot of musicians in that community, and we would just play around the campfire. And the more I started playing around people, the more people were like, “Why aren’t you doing this more?” Eventually, I played an original at an open mic night.

SS: What happened from there?

TL: I kept getting injured when I was highlining, and then I got shoulder surgery. The intention was to be like, “Hey, I want to do this as a career.” And really what that surgery did was plummet me into music because I couldn’t do anything except play and write. It was the snowiest winter we had in Durango. And I was really nesting and playing music. And I have never highlined since. I just fully went into music.

SS: Tell us about working with your producer in L.A.

TL: I met him through a friend. He was in a place where he was like, “I’m done working with L.A. people.” We connected as first gen Americans, and over a series of conversations we were like, “we should work together.” Now I go out to L.A. pretty regularly.

SS: What are you connecting with when you’re writing?

TL: This place is my biggest muse. The Durango and Four Corners area. I write a lot to the land. And I try to write as the land. I think the biggest thing that we do is try to get out of our own way and remove the blockages to let whatever God, mystery, spirit – let us be a channel for that. 

SS: You’re also doing vocal coaching now?

TL: People would always be like, “Can you just teach me how to sing?” But I think what they’re actually saying is, “I just want to connect with my voice.” So I started teaching lessons informally. I’m really focusing less on vocal coaching and more on song-writing and how to connect with our soul work and our why. Why are we doing this … why is this of service to the world?

SS: Where do you want this all to go?

TL: I feel like I’ve nurtured this area with my songs and put the songs into the soil of this land. And it’s time to pollinate and leave and let this touch other soils. I played a show in California and had people come up to me saying they were crying, they were going to call their mom. And I was like, “Wow, this is seeding new soil.” The point is, how can these songs be of best service to the wider world? How can I be of best service to this world in my niche?

SS: When do we get to hear the music?

TL: We’re releasing singles monthly, and the first one just came out last week. I’m not listening to the imperfections anymore. I’m just listening to it like a mother swaddling a newborn baby. Like, “Oh, you’re just here now.” ■