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Rachel Hall to Mariela, Nashville to San Diego
San Diego was queer-affirming and rollerblade-friendly
Rachel Hall grew up in Mobile, Alabama in a family that loved '90s country music: Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Randy Travis. She started playing alto saxophone in fifth grade in order to avoid having to attend physical education class, “because it was so hot and humid.” A couple of years later, while in seventh grade, she started performing in her church band. By high school, she was listening to pop-punk bands such as Relient K and had become a fan of John Mayer, whose guitar playing was an early influence on her own quest to master the instrument.
“It sounds silly, but it's kind of an intellectual decision,” she explains. “I was, like, 'I need to know everything there is to know about music, and piano and guitar seems to be the way.' With piano, I kind of got the more academic side by taking lessons for a year or two. Then, you know, a lot of my friends just played guitar. So that was more like my friends would teach me things. It was just whatever my friends taught me to play.”
Hall describes her youthful self as a “deeply religious and politically conservative person from Alabama.” She left the state for college in Texas and then ended up in Nashville. “Both culturally and on an intellectual level, as I saw and experienced more of the world, it was hard for me to deal with the cognitive dissonance of what I knew about the world around me and what I was taught to believe,” she says. The situation reached a critical point when, during the 2020 pandemic, Hall opened up to her then-wife about questions regarding her own gender identity. “I was, like, hey, you know, I don't really know, but I, like, have these feelings. I don't know what to do with them. And then [my wife] essentially asked for a divorce in May of ‘21.”
Video:
Mariela (ft. Lindsay White): "The Girls of Summer"
By that November, Hall had decided to move to San Diego. “I didn’t know anyone here. I’d only visited once. But I was looking for sunny weather, and political safety, just from, like, a queer-affirming spot. I was also doing a ton of rollerblading at the time. That was my fitness practice that was helping keep me afloat. I wanted to go somewhere with a lot of skateparks that I could skate year-round outdoors, and San Diego just seemed like a good spot. So, I put all my stuff in storage in Nashville and drove out here with three cats in my car. And I just never left.”
On the music front, Hall had been steadily writing songs since 2017 and had released two EPs and a couple singles (pre-Covid) under the Mariela moniker. But when she moved to San Diego, she was so depressed that she found it difficult to create new material. “Music has been so important to me, and I take it so seriously,” she explains. “It's not something that I can always just, like, fall back on when I'm in, like, an unwell mental state. So that's one of the reasons that I pretty much rollerbladed two or three hours a day, every day for, like, the whole first year I lived here. Because I couldn't make music.”
Eventually, the songwriting came back, and Hall will release her debut LP as Mariela, The Underglow, on October 10. The album includes songs co-written by The Voice contestants Leah Colon and Sav Walters and Grammy-winner Melody Walker. It also features a reworked version of Don Henley’s '80s hit “The Boys of Summer,” with a “playful, queer twist” that was crafted with the assistance of local singer-songwriter (and multiple San Diego Music Awards winner) Lindsay White. Mariela has already played numerous local shows at venues such as The Belly Up, The Whistle Stop, and the Soda Bar, and she even did a national tour opening for the North Carolina singer-songwriter Flamy Grant in 2024.
“I've got so many friends scattered around the country at this point. I fly into Nashville, pick up a couple of musicians, rent a car, play Chattanooga, Nashville, Atlanta, Louisville, that's one of my circuits. I made some great contacts in Seattle last week, so I'm thinking, as soon as I'm ready, I can book a couple of things through those connections and hit Seattle, Vancouver, maybe Portland, and then fly back down. So that's kind of my hope for next year.”
Here's something you might be interested in.
Rachel Hall to Mariela, Nashville to San Diego
San Diego was queer-affirming and rollerblade-friendly
Rachel Hall to Mariela, Nashville to San Diego
San Diego was queer-affirming and rollerblade-friendly
Rachel Hall grew up in Mobile, Alabama in a family that loved '90s country music: Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Randy Travis. She started playing alto saxophone in fifth grade in order to avoid having to attend physical education class, “because it was so hot and humid.” A couple of years later, while in seventh grade, she started performing in her church band. By high school, she was listening to pop-punk bands such as Relient K and had become a fan of John Mayer, whose guitar playing was an early influence on her own quest to master the instrument.
“It sounds silly, but it's kind of an intellectual decision,” she explains. “I was, like, 'I need to know everything there is to know about music, and piano and guitar seems to be the way.' With piano, I kind of got the more academic side by taking lessons for a year or two. Then, you know, a lot of my friends just played guitar. So that was more like my friends would teach me things. It was just whatever my friends taught me to play.”
Hall describes her youthful self as a “deeply religious and politically conservative person from Alabama.” She left the state for college in Texas and then ended up in Nashville. “Both culturally and on an intellectual level, as I saw and experienced more of the world, it was hard for me to deal with the cognitive dissonance of what I knew about the world around me and what I was taught to believe,” she says. The situation reached a critical point when, during the 2020 pandemic, Hall opened up to her then-wife about questions regarding her own gender identity. “I was, like, hey, you know, I don't really know, but I, like, have these feelings. I don't know what to do with them. And then [my wife] essentially asked for a divorce in May of ‘21.”
Video:
Mariela (ft. Lindsay White): "The Girls of Summer"
By that November, Hall had decided to move to San Diego. “I didn’t know anyone here. I’d only visited once. But I was looking for sunny weather, and political safety, just from, like, a queer-affirming spot. I was also doing a ton of rollerblading at the time. That was my fitness practice that was helping keep me afloat. I wanted to go somewhere with a lot of skateparks that I could skate year-round outdoors, and San Diego just seemed like a good spot. So, I put all my stuff in storage in Nashville and drove out here with three cats in my car. And I just never left.”
On the music front, Hall had been steadily writing songs since 2017 and had released two EPs and a couple singles (pre-Covid) under the Mariela moniker. But when she moved to San Diego, she was so depressed that she found it difficult to create new material. “Music has been so important to me, and I take it so seriously,” she explains. “It's not something that I can always just, like, fall back on when I'm in, like, an unwell mental state. So that's one of the reasons that I pretty much rollerbladed two or three hours a day, every day for, like, the whole first year I lived here. Because I couldn't make music.”
Eventually, the songwriting came back, and Hall will release her debut LP as Mariela, The Underglow, on October 10. The album includes songs co-written by The Voice contestants Leah Colon and Sav Walters and Grammy-winner Melody Walker. It also features a reworked version of Don Henley’s '80s hit “The Boys of Summer,” with a “playful, queer twist” that was crafted with the assistance of local singer-songwriter (and multiple San Diego Music Awards winner) Lindsay White. Mariela has already played numerous local shows at venues such as The Belly Up, The Whistle Stop, and the Soda Bar, and she even did a national tour opening for the North Carolina singer-songwriter Flamy Grant in 2024.
“I've got so many friends scattered around the country at this point. I fly into Nashville, pick up a couple of musicians, rent a car, play Chattanooga, Nashville, Atlanta, Louisville, that's one of my circuits. I made some great contacts in Seattle last week, so I'm thinking, as soon as I'm ready, I can book a couple of things through those connections and hit Seattle, Vancouver, maybe Portland, and then fly back down. So that's kind of my hope for next year.”
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