Given the choice to live in either sunny California or drizzly Manchester, most people wouldn't hesitate to pack up everything they own and board the next flight to LAX, leaving everyone they love and the cat behind with no explanation. But for folk singer Jesca Hoop, moving to Manchester was an easy decision.
“I fell in love with someone in the back scenes of the Elbow group so I didn’t need convincing,” she says with a soft laugh when asked about the pros and cons of moving to Manchester almost 10 years ago.
Raised in a strict Mormon household in Santa Rosa, California, she left the church when she was 16 and began living the life of a wanderer. This new chapter in her life led to some time living under a tree, working as a wilderness survival guide – as you do – and working as a nanny to Tom Waits' children. To say that she lived a colourful life in California is an understatement so when she fell in love with a Mancunian, thanks to her friendship with Elbow's Guy Garvey, moving to the UK was just another part of the adventure.
New directions
Her life is full of incidental happenings that nudge her in new directions. It might seem like she fell in with the right people at the right time, especially with her long list of collaborators, including Iron & Wine's Sam Beam – whom she duetted with on 2016's Love Letter for Fire – Eels and The Police's Stewart Copeland, it might seem like she fell in with the right people at the right time but she learned quite early in her career that it takes more than good timing to make it as a professional musician.
“There’s no such thing as deserving. The world doesn’t operate upon deserving and I think that it’s important in music to remain in the spirit of music rather than the spirit of competition,” she says, spinning the lines off like a mantra. “If you walk with a sense of entitlement, you’re going to become competitive and I think that competition is not a healthy mode to operate with in music.”
Hoop is now on her sixth solo album, Memories Are Now, and by nature, she is a helper. She sees the world through a different lens and this quality works especially well if you work, say, as a nanny to Tom Waits' kids or if you are a songwriter. In a quest to become more "balanced, communicative, compassionate and truthful", she unravels her own life experiences and feelings into her lyrics and, as a result, her music often functions as a safe space for others.
She says fans regularly tell her that her music helps them “through challenges but I have had it also where they say that [the songs] saved their lives, which is a grand statement,” she says, sounding stunned that her music can help people in that way. “I wouldn’t necessarily take credit for it but I am very grateful that they would turn to the music if they need a rod.”
Deconstruct the beliefs
When Hoop left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a teenager, she had to deconstruct the beliefs that had previously structured her entire life, down to the very way in which she interacts with people and reacts to situations. This type of self-evaluation and rewiring of the brain is incredibly difficult to do. Did it take long to find her personal identity once she left the church?
“I think it took a while, yeah. I mean, it wasn’t about identity, I think it was about . . . more so about accepting the world around me and breaking down the judgments that I’d been trained to cast. Even though we weren’t supposed to be judgmental, you know, it’s inherent that being raised with those kind of standards, you judge the people around you and you manage how much you’re going to relate or give to the people around you based on their choices, based on how the live. I had to talk myself out of judging myself and judging the people around me.”
Even now, at the age of 42, the religious beliefs that encase her childhood still catch up with her, and with the recent attacks in her home town of Manchester, she knows that religion can obscure your view on the world and the people living in it. “I understand the function behind grouping together and forming these belief systems; it helps us stay organised but there’s other ways to go about it too. ”
Hoop’s outlook is to remain open to learning as much as possible and if the answers don’t come all at once, take it from the woman who seems to have lived a thousand lives: sometimes it’s better that way.
“I think that one thing that could help any person who is living under the blinders of Christianity or [those which] any fundamental religion can place on you, god-based religion, is that meeting people and forming relationships with people outside of that story helps open your eyes to the world around you and what’s actually happening here.
"I don't know what's actually happening here and I think that's a more joyful way to live life." Jesca Hoop plays Mitchelstown Cave, Cahir, Co Tipperary, with Rosie Carney, as part of Clonmel Junction Festival on July 8th. €30 junctionfestival.com
