Rachel Kershenbaum

Rachel Kershenbaum writes her own songs, plugs in her own guitar cables, burns her own CDs, prints her own labels and manages her own website. She finds it funny that bios are always written in the third person. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY and performs in Brooklyn and Manhattan on a somewhat regular basis. As of this writing she has earned more than $138, at least a case of beer, occasional carfare, and a very nice crowd of supportive fans and friends.

Folksy and easy to sing along with, her songs are original and catchy, new but somehow familiar. Her influences include but are not limited to: Dar Williams, Aimee Mann, Tori Amos, The Dixie Chicks, The Indigo Girls, David Gray, Sarah MacLachlan, Squeeze, and Liz Phair. She writes uneasy love songs for the masses, and has a knack for turning the most clueless ex-boyfriend into lyrics that everyone in the room can relate to.

After graduating with a degree in English, Rachel attempted to balance her fiction writing with her checkbook. She was a waitress, a nanny, a teacher, as well as a freelance writer and an extraordinary office assistant. During this time, she picked up the guitar and wrote her first song "What Will It Be?" about her experiences working for a popular chain restaurant. This was followed up by a more typically focused song, about her unrequited and unnoticed feelings for her guitar teacher.

Barely escaping full-time employment with benefits, she lived for a while in San Francisco, where she found herself in good company, surrounded by thousands of other young folk who didn't know what the hell they were doing, but recognized a good burrito when they saw one. She also wrote a song about her unrequited and unnoticed feelings for her kickboxing instructor.

When it was time to come home, she did (but not before writing a song about coming back home) and spent a year writing and recording music, and exercising her performance muscles. The end result was "Singer? Darn near killed 'er!" - six songs in good enough shape to force Rachel to learn how to make copies to meet the demands of her newly found fan base. Not surprisingly, she also ended up with a song about her unrequited and unnoticed feelings for her recording engineer.

In the summer of 2002, Rachel happily released her first full-length album, Love Songs for the Romantically Challenged. You can hear samples or buy a copy through her website and at CdBaby.com. You can also buy one from her mother, but it costs more.

Currently in the studio working on her 3rd album, Fall So Hard, you still might catch Rachel singing in the acoustically-marvelous tunnels of the NYC subway system, at local bars and clubs, or, if you’re very very lucky, on the stoop of her Brooklyn apartment.