near Spencer, West Virginia and several years in a rural Pennsylvania farmhouse adjacent to the farm owned by her extended family. The family moved to Bala Cynwyd, a suburb of Philadelphia, in 1979. Her mother's family identifies as Protestant and her father is Jewish. Mirah was raised observing Shabbat and identifies as Jewish. Mirah took part in a number of anti-nuclear walks during her middle school and high school years, including a 6-week stretch of the 9-month cross country Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament in 1986 when she was 12. In middle school she developed a love of 1980s pop music and female artists such as Sinéad O'Connor and Cyndi Lauper. By the time she got to college, her music collection had expanded to include a diverse range of artists (Huggy Bear, Cat Stevens, The Pretenders, Nina Simone, etc.). Music career Start in Olympia (1990s) After graduating high school early at 16, Mirah spent a year traveling before moving to Olympia, Washington in 1992 to attend the Evergreen State College. She taught herself guitar and wrote her first song as an assignment for class. While in college she worked at a collectively run vegetarian campus café with Kimya Dawson, who later became her label-mate at K Records. She was a member of the short-lived all-female Olympia band The Drivers with Molly Burgdorf and Sarah Reed. For a short stint she sang with a swing band and occasionally contributed vocals to an early incarnation of Old Time Relijun. She was briefly the drummer for The Chosen, a Jewish heavy metal duo. In 1996 she began developing her own musical style, composing lo-fi indie pop with vocals and acoustic guitar. Her early style drew comparisons to Liz Phair, and she soon began performing around Olympia under the one-name moniker Mirah. Mirah was involved with a number of "secret cafes" in Olympia, including The Red Horse Cafe which she and her roommate Ariana Jacob ran out of their one bedroom apartment. The Red Horse Cafe served a different menu every Sunday for a year and a half in 1998/1999. The Red Horse Cafe appears in the documentary short 9 Weeks. She was also involved with several large scale theatrical productions including The Transfused, a 2000 rock opera written by Nomy Lamm and The Need. Though surrounded by the local riot grrrl movement of the 1990s, Mirah didn't explicitly associate herself with