singer-songwriter and guitarist, who writes and performs in diverse musical styles. Hoop's life has been littered with fork-in-the-road moments, from the time, aged 16, that she finally rejected her Mormon upbringing, ultimately prompting her to leave home and start writing songs, to the moment in her twenties when she met Tom Waits, who would provide her with a job as a nanny to his children and guide her in the early stages of her career. There has been no shortage of life experience on which to draw musical inspiration. The third of five children, Hoop was raised as a Mormon in northern California. Her parents brought her up on a diet of folk, choral music and Von Trapp-style family sing-alongs underpinned by a rigorous spiritual schedule. For six years Hoop moved frequently, living in yurts, cob dwellings, even a converted chicken coop. She met a group of deadheads who "helped me unhook from everything. I never was a deadhead myself, but I had an aptitude for being out in the elements and being close to nature." To make ends meet she took a series of jobs, all outdoors, including farming, landscaping and surveying. For a period she worked on a survival programme in the mountains , helping problem kids and teaching them "hardcore elemental living". She never stopped writing songs, and eventually came to the realisation that she wanted to sing for a living rather than to herself. First, though, she needed a steady income. It was that this point that she "crossed paths" with Tom Waits and his partner Kathleen Brennan, who hired her to help look after their three children. She knew of Waits but "didn't know the giant he was until I saw him on stage after six months." Hoop is keen to play down the connection, lest it take the focus off her own story, though she does say "they mentored me. It took me a year and a half to play them anything as I didn't want to impose. I wanted to respect their privacy." Hoop worked on her songs for a further three years, at which point she decided she was ready to devote herself to music full-time. Waits waved off his employee-turned-protégé with a rare public endorsement. "Jesca Hoop's music is like a four-sided coin," he stated. "She is an old soul, like a black pearl, a good witch or a red moon. Her music is like going swimming in the lake at night."