Mary Ann Farley

A passionate singer-songwriter from the East Coast, Mary Ann Farley has acquired a small following with her arresting blend of folk, rock and pop. Born and raised in Newark, NJ, Farley did some singing as a teen-ager and sang in two all-girl groups but didn't start to become serious about writing her own material until falling in love with the music of the Police and Sinead O'Connor. Farley, who earned an English degree from Rutgers University, started playing the Manhattan/northern New Jersey club circuit around 1984—although she earned her living as a freelance journalist. It was in 1993 that Farley (who plays piano and keyboards, but often accompanies herself on acoustic guitar) recorded and circulated her four-song cassette First Few Words, and was encouraged by the favorable coverage it received from various East Coast papers. In 1996, Farley's first actual CD, the excellent Daddy's Little Girl, was released by Deko Music, and in 1998, she was hoping for an early 1999 release for her second CD, My Life Of Crime.