Jessica Hernandez & The Deltas have arrived on the music scene with their debut album “Secret Evil.” The Detroit-based band has a unique combination of rock, jazz, soul, R&B and Motown influences that create a distinctive sound all of their own. The band is opening for J. Roddy Walston & The Business tonight at the 9:30 Club at 8 p.m.

What inspired you to become a professional musician? Was music something you were always passionate about?
I’ve been passionate about music since I was super little. I’ve been singing since I was 3. I’ve always wanted to sing and always loved singing. When I was in high school and college is when I started getting into being in a band. In college, I was in a couple of bands and I actually dropped out because I wanted to do it full time. That is when I started teaching myself guitar and teaching myself piano and just writing my own songs. I kind of knew what I wanted to do myself, and then found guys from my hometown, Detroit, that wanted to do the same thing. It’s been a bit of a windmill. It just took me a while to get the courage to do it. I was scared of the idea of failing at it, but I always knew I wanted to do it.

You grew up in Detroit, a city famous for diverse contributions to music. Is there something about Detroit that fosters this sense of musically creativity?
For sure. I wouldn’t necessarily say Eminem and Kid Rock are my biggest influences, but there are tons of ’50s influences between Motown and Aretha Franklin, MC5 and The White Stripes. All those artists are from Detroit. They had a big impact on my musical taste growing up and then being a part of the garage-rock scene in high school and college and then being raised by Motown really had a big impact on my style of writing, when I did start writing all my music.

I take it Motown was a big influence on you?
I grew up in it. It was subconsciously ingrained enough, like that style of music. A lot of times when I start writing, I start with drums and a lot of the drum beats that I like are very Motown driven, which kind of guides the songs in that direction.

You first album, “Secret Evil,” was a long process to write and record. Do you have a favorite memory in the process of creating this album?
Probably when I first started writing it. I was kind of in a weird drifter phase of my life. I didn’t have a job, didn’t have money and didn’t have a place to live. At the time, I became friends with a lot of train-hoppers and I was into that lifestyle for a minute. I was 19 and had just dropped out of school and I was figuring out how I wanted to do this music thing. I ended up spending a summer with them and hanging out and floating around. I had my guitar and I was writing a lot of music at that point. I feel like that definitely shifted my writing style and made me get into the idea of storytelling as you’re writing. That was probably my favorite point. Just the beginning process of starting to write the record and getting all these influences from the people I was surrounded by.

“Caught Up” is a song that has gained a lot of attention. What was the inspiration behind the song?
I wrote that song as a gift to my best friend Sarah. She was going through a pretty bad relationship thing with this guy and was just having an all-around rough time at this point. I felt like, as her friend, I wanted to help her out in some way. I wrote this song for her to feel like she has this kind of “fuck you” to all of her relationship drama. I wrote it for her and I ended up really liking it and putting it on the record.

Going off that, how do you go about writing lyrics for your songs?
Almost every song, with the exception of a couple that are gifts to friends of mine, they are all from personal experience. Even the ones that are gifts are real situations that I am dealing with secondhand. Most of them are storytelling kind of things that have actually happened. Even the funny ones are all true stories.

Even the song “Sorry I Stole Your Man”?
It is, and I am actually engaged to the man who the song is about.

Most of the songs on the album “Secret Evil” were lyrically written before you joined with The Deltas. How is the writing process different when you are working with the band?
When I wrote the first record, it took a long time because I probably wrote around 200 songs because I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do musically. I was really young and in the process of figuring myself out and figuring which direction to go and meeting people and playing with different guys and girls and feeling it out. Once I finally put the album together, I was picking all of my favorite songs that worked cohesively. Through that, I was able to develop a sound through trial and error almost. With this next record, I have already had a standard, set a sound up and figured out a direction.