Esther Rose talks booze, ketamine and 'living in the emotional plane' ahead of ABQ, Santa Fe tour dates

Singer-songwriter Esther Rose knows she’s not like everyone else.

“I’m with my feelings all the time. This is where I exist,” she said. “And I recognize that other people don’t live there.”

Rose’s tendency to feel things deeply, and her constant awareness of her own emotions, might make her a great singer and lyricist, but it has also caused her a lot of pain. She said she used to numb that pain with alcohol.

“It’s dissociation,” she said. “And you can do that without alcohol. You can numb out in a zillion different ways. So, even without the booze, I still have to make sure that I’m working on being present.”

Rose deals with many of these issues on her new album, “Want,” which released on May 2. She is on tour now promoting the album with stops in Albuquerque on Friday, June 27, and Santa Fe on Saturday, June 28.

“We just played our first show — our first full-band tour show — last night in New Orleans. And it definitely felt like we gave birth to the record finally. And now we’re just touring it. So I feel really, really happy,” Rose said.

Rose began her music career in New Orleans, where she grew up, and officially moved to Santa Fe in 2020.

“But I had been making friends and community in Santa Fe since 2016,” she said, “and I’ve written some of my favorite songs in New Mexico.”

One of her first New Mexican songs was “Friend or Foe” from her 2017 debut album. The lyrics describe a river bend, a lonesome road, a hard rain and mysterious “burning” stars that “aren’t even stars at all.”

“I wrote that on my first trek out. I was camping near the Rio Grande, up by the hot springs,” Rose said. “It kind of knocked my head open, in some way. It was just so eye-opening and beautiful, watching the moonrise and the storms coming in, but sleeping out with no tents and no mosquitoes, just so exposed. I think I was really craving that connection to the land.”

“Friend or Foe” came to her quickly.

“We (fellow songwriters) talk about that a lot — feeling like we’re a conduit for a song,” Rose said. “It doesn’t happen all the time, but those are some of my favorite moments.”

Many of the songs on the new album poured out of her “pretty intensely,” too, she said.

“The one that comes to mind first is called ‘Rescue You,’ and that one I wrote after I did my sixth and final ketamine assisted psychotherapy session,” Rose said. “It was a very intense session. I knew that it was going to be my last one for a while. I came out of the session extremely agitated and went to bed upset, then woke up really early in the morning, and I wrote that song all in one go, without even thinking anything. It was just a big purge.”

Rose credits ketamine-assisted therapy with helping her overcome an alcohol addition, as well as helping her “visualize” negative “subconscious patterns” in her thoughts and behaviors.

“‘Rescue You’ is one of the most connective songs that I’ve written lately, as far as what I’m hearing from my friends and from fans at the shows. They say that song really speaks to a very human feeling.”

The song “Ketamine” from the album directly references several therapies she’s undertaken, including ketamine-assisted psychotherapy. That song ends with the line, “It’ll all make sense someday.”

“I think ketamine is a really good new technology, because it only lasts a few hours, and you can get very deep. So, for someone like me who’s pretty scared of letting go and quote-unquote ‘losing control,’ it’s a really great tool,” she said. “What I realized is that there is no control. But what I do have is agency, and I’m learning to self-trust.”

Through her lyrics and her singular vocal delivery, Rose communicates authentic human emotions. But she says it’s not so much a performance as a permanent way of life for her.

“For a while, it seemed unclear what my purpose or path (in life) was. But I realized I have these intense feelings. Like, I’m living in the emotional plane at all times,” she said. “And sometimes that’s really frustrating. I want to be in the intellectual plane. But this is where I live. So, I’ve just learned to accept it and treat it as a superpower.”

Now that she is alcohol-free, with nothing to numb her emotions, she said she can connect more deeply with her bandmates and with the audience.

“Performing now is much better, because I’m looking at everybody in the room, and I can feel the band, and it feels great,” she said. “And, I mean, I’m getting older. Life is precious. Like, I don’t know how many more times I’ll get to do this. So, I just really want to be here for it.”