Rachael Price

Rachael Price (born August 30, 1985) is an Australian-American jazz and blues singer, known for her work as the lead singer for the band Lake Street Dive. She was born in Perth, Australia, and grew up in Tennessee, graduating from the New England Conservatory of Music in the class of ‘07. She is the great-great-granddaughter of Seventh-day Adventist leader George McCready Price, the granddaughter of Hollywood actor John Shelton, and the daughter of composer and conductor Tom Price.

Price was born in Australia and raised in Hendersonville, Tennessee. When she was nine, she performed with The Voices of Bahá, a Bahá’í choir directed by her dad, Tom Price. At twelve, she was a soloist. The choir toured in India, Europe, South America, Central America, the Caribbean, and Australia. Price has said that she had a large personality as a child and accepted every opportunity to sing.

Price practices the Baháʼí Faith, and explains its influence on her musical career this way:

We believe that music is praise, and that is service, and service is prayer, and so that's how I think about it. ... I think music is an extremely spiritual art form. I do it for praise and gratitude. That's what the Faith has taught me about music.

She admires Bonnie Raitt and Nancy Wilson in part for their longevity in the music business, but she also looks up to Ella Fitzgerald as one of her idols. She was first attracted to jazz at the age of five when she heard Fitzgerald singing "The Lady is a Tramp". From ages five to fifteen, Price studied Fitzgerald’s style, noting that she learned her performances “note for note”.

In 2003, Price received an honorable mention at the Montreux Jazz Festival's International Jazz Vocal Competition. In 2004, she was a semifinalist and the youngest competitor in the history of the Thelonious Monk Institute Vocal Competition. She recorded her first album, all jazz standards, Dedicated To You, when she was 17 (2003). Her sophomore album, The Good Hours, appeared just a few years later. In August 2004 she made her U.S. jazz festival debut at Yale's Jazz On the Green, where she opened for Joshua Redman. She won the 2006 Independent Music Award for Best Gospel Song with her recording of "My God, My Adored One" with the Boston Praise Collective. Price also appeared in concert as a featured vocalist with the T. S. Monk Sextet. She then went on to study at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. There she met Michael Calabrese, Bridget Kearney, and Mike “McDuck” Olson, with whom she would form the band Lake Street Dive.

Rachael Price was born in Perth, Australia, and moved to Tennessee at a young age alongside her three siblings Juliette, Joel, and Emily. Rachael grew up in a musical household; she has stated that some of her favorite childhood memories include dancing and singing with her sisters and dad.

Rachael Price currently lives in Brooklyn with her husband Taylor Ashton (married in 2019), their daughter Jupiter, and their cat Stella. Price gave birth to her daughter on April 1, 2023. She often speaks about how important it is to stay healthy on the road.