When Rachel Fine was laid off from her job at a supplemental education company in December, she decided to pursue a longtime love — music.

Now, the singer is celebrating the release of her debut disc, “Own Your Own,” and another career, modeling.

“I had the pictures taken for the CD and they look like modeling pictures,” Fine said during a phone call from New York City. “A friend of mine who went to high school with me is a fashion designer and saw them online and said, ‘Hey, I’d love for you to shoot for one of my campaigns,’ and that kind of just started.

“So, the music kind of inspired the modeling, so it’s an interesting mix.”

Rachel Fine

As is Fine’s music.

“I would call it a blend of electronica and neo-soul,” she said, adding influences include Jill Scott and Portishead, as well as Philly soul and hip-hop.

The 27-year-old penned the lyrics for her disc, which can be heard in its entirety at rachelfine.com.

“I think music’s just been something that’s been relevant my whole life,” she said. “I have tapes of me singing as a little kid with my best friend from Stranahan [Elementary School in Toledo], making up songs and singing.”

Born in Cleveland, Fine lived there three weeks before her family moved to Toledo, where she stayed until the third grade.

These days she lives in Brooklyn and writes about relationships.

“I really spend time thinking about when you’re in a heightened emotional state; I write everything on paper and then I just feel better about the situation. So, everything on the CD is really intensely personal and very much written from the heart.”

Fine shared the backstory to the opening track, “Potential.”

“It’s about being in love with who you want someone to be and who you know they can be if they just applied themselves versus the reality of who they really are,” she said. “Sometimes, I think women tend to fall in love with the potential of the man more than the actuality of who that person is.”

She will perform and sign at a CD release party Sept. 26 at 8 p.m. at the Red Bull Space in Soho.

“The most exciting thing about the CD release party is we’re combining art and photography and music,” Fine said. “We took submissions from thousands of photographers and chose 11, each one doing a photo essay for each track on the CD, so they have 10 panels to tell the whole story photographically as they see for the music.”

The new model stars in the stills in the exhibit.

“I’ve shot with a 9-foot boa constrictor at a park. I’ve shot at an abandoned insane asylum in the basement with a coffin,” she said. “I just let the photographers talk about what their creative inspirations were and I’ve gone for it.”

Was she scared of that snake?

“I was more scared to be half-naked in a public park,” she said and laughed. “There were so many elements that were out of my control — school kids I was trying to hide from, the snake handlers — I was just dealing with all the components at once and trying to get an amazing shot. I think I actually was more scared when I looked at the pictures afterwards and realized it was 90 pounds of snake.”

This entry was posted on Friday, September 18th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Arts and Life, Music.
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