Born Joanna Caruso in Ann Arbor, Michigan, transgender woman Joanna Sterling’s life has been closely tied with music from her earliest days. Growing up in a musical family provides her with a foundational musical grounding. Her uncle, a concert pianist and former student of the famous Eastman School of Music, and her brother, Davis Caruso, a singer-songwriter, created an environment where artistic expression was natural.

Yet, Joanna describes herself as a “weird, shy kid” who first found her deepest connection not in organized performance, but in the quiet time with nature, art, and huge imagination. Formal music lessons began at age five with the violin, but the instrument proved hard to learn, leading her to quit by middle school. At eight, she turned to the piano, which quickly became her main musical voice.

A big change happened when she moved beyond regular classical sheet music. Naturally, she began learning songs by her growing favorite singers – Tori Amos and Sarah McLachlan – purely by listening, playing them on the piano. This learning-by-ear, hands-on method showed her true learning strength and set free her creativity. Along with a love for poetry, this time marked the beginning mix of melody and words that would shape her future.

Finding Her Way: From Alone to Stage

Joanna’s musical journey changed through different stages. Her initial solo endeavor yielded her debut album, “Open Fire,” in 2015, issued under her birth name. She just refers to this as her valuable “learning process,” learning to record in the studio for the very first time. Around her early twenties, in search of collaboration, she established the band “Joanna and the Jaywalkers” with friends, a guitarist/bassist and a drummer.

This time mixed folk-rock styles with strong sea themes, showing a sense of adventure. Their 2018 CD, “The Open Sea Before Me,” reflected this emotional openness – “mapping unknown seas” – and was recorded live in the studio at Ann Arbor’s Solid Sound Recording Co. to keep its real, close feeling. The group became popular locally by performing at festivals like Ferndale Pride and popular venues like The Blind Pig.

However, managing this progress while working on a master’s degree was tough, forcing a temporary slowdown. After graduation, there was a dramatic artistic change.

Using her grandmother’s last name, “Sterling,” as her stage name stood for a deep personal and professional new start. This was a step toward more contemplative songwriting and a more intricate, frequently orchestral sound, a foundation for her most significant work.

The Making of “Queen of Wands”

The COVID-19 pandemic became an unplanned spark for Joanna Sterling’s best work, “Queen of Wands” (2023). Forced to stay home, she deeply studied tarot and astrology, practices that grew into a spiritual base for the album. The title, taken from the tarot card, stands for the fire element – meaning power, creativity, courage, and being real. Sterling saw the Queen of Wands as her “better future self,” a spiritual helper she developed to handle openness and bring together her past and present. “It wouldn’t have been there without the pandemic and having to go so inside myself and do a lot of work on me,” she says thankfully. Every song on the album has both astrological and tarot meanings.

The recording process lasted from May 2022 to Spring 2023, mainly at Solid Sound Studios and producer Chris DuPont’s Share House studio. DuPont, whom Sterling met during pandemic Zoom guitar lessons and connected with over shared love for 90s singer-songwriters, became a very important partner. “He didn’t just produce it; he went in and carefully fixed these songs,” she states, thanking him for improving her “natural feeling” vision. Their partnership grew into a deep friendship. The album’s rich sound benefited greatly from talented Michigan musicians: Anthony Marchese (cello – Sterling’s oldest partner and “one of my best friends”), Lauren Pulcipher (violin), Adam Har-Zvi (double bass), Mel Clark (harmony vocals – “we’ll switch high and low parts, and we’re like, ‘I don’t even know who’s singing’”), and Amin Lanseur (drums – of the band Stormy Chromer).

The carefully constructed narrative journey “Queen of Wands” features thirteen intensely personal tracks:

1.  “Firelight” (Instrumental Intro): A luckily created string introduction creating a sad, waiting mood.

2.  “Joey”: A brave opening track using her name before transitioning. It shows her hard-earned acceptance that her past self is part of her present identity: “I want to accept my full self, not just me as a post-transition woman, but also who was I before.” Writing it was deeply healing, breaking down the harmful idea that transition meant getting rid of the past.

3.  The Wilderness Trilogy (Written around 2014):

•  “Huntress”: Conveys the thrill of reinventing herself in a transformative Alaskan/Western Canadian summer, adopting a new persona (“Anna”) and living free-spirited adventure.
•  “Fool’s Gold”: Came from the hopelessness of being “revealed” as trans in that wilderness setting, feeling like a fake (“I’m not a real woman”). Later seen with pride: “I don’t need to be gold; I’m pyrite.”
• “Whitehorse”: The album’s most emotional song for Sterling, born of sadness from a breakup and loneliness, ending “I’m just gonna be alone.” Hearing it now with full instruments shows that loneliness wasn’t true: “I haven’t been alone; I was never alone.”

4.  “Girl By Choice”: A strong theme song and “love letter to trans women,” written in 2022 after facing hate against trans people from a partner’s family member. It boldly states self-worth: “Some don’t understand it, but that doesn’t mean I can’t accept who I am.” Its effect was huge, most noticeably touching a 72-year-old trans woman who used its words in her personal promises after revealing she was trans.

5.  “So Afraid” (feat. Chris DuPont): A complex look at outside and fear inside herself, featuring DuPont’s unique vocals and electric guitar. It acts as a “pep talk” to her worried self: “What are you so afraid of?… Don’t let fear rule your life; you’ll be OK.”

6.  “Deep End”: Uses her job as a therapist directly, changing how she sees beating bad thoughts and looking at the courage needed to help others’ pain – “What a cool thing to be trusted with.”

7.  “Queen of Wands” (Title Track): A magical, healing-focused song written late in the process, featuring Kylee Phillips’s harmonies and Chris DuPont’s synth and mandolin. It is the album’s spiritual heart.

Two Sides: Therapist and Songwriter

Sterling combines her music career with her work as a licensed therapist in a rare balance. She sees great commonalities between the two as both call upon a natural sense of feeling, of knowing, and “connecting to the things not said.” Her therapy work has a strong impact on her songwriting, adding depth to her examination of pain, healing, strength, and human connection. She describes learning to “use the wise healer part” of herself for her clients as a skill she then uses in her own life and artistry. This double vision drives her mission: to make “healing music” that has the power to move, especially among populations that are often marginalized.

Beliefs, Effect, and Moving Ahead

Joanna Sterling’s main artistic belief focuses on being completely real over being famous. Her guiding rule is simple but deep: “If I reach four people or four thousand, it’s worth it.” She strongly supports openness as a strength, famously saying, “I learned to love my voice’s uniqueness—you don’t need to sound like Whitney Houston to be heard.” The effect of her work, especially songs like “Girl By Choice,” proves this approach. Hearing that her music helped someone accept their truth is, for her, the best proof: “When a stranger tells you your song helped them accept their truth, it proves everything.”

At the album’s release in August 2023, Sterling’s future plans showed a planned change. Her album release concert for her album “Queen of Wands” was August 17, 2023, at Ann Arbor’s The Ark, with her full band and intentionally following the theme of her album. Future shows were a benefit for the Washtenaw Area Council for Children in October of 2023 and a show at Farmington Hills’ The Hawk, a small theater, in March of 2024. In the future, she ensured to do “things well rather than doing many things” at her own shows, to space out the performances instead of having multiple shows at the same venue. As an artist, she was excited to write new songs, to finish out the “Queen of Wands” venture while experimenting with new styles, and specifically to focus on crafting a “stronger,” more energetic rock album. Other goals were touring, the vinyl release of “Queen of Wands,” and creating a music video for “Girl By Choice.”

Joanna Sterling’s journey, told with honest openness in her music and lived through her two jobs, stands as powerful proof of the life-changing power of being your true self. Her work is more than just fun; it is a strong act of healing, support, and praise, saying that a life lived truthfully, especially as a trans woman, is not only about hard times but is truly “wonderful and interesting.”