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2009 has been a busy year with the release of her new album "Ed's Bar and Grill" at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August and having taken up music as a fulltime career only 6 weeks ago. Now resident in Bristol Rachel has been a regular on the Scottish Folk/Acoustic scene having played as a solo artist, duo and with full band at various folk clubs and festivals as well as supporting some great artists like Boo Hewerdine, Heidi Talbot, Naimh Parsons, Kent Duchaine etc.

Originally from New Zealand Rachel initially started in music as part of an all female celtic/blues trio called Ruby Blue and played through the folk clubs and festivals in New Zealand before moving to the UK in 2004 to begin to develop her own songwriting skills and start up as a solo artist.

For the last two years Rachel has been developing her own writing skills and has moved into two main areas - blues/country and blues/jazz (cabaret). In these last few years Rachel has begun to work with a variety of songwriters from different genres with two songwriting retreats run by Chris Difford (Squeeze) in Italy writing with great writers such as Riley Briggs (Aberfeldy), Dorie Jackson (Chris Difford), Athena, etc and a glorious songwriting retreat in the Colorado mountains in the USA where she developed her own love of country/blues.

Since October 2009 Rachel has moved to Bristol to take up the MA in Songwriting at Bath Spa University to further develop her own songwriting and to learn more about this world of the music industry from those who are currently active in it.

She is looking forward in the near future to join forces with the amazing Nashville based singer songwriter Eliza Lynn as they do a short tour in November 2009 and develop this into a full European/American tour for summer 2010.