A hot front from the frozen north
She's just 17, hails from Arctic America and has been taken up by the likes of
Dylan and Sean Penn. What more could a budding pop star want? MAX BELL finds out
WHEN a sober Sean Penn tells the American style press that you are the most important songwriter since Bob Dylan, then Dylan himself invites you on tour and even lets you tweak his famous nose, it must be hard to stay modest. Especially when your debut album, recorded during your 18th year, sells four million copies and
spawns two hit singles.
Fortunately, Jewel Kilcher, whose face currently adorns the cover of Rolling Stone, Details and Interview magazines, doesn't have too much of a problem keeping her Snoopy-socked feet on the ground.
The descendant of Swiss immigrant settlers who claimed an 800-acre homestead without running water in Alaska during the Gold Rush, Kilcher appears inside her Pieces of You CD dressed in a swimsuit, above an autobiographical poem called Me that includes lines like: "I've cheated on boyfriends ... I have firm breasts and I've been selfish since a child." Sitting in her record company's Kensington office sipping a bowl of vegetable
soup, Jewel can afford to act the ingénue. She's a ravishing blonde with no bimbo roots showing. "I didn't know the rules so I know nothing about imaging. Some people think I'm full of cream filling. I don't think I'm pretty, but I've got a spark."
There are worse crosses to bear. Kilcher isn't the first songwriter from above the 49th parallel to make it big in the USA; kd lang, Alanis Morissette and Joni Mitchell got there before her.
But she is the first Arctic American to quit the Northern Exposure town of Homer armed only with an
acoustic guitar, a sheaf of songs and a refreshing inability to tell the difference between the Beatles and the Monkees.
Jewel learned her trade singing cover versions of songs by Nina Simone and Ella Fitzgerald as part of
her parents' Alaskan folk revue, before driving her VW camper van to San Diego where she established a residency at the Innerchange coffeehouse, washed her hair in their sink, and learned to surf.
She might still be living on tips if the aforementioned Mr Penn hadn't heard a demo tape. He played it during the making of his film The Crossing Guard, commissioned a song for the soundtrack, and became romantically linked when he took her to the Venice Film Festival. Penn was a believer when nobody else was - "but compared to the duration of other relationships I've had it was no big deal - except he was famous," says Kilcher.
Still, Madonna's ex-husband opened the doors for a contract and Kilcher found herself providing songs for
Clueless, Foolish Games, a teen witch movie called The Craft and, recently, Batman and Robin.
Meanwhile, her album, recorded at Neil Young's Californian ranch, was going nowhere until the Who Will Save Your Soul single (to be released here next Monday) became the first pop/folk tune to ride the charts since Tracey Chapman's Fast Car.
Jewel continues to play 40 American dates every 30 days. She drives herself to concerts and intersperses
club shows with support slots on tours by Johnny Cash, the Ramones and Dylan. Her current European visit finds her starting out again as an unknown quantity.
KILCHER travels with a Tupperware box full of her native Alaskan soil but isn't capable of staying put. Ambition won't let her rest.
She played Dorothy in the made-for-TV musical The Wizard of Oz, acting alongside Jackson Browne, Roger
Daltrey and Debra Winger. On the evening of our interview, she auditioned for the lead role in a white trash
tragedy, Come And Go Molly Snow, about a 17-year-old bluegrass fiddler who becomes pregnant and falls into drug abuse.
How does she find the time? "Singing and writing is only one 1imb on a creative body. The rest of me is
atrophying on the road. The trouble with the pop lifestyle is you don't use your brain, you don't get any great ideas thrown your way." Of course, she got the part.
Jewel plays the Mean Fiddler's Acoustic Room tomorrow night
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