Jessarae celebrates Kings and family in video

It started with a scroll through Twitter. Los Angeles musician Jessarae was going through his feed when he came across a video the Toronto Maple Leafs released that featured Justin Bieber's song "Hold On."
While Jessarae is no Leafs super fan like Bieber, he has hockey in his blood. His legal name is Jesse Robitaille and he is the son of Kings president, Luc Robitaille.
After getting inspiration from what he watched, Jessarae sent the video to a friend, Jesse Buchanan, who works as a video game developer. The response was something along the lines of 'we can top this.' That was all it took.
"The fuse was lit," Jessarea recalled recently in a telephone interview. "We're like let's do it."

The pair got to work right away. "We shot a bunch of the stuff at his house and then we went to the Toyota Sports Center and filmed a bunch of the stuff on the ice and rented gear ourselves and did it all," the musician said.
Even Jessarae's girlfriend helped out with the production. "She was a smoke machine," he chuckled. "She was blowing smoke from behind the camera."
The finished product features Jessarae strumming a guitar emblazoned with the Kings' logo and singing along to his song "Follow Me," while clips from the Kings' history, including a shot of him and his dad after a game, are interspersed throughout the video. He's also sporting Kings jerseys from different eras, which he's quick to point out are all game-worn, and of course they would be, his father is Lucky Luc.
Jessarae was happy with how it turned out but he wasn't quite sure what to do with it, so he showed his dad. "He was like 'this cool, what do you guys want to do with it' and I said 'we were hoping you would know,'" he said.
Robitaille knew exactly what to do. He sent it over to the Kings and, sure enough, the team liked what it saw and shared the video on its social media feeds just over a week ago.
Jessarae says he has been overwhelmed by the response. "It's become one of my most listened to songs," he said.
"Quite a few people have reached out and said they saw the video and they've been listening to my music now. It's helped widen my audience."
The video has allowed Jessarae to bring his music to the same fanbase that would have cheered on his father during his days with the Kings. Although he was only 10 years old when Robitaille hung up his skates, Jessarae still vividly remembers his father's last game in LA.
"They put these little postcards on every seat in the arena, acknowledging him and his impact," he said. "Even now thinking about it's pretty emotional."
As a child, Jessarae didn't fully grasp how his dad wasn't like other dads. "For me, he was just my dad," he said.
"He was just my dad who had many months free during the offseason and then there was a lot of times he was gone all the time and I just thought that everybody had parents like that."
But attending Robitaille's final home game with the Kings, it really hit home for Jessarae the impact his father had on the sport.
It's rather fitting then that the song Jessarae chose for the video is, in his own words, about fatherhood and growing up.
"It's a family story," he said. "It's a family story about the Kings. It's a story of my family and I think it's relatable to anybody who has a family."
Growing up in a hockey family, Jessarae played when he was younger but it was music that became his passion. "I would write songs for my parents, so I just kept doing it and I liked it," he said.
"It was very cathartic for me to just pick up a guitar and bang on it or sit down at a drum set."
From those early days serenading his parents, Luc and Stacia, to him pursuing music as a career, Jessarae says his family remains incredibly supportive.
"I have had so many moments of self-doubt but they still keep pushing me and telling me I can make it and live my dream," he said.
Even when he wanted to adopt Jessarae as his stage name, they were both on board. "I remember having doubts about my name," he said.
"My legal name is Jesse but I've always gone by Jessarae. I kept thinking should I go by Robitaille or should I go by Jessarae. I think they were in their bedroom and I said 'I want to go by Jessarae' and they were like 'yeah, do it.'"
Although he didn't follow in his father's footsteps on the ice, Jessarae sees a lot of similarities in music and hockey and really wanted to convey that in the video.
"We wanted to capture the energy of generations moving towards a common goal and the unity between generations and that common goal," he said. "Whether that's in hockey or in music."
LA's Stanley Cup victories in 2012 and 2014 certainly brought together generations of Kings fans in celebration of hockey's ultimate prize. And if the club reaches the pinnacle again a third time, Jessarae may just have to cut a new video.