19 hours Ago
The stately melody that underpins Rhapsody in Blue famously revealed itself to George Gershin during a 1920s New York-to-Boston train ride, emerging from chugging industrial sonic chaos that most would dismiss as “noise.” The rotating cast of performers on Sky Railway’s trains is similarly inspired — not necessarily to write movements, but certainly by movements such as the swaying, slowdowns, and textural hum of the floor in the railway’s trains, which began operating as tourist draws in November 2021. They also enjoy a perspective unavailable to the railway’s estimated 30,000 riders each year; rather than gaze at the train’s on-board entertainers, their view consists of rows of smiling riders, many viewing the pastoral Galisteo Basin for the first time.
Married singer-songwriters and guitarists Paula Rhae and Marc Malin often play with three other musicians around Santa Fe as part of their band Marc and Paula’s Roadside Distraction — a name they also use for their KSFR 101.1 FM radio show that airs at 1 p.m.
Tuesdays — but the heavy clicking sound of the tracks serves as the rhythm section when they perform as a train twosome. “Everything has a vibration,” Marc Malin says. “Everything has a tone.
The train whistle, sometimes it’ll be B-flat. So we’ll do a song in B-flat. As musicians, the environment informs some of the decisions we make.
” Sky Railway offers a series of 2.5-hour journeys with self-descriptive themes: Sunset Serenade (flamenco), New Mexico Ale Trail, Jazz Under the Stars, Santa Fe Scenic, the Stargazer, and Burlesque Express. On a cloudless late-summer day as the train glides out of the state capital, the Malins sit in a corner of the Lore of the Land train, stringed instruments at the ready, as historian Garrett Peck grips a microphone and shares anecdotes about the topographically captivating landscape seen through the window behind him.
Sky Railway excursions depart from the depot in the Railyard at 430 W. Manhattan Avenue; costs vary; visit skyrailway.com A snapshot might create the illusion that Peck is crooning as the Malins provide background music.
While the performers on each train don’t work in concert to that extent, camaraderie is key and develops quickly. Nicolasa Chavez, known for her stirring flamenco performances as well as her deep knowledge about the Land of Enchantment as the state’s deputy historian, performs regularly on Sunset Serenade and as a fill-in on Lore of the Land. “So each time, there tends to be a different musician there,” she says of the latter train.
“I [tell them], this is some of the storytelling I do, and we’ve had a lot of fun trying to fit things together. Even when I meet somebody for the first time, it tends to just flow really, really well. In the performance world, some people can be very competitive, but I don’t ever feel that on the train at all.
” In her ruffly, flashy dress, Chavez is accustomed to looks of surprise and delight even from audience members who chose her train specifically to see flamenco. A backing band plays as the train moves, and Chavez rises periodically to dance, improvising often. When the train comes to a standstill at its turnaround stop a couple of miles from Lamy, she moves to the open-air car that separates the first-class and standard sections, taking advantage of the additional space to perform a more athletically challenging dance.
“It’s really fun to be dressed up in costume while riding a train, because there’s that element of being in another space that’s not your everyday life,” she says. “It definitely takes you away from that. I wear certain things when I’m in the office or around home, but getting to actually dress up and perform is always a real pleasure and joy.
” “A real pleasure” isn’t how she’d describe the rigamarole of boarding the train in her ornate dress. “It’s pretty tight around the knees and thighs,” Chavez says. “It’s kind of funny; I’m super dressed up, but I’m hoisting myself up onto the train.
So there’s a little comical aspect to it.” While it’s the train performers’ job to entertain riders, that often ends up being a two-way street, they say. Chavez recalls many spirited chats with people who experienced flamenco in Spain or, at the other end of the spectrum, knew nothing about it and were transfixed.
“It just makes you realize how many wonderful people there are out there,” she says. “You know, we’re always slammed with bad news happening all the time. And riding the train, for me, counteracts that in many ways.
” The Malins perform many original songs, some inspired by train travel. Their back catalog allows them to pleasantly surprise some riders with seemingly tailor-made tunes the riders hadn’t previously heard. “We were playing last week, and there was a whole car full of these little ladies from Louisiana,” Paula Rhae Malin says.
“They said, ‘Oh, please play some Cajun music.’ So of course, we did. We have a pretty big repertoire, and we love New Orleans, so we played one of our original songs, and they loved it so much.
” Peck estimates that about half the riders live within an hour of Santa Fe. “Visitors are always surprised by how beautiful New Mexico is, because I think so many people expect something like Phoenix,” he says. “I try to speak with every single person on the train; that way the person feels that they’re welcome, that they’re valued.
I’ve met more than a few train nerds — people who have serious esoteric knowledge of trains. Some of them just blow me away with their knowledge.” Peck fills in on the Stargazer , just as Chavez does on Lore of the Land .
Astrophotographer Peter Lipscomb is the “regular” performer/informer on the Stargazer , although schedules are far from predictable. Many city-dwelling riders have never seen the Milky Way, which human-made light has rendered impossible to view across 80 percent of the U.S.
, Lipscomb says. “Some of them get quite emotional about it, because this is something they’ve only heard about,” he says. “And with the advent of social media and the different forms that information is shared — true or not — there’s a lack of understanding about the natural world and that these things are still out here.
” Lipscomb ran the business Astronomy Adventures for years, providing nighttime tours of the Galisteo Basin focused on the heavens. He also manages Cerrillos Hills State Park, where he spearheads sporadic stargazing events in the darkness southwest of Santa Fe. Those who have encountered him are familiar with his eloquent soliloquies about the threat posed by light pollution.
“People come to New Mexico for a variety of reasons, and we are seeing the widespread use of artificial light increasing over the last 150 years,” Lipscomb tells riders. “What once was the domain of many — for our ancestors, thousands of years in the past — is now becoming the domain of the few. So I want to highlight what that means for people when they go out on Stargazer , and I don’t want them to think that [stargazing] requires a whole lot of investment in terms of equipment.
“I talk about the night sky as a natural resource, the most ancient of all natural beauties. I talk about the night sky as a cultural resource, one that we all share, and the fact that our ancestors, regardless of our personal or individual backgrounds, they all paid attention to this stuff.” He also shares the following poem, To Know the Dark , by Wendell Berry: To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight, and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings. Lipscomb brings a 4-pound meteorite for riders to hold, telling them it’s older than any rock on Earth’s surface.
He uses a kitchen metaphor to explain its significance to riders: “If you want to bake a cake, you need ingredients, right? You need flour, butter, sugar, eggs. Well, what if you want to make a solar system? You need rocky stuff, you need gaseous stuff, you need icy stuff, you need metallic stuff. And so what I’m holding here and sharing with you is a little bit of batter that didn’t make it into the cake.
” Originally, Sky Railway trains traveled all the way to Lamy. That four-plus-hour journey wiped many riders out, and they’d be asleep during part or all of the journey home, Peck says. The Malins happened to be performing in Lamy when a Sky Railway train arrived a couple of years ago, before it featured a lineup of entertainers and performers.
“We were waving, and people were waving back,” Paula Rhae Malin says. “A man came out and gave us a card and said, ‘Oh, we’re doing something very exciting. I can’t tell you everything about it, but we’d like you to be included in our entertainment.
’ We promptly forgot all about it, and then a gentleman tracked us down at Cowgirl BBQ when we were doing a gig there and said, ‘Oh, we’ve been looking for you.’ Now, [the train is] our favorite gig.” Santa Fe singer-guitarist Kipp Bentley performs on Lore of the Land and several other trains, and like the Malins, he has a large songbook from which to draw.
The songwriter mostly performs covers on the train — which required some adjustment. “I slip in some originals, but I see my job really as being an entertainer and sometimes being background music, which is fine,” says Bentley, whose 2023 album Durable Goods includes the bouncy track “Chasing a Train.” “If I get a good response from playing an original song, then I’ll play more.
If it’s just sort of ignored, then I maybe won’t. Prior to doing the train, I didn’t have a great repertoire of cover songs. I could play for a couple of hours, with half of that being my own stuff.
I’ve developed a much wider repertoire, and I think it’s also helped me as a songwriter. Like, ‘Oh, this is an interesting chord change here.’” The Malins have no compunction about foisting their original music upon a captive audience.
“Sometimes it’s a challenge for songwriters to get their music heard, because people want to hear what they’re used to hearing,” Paula Rhae Malin says. “Luckily, on the train, it seems like the people who come to visit, they want a taste of what Santa Fe music is, so we try to give them that.” The Malins close their train performances with two original songs: “Not So Silver Eagle Rides Again” from their 2024 album Marc and Paula’s Roadside Distraction , and “River of Time” from their 2021 LP Love Can Shine Through .
As the Malins perform the latter, the train diagonally traverses the intersection of Cerrillos Road and St. Francis Drive, providing riders and performers an alternate perspective of a piece of Santa Fe most residents only glimpse while waiting at a red light, usually behind other vehicles. Chavez is mindful of the importance of viewing life from different angles.
“There’s no other feeling like just being out with the piñon trees, the juniper, the views,” she says. “My view is every bit as spectacular [as a rider’s], and when people are watching me dance, I’m getting to see them enjoy it, and I’m getting to see this expansive sky behind them.” ◀.
