Jordyn Zaino Whips Up a Quiet Storm with Impassioned Ballads
Singer/songwriter makes music that doubles as mutual aid
“What were your musical inspirations growing up?”
It’s the obligatory cliche question that all musical journalists ask — more of an icebreaker than an overly meaningful query. Yet when I ask local singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist and raw rock frontwoman Jordyn Zaino, her first two answers provide a certain profundity and perspective that doesn’t really strike me until later.
“I loved Florence + the Machine and, um, Rage Against the Machine,” she says thoughtfully before breaking into a chuckle, “not to just name all of the machines.”
Looking back on Zaino’s nearly decade-long music career, both as a solo act and fronting two Charlotte-area rock bands, both of these inspirations appear conspicuously in her work.
I hear Florence Welch in Zaino’s ethereal but robust vocals and see Rage in her political activism. One of Zaino’s bands, With Haste, a supergroup of sorts comprising a number of Charlotte musicians known for their work with other outfits, came together in 2024 as a response to the rising tide of fascism in America.
For the year that With Haste played together, each show served not only as a performance but a mutual aid drive, soliciting donations for different causes and connecting attendees with community resources.
“I noticed the patterns [before Trump’s re-election in 2024] and I was like, ‘Things are not going to go well and we need to come together as soon as possible,’” Zaino says of the band’s formation. “The lyrics of the songs that we were writing were very much like, ‘Let’s come together, let’s do something about this, and do it with haste!”
Zaino’s sense of urgency was perhaps driven by a political and spiritual reawakening that came relatively late in life. She grew up in Fort Mill, engrossed in the lifestyle imposed on her by the evangelical church.
She studied music at Hillsong College, part of international megachurch Hillsong Church, in Australia but was expelled for “partying,” she says. The college’s code of conduct instructs students to “abstain from biblically immoral practices” including drunkenness and profane language.
The experience served as a wake-up call.
“That kind of opened my eyes,” she recalls. “I was like, ‘Oh, was I in a cult? Like, hat was the past 20 years of my life? What the hell?’”
In 2017, she left the church and began to focus more on music on her own, more secular terms. She had done some performing in high school, playing mostly cover songs on Friday nights for families outside of a Pelican’s SnoBalls location in Fort Mill with close friend Brogan Gaskill.
Upon her return from Australia, she began wading into Charlotte’s music scene, performing her original material and forming a band called No Rope in 2018.
The 2021 track “86 My Will to Live” is indicative of the tortured lyrics present in much of Zaino’s work.
“You try to live your life/ Despite all your strife/ There is much to see/ You’ll look back quickly/ Down these crucial tracks/ Am I gonna die a machine?” she sings.
With a motto on its Bandcamp page reading “remind your pals to hang in there” and a logo showing a hand slice through a noose with a knife, a running theme throughout No Rope’s body of work involved the importance of being present for loved ones struggling through mental health issues.
That theme correlates with the central focus of With Haste’s work, all revolving around community action and mutual aid.
Though the members of With Haste remain close friends, the band has naturally drifted apart as some members have moved and others are pursuing new projects. Zaino, who has always struggled with stage fright, has now returned to performing solo, which she says is not as fun as being onstage with a band but has its own advantages.
“It’s more anxiety and less anxiety in a way,” she says of performing alone. “It’s like, I don’t have to worry about what anybody else is doing, but then again, all of the attention and perception is on me and I feel a lot of pressure to not mess up.”
She’s scheduled to play a show at Dish on July 11, though she’ll be comforted by the presence of former With Haste bandmate Oscar Castillo, whose band Bergenline is on the bill alongside local rockers Crow With No Mouth and New Jersey-based touring act Starikova.
Read more: Crow With No Mouth Delivers Hardscrabble Folk Ballads
Zaino says that, while she’s found a strong community in venues like The Milestone, Snug Harbor and Petra’s, she’s been hopeful to see how Dish has created a space for young music fans as of late.
Tiff Tantrum, vocalist for politically engaged veteran punk band No Anger Control, has been booking shows like the popular Slay Together Fest at Dish, drawing crowds that are often shut out of Charlotte’s most popular venues.
“I am really inspired by the amount of younger people with X’s on their hands coming up to shows at Dish specifically, because it is an all-ages venue,” Zaino says. “It gets packed … and you see, like, literally 200 kids, teenagers, just rocking out and it’s awesome. I’m just so excited for the new generation of rockers in Charlotte. I think the scene right now is great, but I’m really excited for what’s to come.”
Zaino is currently working on new music to follow up on her 2022 solo project, who we weren’t, recorded live with just her and a guitar. This time she’s experimenting with longer songs in her home studio, like the upcoming single “2 + 2 Does Not Equal 5,” which she hopes to release in August and currently sits between 13 and 14 minutes.
“I wanted to challenge myself, but then I started thinking about people’s attention spans and I’m like, ‘Would people want to sit down and listen to something this long? Could they?’” she explains. “I don’t know if it’s a challenge to me or a challenge to others.”
Whatever it takes to keep the machines at bay.
