Pharaoh's Daughter lead singer mines her ultra-Orthodox roots for melodies

Basya Schechter, lead singer of Pharaoh's Daughter, draws on her ultra-Orthodox childhood to craft songs for the band.

Basya Schechter got her start the way many musicians do in this city: strumming a guitar in smoke-filled clubs for pennies on the gig, writing songs about heartache and heartbreak and love, howling into a tinny public address system until her voice went hoarse and the lights went down. This was back in the mid-1990s, when jam bands such as Phish and Strangefolk were getting plenty of mainstream radio play, and half of downtown New York was doing the drippy, meandering, overblown Grateful Dead revival thing.

Schechter was making less than $20,000 a year. She had no health insurance. She worked an array of part-time jobs to help pay the rent: traveling diaper saleswoman, a dog walker for a drug dealer in Brooklyn, a temp at a midtown office. She spent the extra cash on new guitar strings and travel.