Jetta King always seems confident and authentic. Her blonde hair is sometimes streaked in pink, and when first I met her, a third of her hair was shaved off. She has tattoos and can pull off very high platform boots.
King is a little bit punk, a little scene and a little metal. Her voice is big and beautiful—she has a difficult time doing anything but belting. She can lead a church choir and be the frontwoman for a rock band on the same Sunday.
That said, she does not have any songs to download (yet), a manager or a label. Why?
King and I discussed this a few days after she sang Paramore’s “Misery Business” at the McCallum Theatre with the Emo Orchestra and Hawthorne Heights. I learned that my friend, like all of us, has been battling her own demons—and, like many of us, getting in her own way.
Driven to pay the rent
King, 34, of Palm Desert, waited until she was in her late 20s to start a band despite decades of singing and playing the guitar. She had played with friends in her living room and outside for neighbors. She sang in the occasional school musical and at church.
The thought of doing music as a career didn’t appeal to her. She was seeking stability—a safe harbor from the storm that was her chaotic childhood.
“Growing up, you hear about people focusing on music first and not having any money. I just didn’t think that was smart,” King said.
After being driven to Hollywood for various child acting roles during the first eight years of her life, King’s parents divorced, and her mother started getting into drugs. King’s sleep suffered, and so did her grades.
By the end of high school, King, who had dreamed of being a pediatric surgeon, felt discouraged by counselors. She said they were surprised she was planning on attending college at all.
“It was never anyone’s priority to help me through that,” she said.
“I wanted to sing with an orchestra. That’s been my dream since Metallica did it (in 1999).”
Jetta King
King spent time at community colleges and eventually found her way to personal training. Now she’s a Fascial Stretch Therapy practitioner. FST is a type of assisted or therapeutic stretching that may help reduce pain and increase mobility. It’s physical work akin to being a masseuse; however, according to King, the result is similar to what happens when she is onstage.
“As I’m stretching someone, I can feel all of their edges, and I can feel just how far I can get before they get uncomfortable … so that they don’t ever tense up or run away from what we’re doing, but it gets deeper and deeper,” she said. “It’s like peeling back the layers. That happens in my singing. … I don’t want to just put on a show. I want my heart to be spilled onto that stage and shared with everybody who’s there, including the other people on the stage … I want to feel like we’re all closer now that we did this together.”
King seems repulsed by the idea of doing anything that could make her feel selfish, greedy or insincere. She lost interest in becoming a doctor when she encountered a few harmful ones—and when she decided her favorite singer was a jerk, she thought it meant the industry wasn’t for her.
“When you meet your heroes and you realize they’re not good people, it sucks. It breaks your heart,” she said.
About five years ago, King felt she needed to start taking music more seriously. The Jetta King Band and found local success early on, performing at Idyllwild Strong, Big Rock, the CV Music Awards and Coachella Valley Brewing Company.
The band lost momentum ahead of the pandemic, leaving King to find a new guitarist and a violinist. They call themselves Threeway and have played at Indio’s Fall Family Festival, Second Saturdays in Indio and the Concert for Autism. King wants to find a new drummer but said they’re hard to come by.
“The way that everything’s been happening, I think it’s all been the perfect plan,” she said. “It’s been amazing to have it happen this way, because I feel like I can financially support myself and support my dreams.”
One of those dreams came true when King was selected to perform onstage with Hawthorne Heights and the Emo Orchestra at McCallum Theatre.
“I wanted to sing with an orchestra. That’s been my dream since Metallica did it (in 1999),” she said. She remembers thinking, “I just want to meet some people who play strings and horns, and I just want to jam with them. … Metal with a beautiful symphony—that’s the coolest thing ever.”
Letting go of perfection
So how did King end up onstage with the Emo Orchestra?
Hawthorne Heights lead vocalist JT Woodruff put out a call out on social media earlier this year, asking fans to enter a contest to sing onstage during the tour. Fans were told to send a clip of them singing “Misery Business” by Paramore; King was sent the post and decided to enter.
“I figured they probably wouldn’t even see my video,” she said. “Usually, what I would do is get really worked up about it and record this perfect video.” Instead, she said, she sent a video she already had of her singing part of the song on her couch, accompanied by her guitarist.
About a week before the concert date, she received the invite to perform via email.
“I was like: God has prepared me for this moment—I’m ready,” King said.
The doubts started to rush into her mind. Was she the only person who entered? Maybe Woodruff would sing over her if she sounded bad?
The show was just a few days away, so King quickly rearranged her schedule and started spreading the word. Friends and classmates she hadn’t seen in years started sending her messages and getting tickets to the show.
That morning, ahead of her afternoon rehearsal—when she’d first meet the band—King texted me while trying to figure out what she was going to wear.
“Man, this is definitely the most nervous I’ve felt maybe ever,” she texted. “I just feel like this is going to be the start of something bigger.”
After rehearsal, she judged her performance as “pitchy.” She’d been warming up all day but still didn’t feel warmed up.
Then came showtime. King’s name was announced during the second act; Woodruff stepped away from the mic, and center stage was given to King.
She didn’t just belt out the words—she sang. She danced, jumped and smiled. She let go.
While she missed a lyric here and there, she could hear the crowd cheering her on, calling her name: “Jetta! Jetta!”
After the show, as she was taking photos with the orchestra, friends and fans asked to take their picture with her, too.
“I didn’t have any idea that I had that much local support,” she said later. “That was probably the biggest thing—hearing that many people yelling my name … and people wanted to take pictures with me and get my autograph, I was like, ‘I’m nobody; what do you mean?’”
King never felt like she was popular, well-liked or supported. She’s never released any of her own songs because she always finds something wrong.
“So now to feel the support of a whole town … it just felt really good to be supported in that big of a crowd, and then for everyone to talk so positively about it instead of, ‘Oh, she did this wrong,’” King said.
She was expecting criticism and, she admitted, she was afraid of it.
“I sang a lot of wrong lyrics; I missed a bunch of lyrics, and my voice was not at its best, because I was just screaming it,” King said. “I was very afraid of how that would come off, but everyone so far has been like, ‘That was so cool!’”
She is planning on finally releasing her song “Too Loud,” which she has been performing for years, by early next year.
Learn more at www.instagram.com/jettamindtrix.
