Jesca Hoop

Jesca Ada Hoop is a American singer-songwriter and guitarist from Northern California, who performs music that covers differing genres. One of five children in a fifth generation Mormon couple, Hoop was steeped in a musical environment created by her family. She began performing as a child and starred in her high school choir.

Hoop broke away from the strictures of Mormonism just as her parents were separating. During this time, her mother Janette turned the basement into a theatre, and brought in all sorts of eccentrics to rehearse and put on musical plays for the community.

Jesca started to rebel against the traditions of her family and the only life she had known. "My girlfriend and I started smoking pot, which was such an out there thing for me to do given my upbringing. I was singing with the Santa Rosa Chamber Choir at that time. The combination of singing in that style for hours a day and smoking thrashed my voice....until it was gone. I had to leave the choir, and it took me about a year to regain my vocal strength. I had to re-teach myself how to sing in the ways that worked for me.... Cut a new pattern and stitch myself back together. It was a blessing. It is why I sing the way I do. Appropriately, at that time I started listening to Kate Bush, Tom Waits, Björk and Diamanda Galas."

Hoop spent the next several years homesteading in Northern California, Wyoming and in the high mountains of Arizona, where she worked in a wilderness rehabilitation program for mixed up kids.

Later deciding to move back to California, Hoop formed a duo with a friend and started playing in Northern California clubs before going to work for Tom Waits' family. Waits says, "Her music is like going swimming in a lake at night." The Los Angeles Times considered Hoop one of ten Southern California artists that are "new and notable in 2007."
Since her initial exposure through Nic Harcourt at the Southern California radio station KCRW in 2003, Hoop has shared the stage with many acts. Since 2007 she has toured with Polyphonic Spree, Matt Pond PA, Elbow, Mark Knopfler, Greg Laswell, Andrew Bird, Eels, Peter Gabriel and The Punch Brothers.

Jesca recorded & released 2 full length studio albums 'Kismet' and 'Hunting My Dress' whilst living in Los Angeles, before relocating to Manchester, UK in 2009, where she has since recorded an EP 'Snowglobe' and a brand new LP 'The House That Jack Built', to be released on 25th June 2012.

User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License and may also be available under the GNU FDL....

READ MORE