Rachael Benjamin/Peaks and Valleys

Rachael Benjamin came from a small Kentucky town. She grew up listening to her grandmother Anna Lou, play old time mountain music and hymns. While living in Kentucky she took to the influences of Jean Ritchie and Elizabeth Cotton. She moved to Brooklyn to work in social work but kept writing and singing in the evenings. Her songs are soft, sweet, and haunting of another time or place.

Rachael met David Boyel and they started playing together. David is a carpet bagger from New Jersey from a different time he sings with a bit of sadness and longing in his voice of simpler times and earlier music. David plays claw hammer banjo and guitar.

Together Peaks and Valleys has been playing around Brooklyn and New Jersey. Recently booking at such places like Mercury Lounge, Lucky Cat, Greenpoint Reformed Church, Matchless, Café Vivaldi, Creak and the Cave, The Farm, and New York Sings.

We are also playing the Folk Art Museum in New York in May and Kentucky in July.