...Rachael Yamagata
Freak like me: Girls, if you wanna make it in the music biz these days, your dad better be a Tongan chieftain and your mom an Icelandic sculptress. And you'd want to have lived in at least 10 countries by the time you reach your teens, been kidnapped by German anarchists and studied at some esoteric college that's a cross between Julliard and the X-Men academy. Rachael Yamagata has her third-generation Japanese dad to thank for her surname, and her German-Italian mother - an accomplished painter - to thank for her restless artistic temperament. Now in her late 20s, Yamagata describes herself as an "indecisive control freak hopeless romantic" - sounds like your average pop diva to me.
Bumped around: Yamagata was born in Arlington, Virginia, and her parents had divorced when she was two. Young Rachael wanted to be an actress, and studied Italian theatre at Vassar before moving to Northwestern in Chicago to study opera. While living in Chicago, she went to see local funk band Bumpus, and decided she was going to join them. She went to every gig and hung out at their practice room, buttering them up with tea and donuts. Eventually, Bumpus gave her a tambourine and let her join them onstage. When she discovered her inner Janis Joplin, the band promoted her to backing singer; soon, she was sharing lead vocal duties, wowing audiences with her husky, hot-mama vocal style.
Gap year: While Bumpus borrowed from Sly Stone, Prince, Mos Def and Parliament/Funkadelic, Rachael was secretly digging the grooves of Carole King, Roberta Flack, Simon & Garfunkel, James Taylor and Rickie Lee Jones. She quit Bumpus and started performing at open mic nights. A friend put her in touch with a talent scout, and this happenstance led her to signing with RCA and recording her debut EP with producer Malcolm Burn, whose previous clients have included Emmylou Harris and Bob Dylan. Before long, Rachael was getting rave reviews, going on tour with David Gray, Liz Phair and Damien Rice, and hearing her songs being played on episodes of ER, on a Gap ad, and wafting out of Starbucks' PA system.
Something happens: The debut album features a stellar cast of musicians who have played with the likes of Smashing Pumpkins, Rufus Wainwright, Garbage and Jeff Buckley. It also features members of The Klezmatics, descibed as the number one Klezmer (Yiddish wedding music) group in the US. Happenstance is "a collection of songs inspired by my obsessions, often love related, but not always," she says in her biog, which she insisted on writing herself. "It's about the battle between chance circumstances and the belief that everything happens for a reason."
