Words by Haley Collins
Photos by Leo Soyfer
After a string of performances as the bass player for Lily & Madeleine, Jody Galadriel Friend’s thoughts turn to managing her creative balancing act. While the primary focus remains leading her band Public Universal Friend (PUF), she continues to explore roles playing in other people’s bands and pursuing alternative creative outlets. Embracing her multifacetedness, Friend sees this exploration as a healthy way to take off some of the pressure she feels.
Jody Friend and PUF credit their names to an American historical trans/nonbinary preacher from the Quaker tradition who also went by Public Universal Friend. The figure was a fitting namesake for Friend, who had at 29 come out as a gay trans woman and was wrestling with her relationship with the church.
Now Friend speaks to the pursuit of integration of queerness and spirituality: “There is an element to transness that is a forever thing, though not exactly by way of philosophical essentialism; I have always been myself, and being trans became a new way of defining and engaging with that which I found to be true. I am in a new chapter but in the same way, I have always been here.”
Though Friend knows she lost a large part of her audience after coming out, her audience has easily grown tenfold, which she largely credits to the power of her vulnerability. “There have to be ways to express queerness that might not be pragmatic outward relational ways but began within. Queerness is a breaking of the ice,” she says.
Earlier this year, PUF released their self-produced album Chrysalis, a collection of folk and Americana that weaves thoughtful lyrics exploring love, grief, and existentialism from the queer perspective. Friend is aware of her image and regard within Indianapolis and the queer community. And daily, she grapples with her exposure on stage; she will be vulnerable, and some people might not like it. She stresses that in order to continue performing at her best, she has to do a lot of self-care and a lot of rest.
In addition to PUF and her various supporting gigs, Friend is working on a memoir, Transangelicism, centered around developing a new sense of divinity within the scope of queerness. She admits that, at times, she was still too close to many of the events in the story to properly write about them, but she senses that time has brought more clarity to her experiences. With the support of her community, she hopes to be able to release the book sometime next year.
As for the band, Friend’s ambition is contagious, and she wants the band to climb as far as they can together while maintaining integrity. Friend explains her view on the existential side and mythos of success; she wants to reach new heights of connecting with lots of people and a self that she is eager to share with the world. Ultimately, her goal is to create a community of creatives that are aligned and share the same vision.
