Full Bio

On her debut EP By My Own Ways, to be released July 26, 2024, Marley Hale shares a collection of lived-in stories with a strangely enthralling power, sharply capturing moments of danger and desperation and all-consuming longing. Before setting to work on the five-song project, the Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter spent a month alone in a cabin in Joshua Tree—a transformative period that included getting sober and recommitting to music as a form of emotional excavation. Rooted in a beguiling voice that would feel right at home on classic country radio, By My Own Ways ultimately introduces a singular new artist exquisitely skilled at merging raw truth and mesmerizing storytelling. 

Co-produced by Hale and Dylan McKinstry at Greenpoint Recording Collective, By My Own Ways centers on a captivating country/folk sound that’s rich in finespun detail (e.g., lush fiddle melodies, sleepy pedal steel tones). On the EP’s slow-burning lead single “Drunk On You,” waltz-like rhythms and hypnotic guitar riffs meet in a moody rumination on sobriety and heartbreak (from the opening lines: “If whiskey were woman I’d fuck her/He said over his drink, across the bar/But if whiskey was a man, I’d never leave him/And that’s what makes this living so hard”). Mainly recorded live with her longtime bandmates (as well as several session musicians), By My Own Ways also finds Hale mining such niche influences as Ennio Morricone’s spaghetti western scores on “Dear Girl”: a darkly spellbinding track featuring trumpet player Tree Palmedo (Esperanza Spalding, Lazarus Lynch). “‘Dear Girl’ came from grappling with the shame I felt about the person I’d been—especially before getting sober—and how far that was from who I wanted to be,” says Hale.

Encompassing everything from smoldering country-rock (on the EP-opening “To Those At My Window”) to piano-laced honky-tonk (on the gut-punching closing track “Good Man”), By My Own Ways spotlights the refined yet adventurous musicality Hale has cultivated almost her entire life. Born in Austin but raised in Northern California, she first learned to play guitar from her father at age 10 and soon began writing songs of her own. She grew up listening to classic rock bands like Led Zeppelin and songwriting greats like Sheryl Crow and Lucinda Williams, eventually finding her way to country and folk songwriters that shape her sound now: Gillian Welch, Kris Kristofferson, Loretta Lynn, and the like.

All throughout By My Own Ways, Hale imbues her songwriting with an intensity and depth that she partly attributes to her sobriety. “My songs have always been introspective, but now it feels so much easier to really dig into what I’m feeling,” she reveals. The result: a body of work that simultaneously speaks to the ineffable pain of self-loathing, and the transcendence of true self-acceptance.