My name’s Jennifer Knight and I’m from Canada. 

I knew from age two that I was female or trans as they call it, at that age. During the Atomic era, being a child of an Air Force family, the way the military treated people that were LGBT, you had to undergo conversion therapy. I ended up enduring 11 years of it.

As soon as I got past that teenage years and I could start running away, I started running away in music. That started becoming my escape, my way to make money. As soon as I became 18, started living full time, emancipated myself, freed myself from my parents. And, you know, start my journey, which took me all over the globe. And music was part of the business.

I was born with part of my pinky here, attached to the back of my head. I have an extra fingernail attached right here now that goes straight to the bone. It can’t be removed. I wanted to play the music bad and get hold of the guitar and everybody tried to show me the traditional way how to play things and I couldn’t do it. So I created basically my own unique three finger way of playing music. And Willie Nelson gave me the nickname, “Three Fingers JK.”

During the seventies, I had the pleasure of playing with Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings. Working with Waylon and Willie, the main thing was, as long as you do your job and you did okay, we didn’t care. I ran into some of their bandmates. But they said, you know, “You were actually… you know, you did a very excellent job and we used to keep an extra mustache, you know, for you in case we need to, you know, hide you amongst the crowds because, you know, people would give you funny looks in, you know, some of the redneck countries. Because you’re tall and you know, you know, you look a little girlish or whatever, but we protected you ’cause you… you were good. You did your job. We didn’t care.” But it doesn’t always work that way with certain places. 

I toured in ’76 with Paul McCartney and Wings, and so I had experience playing the Beatles songs. Back in the nineties,  I auditioned for a Beatles coverband up in Portland, Oregon. They rejected me. You know, they said, “You’re… we don’t like your kind.” 

The biggest mistake I made was I got involved with alcohol and drugs. Being a musician, it was part of the scene. It came freely. I had what they call a spiritual awakening, that is described in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, that one day, out in the middle of nowhere, up in the Pacific Northwest, decided it was time to get my act together. Between that and staying focused on being Jennifer and just being the best I could and sticking to music… as a result, you know, this year I celebrate 44 years sobriety.

“I could not have made it through life without music.”

I could not have made it, you know, through life without music. Period. No pill, no drug, no alcohol, no talk therapy, nothing can replace that and that’s something that you can do something very positive with.

Quite simply, Rick Nelson used to sing it a lot when he did the song “Garden Party.” You know, you can’t please everybody, but you gotta please yourself. When you look in the mirror, you gotta be able to like who… who you’re looking at. If you can like who… who you’re looking at, that is the most important person.