Album Notes

Rachel Kershenbaum writes her own songs, plugs in her own guitar cables, books her own shows 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 every now and then. As of this writing she has earned more than $138, some of which has been exacted in cab fare and lukewarm tea. She is blessed with a group of very talented friends including: four photographers, two graphic designers, one licensed hair stylist and several dozen very encouraging audience members.

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, Paul Simon, Tori Amos, The Dixie Chicks, Pete Seeger, The Indigo Girls, The Gilmore Girls, David Gray, Kurt Vonegut, 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. It took three more years and the talents of several other Brooklyn-based musicians to bring forth her next full-length offering, “love is not love…” but she’s happy to report that copies are now available. You can hear samples or buy one at CdBaby.com or download songs at itunes, rhapsody, and a bunch of other digital distributors, as long as you can spell her name. It’s just like it sounds: K-e-r-s-h-e-n-b-a-u-m. The most expensive way to obtain Rachel’s music is to buy a CD from her mother for $18. What can we tell you…it’s good luck!