Jesse Lynn Madera Revisits Rough Start in Los Angeles With Song She Wrote 10 Years Earlier, “Woke Up in LA”

When Jesse Lynn Madera relocated cross-country from New York to Los Angeles with her husband, actor Hemky Madera, in 2010, she felt like her world was falling apart. Sinking into despair, uncertainty, and loneliness, Madera left her friends and life behind without a support system in place. A few years into her new life, she began reflecting on her earlier days in Los Angeles and wrote and recorded “Woke Up in LA,” an unconventional love note to a city she didn’t realize would eventually feel like home. Then, she never released it.

Shelved for 10 years, Madera revisited her old story and the song she initially planned to record for a duet project, which was later abandoned. Set by teardrop vocals, “Woke Up in LA” is a wistful remembrance tenderly moving between pain and bliss. A decade on, Madera’s song arrives as a story laced with resilience and perseverance rather than the emptier place where it started—I don’t care how you teat me, I love you completely, through the dog days / I’m yours anyway / I was begging and pleading, and you just lay there sleeping / And I prayed to fly away / I woke up in LA again, today.

“I realized when I was editing the music video that this song is really an homage to how beautifully my life wound up working out in Los Angeles after all,” Madera tells American Songwriter. “I spent the first few years sick over leaving New York City, and somewhere along the line, LA snuck up on my heart.”

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Years earlier, the song was originally tracked in Madera’s living room in Los Angeles. “The mic I was singing on wound up being too hot (loud), but I didn’t realize until it was getting mastered,” says Madera. “I was so stuck on it being a duet, zoned in to that idea, that I didn’t even consider re-recording it solo.”

Throughout the past few years, Madera began revisiting the song live for some festival shows with her touring guitarist, singer-songwriter Jesse Cole, who also appeared on the original recording.

“It went over so well live that I decided it would be my next single,” Madera says. “It seemed like a good follow-up to my John Prine cover of ‘Speed of the Sound of Loneliness,’ instrumentation-wise. I love how it turned out. Maybe it’ll be a duet again one day.”

Whether she explores it as a duet again one day, Madera’s homage to Los Angeles is part of a new album—and a follow-up to her 2024 release Speed of Sound—which, she says, may also feature that Prine cover.

“The John Prine cover might be on there, as well as some of the more ethereal piano stuff I do,” shares Madera. “I love mixing up the acoustic guitar songs with the weighty, dramatic songs. It rounds out the musical buffet.”

Currently on her U.S. tour, Madera will also make her UK debut this spring, supporting the Zombies’ lead singer Colin Blunstone on a 16-date tour kicking off on May 7. For now, she’s in a state of blissful reflection, and “Woke Up in LA” is just one marker of how far she’s come since then.

“It is a testament to resilience and the persistence of love, even through the ‘dog days,’” says Madera. “It’s the artist’s job to reflect the truth, to hopefully help the listener feel seen and understood through having the courage to try to understand ourselves.”

Photo: Alysse Gafkjen