Interview by Craig Harris
From Middlesex News, May 22, 1994
Kessler's best-known tune, "Mary Tyler Moore" epitomizes her views. "Mary Tyler Moore was a role model for me," Kessler said during a recent telephone interview. "She was the first single woman on TV. She wasn't a character's wife or secretary. The show was about her trying to live an honest life as a woman in the 1970s. I can relate to that."
... Long Island, New York-born Kessler spent much of her adolescence listening to records in her room. "There were two sides of my persona," she said. "There was my social cheerleading, otgoing, side and my sit in my room and listen to sensitive singer-songwriters and write poetry side."
Kessler first played guitar in the fourth grade. She temporarily gave up music, however, while studying for a degree in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. "I thought that I would go into negotiating and arbitrating," she said. "I was always the diplomat when I was growing up. I thought that was my natural calling."
Kessler's career outlook changed after she heard Suzanne Vega's self-titled debut album. "I couldn't believe that there was such a great acoustic singer-songwriter out there," she remembered. "I didn't hear anything like that when I was going to school."
Kessler wrote her first song after seeing a concert by folk-blues performer, Rory Block. "She was very rhythmic," she recalled. "I don't relate too much to the blues. I'm based more in contemporary folk and pop. But, she opened the door to country blues for me. I didn't realize that it was out there. She was very powerful. Her songs were very honest."
Kessler moved to Massachusetts in the summer of 1986. She came to Boston five years later. "I moved here because I wanted to pursue music more fully," she said....