Biography

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 the Waits family. The nature of this relationship and Hoop’s budding talent inspired the couple to become her mentors.