Rachel Bissex

Rachel Bissex, a folk singer, songwriter, and guitarist, spent her childhood in Newton, Massachusetts. Her first guitar arrived at age thirteen, a secondhand instrument her mother acquired at a neighborhood music shop for under forty dollars after the girl’s musical interest persisted. At nineteen she headed to California carrying ambitious dreams, yet distance from relatives grew difficult, prompting her to hitchhike eastward to Vermont so she could settle near her brother and father. There she enrolled at Johnson State College in 1977. Her first album, Light in Dark Places, appeared in 1991; two further releases followed during the decade—Don’t Look Down in 1995 and I Used to Be Nice in 1998. Between the Broken Lines arrived in 2001 and In White Light in 2004. Throughout her career Bissex performed at folk festivals, concerts, concert halls, and coffeehouses, serving as opener for Joan Armatrading, Ray Charles, and Shawn Colvin, among others. In 2005, after a two-year struggle with breast cancer, she died; later that year the tribute album Remembering Rachel: Songs of Rachel Bissex was issued.