Photograph by Maddie Hordinski
Over-the-Rhine-based singer-songwriter Alexis Marsh, who produces solo music under the stage name DYAN, brings her unique, ethereal, and cinematic sound to the stage at MOTR Pub during her residency this month.
DYAN’s newest album, Midwest, was released in February and is its first full-length album since its debut Looking for Knives (2016). Midwest’s release also marked the beginning of DYAN’s transformation from a musical trio to a solo act, led by Marsh.
Midwest is a reflection of Marsh’s past self, highlighting her growth not just as an artist, but also as a mother and person. Inspired by her experiences living in the Midwest—specifically Cincinnati—her residency will give her the chance to play Midwest live in the city that influenced it.
Originally from Winnipeg, Marsh studied at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, then moved to Los Angeles, believing that the coasts were the best place for a creative to be. She worked as an accomplished composer for film and television, but began exploring songwriting in 2013, after director Jocelyn Towne commissioned her and writing partner Samuel Jones to create the opening sequence, “Chances (Gone Too Soon),” for movie I Am. She continued practicing songwriting afterwards in between working on film scores.
Around the same time, she reconnected with a fellow Louisville alum, musician Dan Dorff Jr., while he was on tour in LA. Dorff lived and made music in Cincinnati, and the two remained in touch, eventually collaborating on musical projects together and then beginning a relationship.
Marsh split her time between LA and Cincinnati before moving to the Queen City full time in 2014. “I just felt like I actually wanted to have a family and not just pursue music, and I wanted to do it with Dan,” she says. “I remember living in Los Angeles and everyone sort of being like, ‘Ohio?!’ There is a real sort of assumption about the people who live in Ohio, and I kind of resented that because I saw Cincinnati as a place with a lot of artists and a lot of culture.”
Marsh continued working with Jones and Dorff while living in Cincinnati, and the trio released Looking for Knives in 2016, their debut under the name DYAN. Yet, living a country apart and each continuing to pursue other musical projects presented logistical challenges when it came to writing and recording songs, and the trio officially broke up in 2021.
“DYAN has become my solo project,” says Marsh. “It’s always been centered around my songwriting so it seems to have landed in the right place.”
Midwest is Marsh’s response to those who questioned her decision to start a family and continue to pursue a creative career while living in Ohio. She has now lived in Cincinnati for more than 10 years and continues to compose remotely, work on solo projects, and raise her family in OTR. Midwest’s title track is representative of her sentiments about the move—the song begins with the blunt statement, “I’m not going back to California, I am working on the inside where I’m going to have my baby,” reaffirming her choice to stay in the Midwest and start a family, even through challenges.
“There’s a sadness to it of, I am kind of giving up some part of what my dream is, of not being in these places that are teeming with opportunity. But I also felt like I’m not going to go after those things because I want to stay and find some sort of happiness in being a mother,” she says. “This is the perfect size city for me. I don’t need it to be Manhattan, I don’t need it to be Chicago. I like that I can drive, I like that I can afford my apartment.”
In some ways, writing Midwest was a way for Marsh to unearth the feelings she’s experienced living in Cincinnati. The title track recounts her experience enduring a tragic miscarriage, questioning her decision to move to Cincinnati with the intention of starting a family only to lose the son she wanted: “Country don’t you want me here? Country, have I been away for too long? Country, is there nothing I can say? Since that baby never came?”
“[I felt] like there was a shift when I wasn’t pregnant,” she says. “When I was pregnant it was like I was an angel, I was accepted, even though I was this liberal divorcee or whatever. It felt like all the kinds of liberal biases about me were sort of muted.”
Despite this, Marsh says the album depicts confidence in her decision to remain in the Midwest and discusses coming to terms with the idea that the region might not be the idealistic safe space she had originally thought.
“Midwest” ‘s repeating lyric, “We drive away from those billboards in the Midwest,” subtly comments on the pro-life billboards that appear across many Midwest towns. “It’s just torturous,” says Marsh. “I didn’t want to comment on post-Roe America directly, but I wanted to try to find a way to say, those billboards are heartbreaking regardless of if you’re a mother, or not a mother, or if you’ve had an abortion.”
DYAN doesn’t shy away from any topic across the rest of the album; other songs, like heartfelt ballads “Steady Hand” and “Pray to Me,” break down the nuances of relationships, Marsh’s desire to prioritize her child’s well-being and education, and double standards she’s experienced in parenting.
For Marsh, the creation of this album was a way to challenge herself to become the best musician she could be. She not only wrote some of her most vulnerable pieces for this album—she also learned guitar and worked with a vocal coach to strengthen her voice so she could perform and produce the songs exactly how she wanted.
“There were times when I didn’t understand why it was necessary for me to learn guitar—like, there’s plenty of guitar players. You could just hire a guitar player,” she says. “Now, I understand that I wanted to do it. It wasn’t that I needed to, I just want to be able to go into rehearsal and be able to play all the parts.”
DYAN showcases her sound and new album during live performances at MOTR Pub on the first three Wednesday nights this month. Marsh has reworked some of the songs to be performed as acoustic versions, creating a softer sound for MOTR’s intimate barroom stage. As the artist-in-residency for December, DYAN will perform following opening acts Planchette, Adalia Powell-Boehne, Brianna Kelly, and Curt Kiser. Admission is free.
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