Communiqué

Chancey Marler makes her point through music

by

“I’m from Alabama,” musician Chancey Marler says as she sips her latte.

A day ago, I stumbled across snippets of her music on Instagram and fell in love with the sound. The easy route would be to call Marler a singer-songwriter. Yes, she’s got an acoustic guitar and sings from someplace deep within her feelings. The expanded description would be to liken her to a subtly simple indie rock sort of thing—like the more country-ish Connor Oberst stuff, or maybe even Sam Beam’s Iron & Wine with the whisper-quiet -vocals delivered so beautifully you have to remind yourself to pay attention to the lyrics and not just the melodies. Within an hour of finding Marler, I’d discovered we have a mutual friend or two; bothered those friends to reach out to her; and now we’re knocking back coffees downtown and considering the nature of the Santa Fe music scene from disparate angles together.

“I’m a registered nurse,” Marler continues, “and I came here on a travel nursing job and just fell in love with the Santa Fe vibe, everything about it. Now I live here full-time, and I didn’t realize the music scene was so big.”

I laugh at this, assuming it’s a joke. Most folks get a tourism campaign style picture of Santa Fe before moving here before discovering we’re not just Canyon Road and the Lensic, that much is true. But a big music scene? That has not been my experience. Don’t get me wrong—there’s a lot of music in Santa Fe and a lot of musicians playing it, but the scenes as I know them mostly break down to a handful of microcosms like the jazz people; the metal dorks; the Americana set and so on, and the overlap is tangible. Still, Marler is not joking and reframes my notion of music in our fair city: Santa Fe might seem small or slow to some, but for someone who grew up on a 150-acre farm in Alabama like she did, the size and pace feel exciting. This isn’t a metropolis, of course, Marler says, but she has unearthed much to love in her just-under-a-year in town, and she wants to be part of it.

Music came later in her life, she says. Her dad and brother are both guitarists, but, initially, Marler notes, she wanted to be a dancer. This included a stint for dance at Troy University in the Alabama city of the same name, and she takes pole dancing classes to this day. During college, however, when Marler’s father suggested dance alone might not be the most lucrative career path, she phased into nursing.

“I looked up the most stable jobs,” she explains. “I enjoy nursing, but I didn’t play doctor growing up—but it has still provided me the opportunity to travel; like, I went to Hawaii during COVID to work and also to try and find some joy during the pandemic.”

And yes, btw, it was emotionally tough to work in healthcare during the pandemic—tropical locale or no. And Santa Fe is a far cry from Hawaii, obviously, but it’s more Marler’s style. Finding her footing, then, came next. To date, she’s yet to perform music seriously in front of an audience, though she’s attended open mics and comedy events with original songs like “My Pussy Hurts.” The next step is to get a little more serious.

“I have only just started to feel comfortable expressing my voice and my music, and I have just started to lean into how the more you show up, the more it reflects back to you,” she says. “I grew up with a stutter, and it was pretty difficult to speak, so I was bullied all through high school, and even now if I’m too caffeinated or have a week where I’m not sleeping, my stutter will be exacerbated—but my dad put me in vocal lessons. When people sing, they don’t stutter. Music is voice therapy.”

I tell her I don’t notice a stutter, and she says something about how much work that takes.

“In most peoples’ lives, the thing that’s the struggle is the thing that’s also helping you out, though” she continues. “Had it not been for this horrible experience, I wouldn’t be here. But I’m just trying to be happy.”

And there it is. The crux of what drew me to Marler’s song snippets in the first place: Sincerity. She means it. She really fucking means it, and that comes across in songs about trees and love and in songs about her grandpa Carol—the one who started the farm on which Marler grew up.

“I’ll tell you this,” she says, “this seems like the right thing to do, playing music. And there’s a part of me that wants to record, but I just want to create it in a way that I feel comfortable with, and that’s what this is right now. If it happens, cool. If it doesn’t, that’s cool, too.”

Very cool.

Marler performs this weekend at DIY space Ghost alongside Albuquerque-based folk songwriter AJ Woods & Alligator Juniper, improvisational outfit Tarantula Hawk and JJ Light (formerly of the Sir Douglas Quintet). And unless I’m wildly off here, Marler might just be on the cusp of something glorious. Let’s tune in.

Chancey Marler: 7 pm Saturday, Nov. 23. $10-$15. Ghost, 2889 Trades West Road, @ghost_santafe on Instagram