There is something to be said for staying in one’s lane in life, for never venturing too far from a comfort zone that may allow you to accomplish a lot of good things if you stay there, but rarely do anything great or unforgettable, either.
Palmyra grad Rachel Kline made her choice long ago to shed the unseen shackles of a comfort zone and to, quite simply, go for it.
To say she hasn’t looked back would be quite the understatement.
“Growth happens when you stretch yourself,” Kline said. “You should be open to new experiences and opportunities, especially if they fall outside of your comfort zone.”
A 2013 graduate of Palmyra, where she was best known for her athletic prowess in track and field and volleyball, Kline has stretched herself incredibly far past conventional limits since graduating from St. Joe’s in 2017, managing to land a dream job as a game designer for Arrow International in Las Vegas and launch a highly successful career as a lead singer for two bands, Philadelphia Funk Authority and Rock 702 Band, currently one of the top cover bands in Vegas.
“This journey has been anything but conventional,” Kline said in a phone interview from Las Vegas. “I was definitely not expecting to end up where I ended up, in gaming and in the music industry.”
Though she has found her passion and purpose in life, it wasn’t anything she was even close to after graduating from college.
“I kind of found myself at a crossroads,” Kline said. “I was struggling to find my place in the workforce. Being a former athlete, it’s kind of all you focus on, really. Then you graduate, it’s kind of like, ‘What now? What do I do?'”
She found the answer during a social media internship for iHeart Radio. During the company’s Jingle Ball event, Kline was reminded of her love for performing that began in her middle school days.
“I realized I still had the heart of a performer,” she said, looking back. “I did plays in middle school, then kind of gave it up to focus on athletics.”
“I always did car karaoke when I was driving by myself. I love singing. I was watching Dua Lipa [perform] and thinking, ‘I can do that.'”
So, she began sharing her talents and that love of music with a wide audience for the first time, and many in that audience thought they knew Kline, only to find they only knew part of her. And not the singing part.
“I just started posting covers online,” she said, “and the response was definitely overwhelming because most people knew me as an athlete, not a singer.”
That would soon change, though. Kline continued to post her music online and share her talents with anyone who had an interest. In 2018, she earned an audition with Philadelphia Funk Authority, an eight-piece band based in the City of Brotherly Love. Despite a nerve-jangling audition, Kline landed the role of female lead singer. The rest was history, although there were still some twists and turns to come on Kline’s career path.
The biggest twist came in 2020 with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which temporarily stopped more than a few careers in their tracks, including Kline’s.
Just months earlier, in late 2019, everything seemed to be falling into place.
Kline was playing three to five gigs a week with Philadelphia Funk Authority and had left her job to pursue music full-time.
But all of those positive developments were swiftly halted when COVID-19 began to rage, and the band could only watch as 45 gigs were canceled in the blink of an eye in the summer of 2020.
Now what? Well, for Kline, it was time to rekindle another forgotten passion — gaming and game development. To that end, she decided to enroll at the University of Pennsylvania to study coding and begin pursuing another career.
“I’ve been an avid gamer my whole life,” Kline said. “I’m not much of a TV or radio person. I like to consume stories through video games. That’s a passion I’ve always had.”
The more the merrier, right? Right.
“I absolutely fell in love with coding,” she said. “I fell in love with game development. On top of being an athlete, I never thought I’d find a passion more than that.”
Not that she’s complaining. In fact, her passion for gaming that she pursues full-time at Arrow International in Las Vegas only seems to enhance her love of performing and vice versa.
Speaking of performing, Kline has continued to do that as the lead singer of Rock 702 Band, a group of veteran musicians who have become one of Vegas’ most popular cover bands with Kline’s help. She joined the band in 2022, and now sings the hits of artists like Journey, Lady Gaga, Stevie Wonder, Adele, and Bruno Mars to delighted fans every night that Rock 702 Band takes the stage.
“I kind of gave up music for the second time in my life,” she said, initially content to focus on her career in gaming.
However, her singing remained online, which was a very good thing for both Kline and Rock 702 Band, which was in the market for a lead singer when they happened to stumble across one of Kline’s tracks.
“They were like, ‘Hey, we saw your profile online, would you be interested in auditioning?’ I said, ‘Sure, let me do it.’ So, I auditioned for the band, and they were kind of blown away, and they said, ‘Are you involved in any other projects?’ and I said, ‘No, I’m a gamer.’ And they were like ‘What? That’s a waste of your talent.'”
So then, in 2022, nearly two years after the pandemic ended her first go at a music career, Kline was back doing the only thing she loves more than gaming.
It has been a memorable two years for Kline, to say the least, and it culminated recently with Rock 702 Band being named the winner in the Best Lounge Act category of the Las Vegas Review Journal’s Best of Las Vegas contest.
“Oh my gosh, I was not expecting that at all,” she said. “I started out just doing this on the weekends for fun. I was shocked to be nominated, let alone to actually win the award itself.”
There have been many other memorable moments in the last few years for Kline, including a surreal meeting with Wilson Phillips singer Carnie Wilson and the opportunity to watch from afar as music industry role model Taylor Swift produced the epic Eras Tour for her legion of fans.
“She said I reminded her of her sister (Wendy, also of Wilson Phillips),” Kline said. “What?! That was insane. She was so cool and so nice.”
But more than anything, Kline is simply grateful, grateful for the life she gets to lead, and grateful for the family and friends that support her.
“I just feel so blessed,” she said. “Blessed to be in this situation, blessed to be in this band with so many talented musicians. I’m just excited that we get to do this beautiful thing together.”
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