Rachelle Garniez

Rachelle Garniez is a songwriter, singer, composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist. Her genre-fluid story-songs combine the influences of time-honored Tin Pan Alley/Brill Building craft mixed with folk, Latin, blues, and a touch of jazz. Her vocal and musical expression span a broad range of emotion and character, converging at the crossroads of comedy and tragedy. She is equally at home on street corners and subway platforms and onstage at venues around the world.

Born and raised on New York City's 1970s culturally diverse Upper West Side by an American classical pianist and a European professor of French literature, Rachelle was exposed to a singular multiplicity of rich and multi-layered influences, from utopian collective free-schooling and Austrian Expressionism to the roller disco dancers and congueros of Central Park.

Most immediately connecting to fiction and poetry she originally wanted to become a writer but was eventually irresistibly attracted to songwriting. She was equally fascinated and inspired by the music and words of pop culture - top 40 radio, rock ’n’ roll, soul, psychedelia, 1930s jazz, punk rock, and musical theater.

In 1982, at age 17, she left home and spent a year making her way around Europe. By default, she picked up a guitar and started playing folk songs on the streets of Venice and Avignon. She wound up on a beach in the south of Spain, where she was adopted by the local Gypsy flamenco singing champion and began to develop a commitment to the visceral and ephemeral mode of live music. After a year, she moved back to New York, gave away all her LPs and lived in a squat on 89th Street before eventually settling in the East Village and being hijacked by an accordion, an instrument that served to connect her with an infinitely expanding motherlode of multi-cultural music.

From her first adventures as a street musician and a fixture in the 80s New York boho scene to being hailed by the New York Press as "one of the greatest songwriters of our time,” Rachelle’s career has been marked by an unwavering muscial integrity and startling originality. She formed her own band, The Fortunate Few, in 1997 and put out five CDs on her own label, Real Cool Records. Her sixth album, Who’s Counting, was released in 2015 by StorySound Records. In addition, Rachelle's songs have been performed and recorded by jazz artist Catherine Russell, pop singer Karen Elson, and Ingrid Lucia (The Flying Neutrinos).

Besides her her own work, Rachelle has performed and collaborated with Jack White, Suzzy Roche, Sven Ratzke, Palmyra Delran, Thomas Dolby’s TED House Band, Obie-Award winning performer and playwright Taylor Mac, high-fashion politically active neo-cabaret troupe The Citizens Band, queer variety show Weimar New York, beloved bar band Mumbo Gumbo, roots-world ensemble Hazmat Modine, sonic sorcerer Sxip Shirey, and post-modern choreographer Keely Garfield. She was recently the featured singer on an album of old-time jazz gems, and played the part of Ursula in an episode of season 4 of HBO’s High Maintenance. Together with Terry Radigan and Amanda Homi, she is a member of VickiKristinaBarcelona Band, covering the Tom Waits catalog in three-part harmony.

Rachelle is truly “a diva with a difference” (Billboard), “romantic, rhapsodic, and causally hilarious” (The New York Times). Or, as the The New Yorker has it, “Garniez wanders through the genres of country, jazz and pop, leaving behind nothing but sweet wreckage.”
In 2019/2020 she worked with Erik Della Penna & Ulrich Balß in Europe for a multi-media show called "An Evening in New York" , based on a true story from 1928/29 with historical fotos from that time.
Fall 2020 is planned a Europan tour with the VICKY KRISTINA BARCELONA project