New Jersey native Jessie Baylin began plotting her songwriting career at an early age, penning poems while still in elementary school and -- at the ripe age of 13 -- singing for customers at the Fire Sight Inn, a local jazz bar that her parents owned. Although moved by the work of Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Barbra Streisand, Baylin didn't compose her own songs until several years later, when she relocated to California after graduating from high school. She then settled in Los Angeles and honed her songwriting skills in private, eventually emerging with a batch of demos that mixed her jazz, country, and pop/rock influences.