Rachel Grace has done something many musicians spend years trying to achieve. She now makes a living entirely from music, not from one narrow strand of it, but from the full working life of a modern independent artist: recording, live performance, session work, teaching, choir direction and the steady administrative labour that sits behind it all. It is a practical achievement, and one that says as much about discipline as talent.
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Grace is from Wexford, where music arrived early and stayed. Her grandmother, she said, was the main influence in a family that listened to music but did not play it professionally. She was taken to sessions as a child, sat in with musicians while still very young, and learned guitar and banjo in the process. School helped too. Her primary school had an orchestra and assigned instruments to pupils, which is how she learned saxophone. Guitar came first, then piano. The piano, she said, won because of how it sounded.
“I discovered the piano and how lovely and depressing it sounded, and I switched.”
There was little ambiguity about the ambition. Grace said she had wanted to be a pop star before she had properly begun to sing, and as her musical abilities developed, the idea settled into something more grounded. Music was not simply an interest. It was the area in which she felt most capable and most certain of herself. After school she intended to spend a year gigging full time, but Covid intervened, and that changed the sequence. Instead, she went to BIMM and studied commercial modern music, a degree that gave her not just musical development but a clearer understanding of the industry itself and how to work within it.
That education mattered because Grace is clear eyed about the economics of the profession. There is no romance in her account of how musicians survive. It is work, and a great deal of it. She said it is only since last September that she has been able to earn a genuine living wage from music alone, and even then that income comes from multiple activities rather than one headline career path. Like many working musicians, she does weddings, pub gigs, teaching, session work and choir direction alongside her own writing and performing. The point is not compromise. It is continuity.
“It’s very cool to be able to say that you actually are a full-time musician.”
That breadth of work has also widened her understanding of what a musical career can be. Grace teaches a children’s choir in Rose Street in Wexford, work she entered with some apprehension because she had not previously directed a choir. Now, she describes it as the favourite part of her week. She also works in Windmill Therapy Centre in Wexford, providing music sessions for adults with learning disabilities and additional needs. Her view of music is not limited to performance or product. She understands its social and therapeutic value as well, and speaks of it in direct terms.
“It’s so powerful. It’s so powerful.”
Yet songwriting remains at the centre. Grace has the slightly unusual habit of writing sad songs without consciously intending to do so. She does not often write directly from personal experience, particularly because she began writing so young and had not, by her own account, lived enough yet to draw heavily from autobiography. Instead, she imagines herself into other people’s situations and writes from there. The result tends to be melancholic, or at least melancholy adjacent. She described the songs on her album as somewhere near torch ballads, with only a small number escaping that mood.
“I don’t ever intend to be, but it always happens that they are giving me songs.”
What is useful in Grace’s account of songwriting is that she does not mythologise it. She studied songwriting formally, but is careful not to overstate what can be taught. Structure can be explained, form can be analysed, but songs do not arrive by formula. Sometimes she begins with chords at the piano. Sometimes a line from poetry or a moment in a film opens the door. Sometimes, she said, the whole thing arrives at once and must be caught quickly on a voice recorder before it disappears. It is a practical description of craft rather than inspiration.
“You can’t really be taught how to write a song correctly, because there’s so many different ways to do it.”
Her latest release, Never Grows Old, is her first album, following an earlier EP released when she was still in her mid teens. The album contains nine tracks and runs to about 35 minutes. More importantly, it reflects a more developed recording process. Rather than building songs layer by layer in isolation, Grace recorded this album with a live band in Gavin Glass’s studio in Wexford. Colin Lindsay, Brendan McCarthy and Lee Byrne, musicians she has played with since she was 15, joined her on the sessions. That continuity matters. The record is still hers, but it carries the confidence of an artist who trusts the people around her.
The same pattern appears in her live career. Grace has supported Wallis Bird, Gavin James and Róisín O, and has worked as a session musician with Róisín O and Irish Women in Harmony. Wallis Bird, she said, was her first major support slot and remains one of her favourite artists. Playing for others has given her a different discipline, and one she clearly values, even if she admits it can be daunting. When the song is yours, the risk is personal. When it belongs to someone else, the responsibility is different.
Her album has also begun to travel. Grace launched it in Wexford Arts Centre, followed with shows in Galway, has a Carlow date in May, and is planning a tour for October. Irish radio has responded well too. Without a PR budget or a formal plugging operation behind her, she has been sending emails herself and building support the hard way. The album has received local and regional radio attention, and she noted that Marty Whelan on RTÉ lyric FM selected it as his recommended album of the week. For an independent artist, that is not minor encouragement. It is serious traction.
Still, Grace is frank about the operational burden. One speaker she heard at the Choice Music Prize conference said that being an independent musician is 90 per cent admin, and she agreed immediately. The observation is worth pausing on because it captures the central tension of modern independent music. The artist must also be organiser, promoter, marketer and project manager. Social media must be fed. Emails must be sent. Opportunities must be chased. There is not always much time left for the part outsiders imagine is the whole job.
“Being a musician independently is 90% admin work.”
That may be why one of the most revealing parts of the conversation concerned management. Grace does not currently have a manager, and acknowledged that part of the delay is temperamental. She likes to know what is happening and with whom she is dealing. Yet she also recognises the limits of doing everything alone. Touring outside Ireland, building a wider audience and creating the space to concentrate on the work itself will almost certainly require a team around her. She knows that. The next phase seems likely to depend on it.
For now, though, Grace represents something more durable than the overnight narrative the music business still likes to sell. She is building a life in music piece by piece, with enough realism to understand the pressures and enough commitment to keep going. That may not be the most theatrical version of success, but it is often the more substantial one.
“It’s still music, it’s still what I want to do at the end of the day.”
