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She started off as a small-time folk singer and went on to sell 25 million albums as one of America's
biggest female stars. Yet two years ago Alaskan-born Jewel was staring burnout in the face and
wondering whether she'd ever sing again. Now she's back with a new album - and, says Alan Jackson,
she's lost none of her sparkle.
"That," remarks Jewel Kilcher, replacing the telephone receiver in its cradle, "was my personal butler,
ringing to introduce himself. He's a bit late in the day. I didn't even know that I had one. But I'm
sorry... Where were we?" Before I can tell her, her name is called by a male voice in the adjoining
room. At once she giggles, jumps up, then slips through the opening that has just been made for her
in a pair of vast double doors. There is more giggling, muffled now, and (is it just my imagination?)
the sound of pantomimed advances being semi-fended off. "Sorry a second time," she says, flushed,
reappearing seconds later. I ask who's there, though I already know "Oh, nobody," she says, especially
loudly. "Just a gimp I sometimes take along with me when I travel." To further put him in his place,
she then beckons in their beagle, Jango, and closes the door behind it with theatrical,
no-more-disturbances finality.
Odd to be meeting her in this staid, old-money hotel off New York's Fifth Avenue. Anyone who knows
anything about the 27-year-old singer-songwriting success knows that she's from Homer, Alaska (population
4,000) and that fresh air, a hard landscape and privation are the things which fashioned her and,
consequently her folk-based but increasingly rock-driven music. Yet here she is in over-upholstered,
lamp-lit luxury, with her very own flunky at the end of a phone line, and net curtaining and
triple-glazing separating her from the cold, bright afternoon outside. That's because more than 24
million albums filled with the sound of hardship and big skies have been sold to date, and Jewel is now
a very big deal to her record company. Plus, and on a purely practical level, Manhattan is short on log
cabins (her childhood home) and camper vans (arriving in California to seek her fortune, she lived in
one). The St Regis it is, then.
Fame and fortune hit Kilcher's life like a landslide some five years ago. You'd think that, by now,
each and every one of us would be sufficiently media-aware to be able to imagine just a little of
what that must be like - the reality-warping scary-weirdness of it all. But how many of us grew
up on a homestead without running water, electricity or a telephone line, and had to hike three
miles to the nearest main road to hitch a ride to school ? The point I make is that, despite having
parents who moonlighted by playing folk tunes to tourists, Jewel must have been less prepared for
what fame and fortune felt like than any one of the metropolitan fans now queuing for one of her CDs.
The newly vertiginous profile (cover star of Time and Rolling Stone, and one of the hallowed
handfuls in Vanity Fair's last "Rock" edition), the sudden, quite extraordinary wealth... Only
recently, one senses, has she got a handle on dealing with it all.
And her way, after veering uncertainly between cowgirl insouciance and
falling-out-of-Versace-at-an-award-show stereotype compliance, has been to take a big step backwards,
allowing herself time to reconnect with the musical gifts that brought her celebrityhood in the first
place. "I'm all across the media, therefore I am? It's easy to get pulled into thinking that way,"
she says. "Also, there's a very fast, seductive rhythm to this industry when things are going well for
you. It's like, 'Have a hit, have another hit, then go all-out to have an even bigger hit...' Fine, but
with each release you become more cartoon-ish, more sensational, more undressed. l'd begun to feel at
the mercy of that rhythm, and I needed to step away from it. And the big discovery is that you can
do so." If, that is, you are prepared to risk the consequences.
Kilcher says that falling out of love with her muse was, "just horrifying. There'd been this enormous
struggle within me over what I was going to do with my life, and eventually I'd found this route
forward; it was something I thought could never be taken from me. To hit 25 and to feel like any joy
in it was gone was like having the rug pulled from under my feet. My one real certainty
was gone." Not so surprising that she should face burnout this young, given the intensity of her career
to date: a record deal aged 18, followed by the multi-platinum success of the 1995 album
Pieces of You, and its 1998 successor Spirit. In time, though, she realised she was now in a position to dictate the rhythm herself "By not thinking about what pop radio might or mightn't like. By
not touring as much. "Which is, of course, where the consequences kick in: your sales and, hence, your
income may fall as a result. "But so be it. What's the point if you're not enjoying what you do?"
The happy thing in all of this is that few other artists are as well placed as Jewel to take advantage
of Internet culture to retain and mobilise their existing core audience. In a marketplace awash with
clever young women with guitars, she first stood out by virtue of her clear, lovely voice, the
directness of her largely acoustic songs, and the sometimes euphoric nature of her live performances. That
she quickly became known for her liberal views on social and environmental subjects, and had an unusual
personal story to boot, made her an influential figure within certain demographics. Her
website, www.jeweljk.com, recognises that fact, and makes full use of it. Logging on, you are urged to
become a member of her "Street Team", used to lobby local radio stations into playing her
tracks. Then you start clicking on the links...
The EveryDay Angels Foundation "supports and promotes grassroots community involvement in many areas. Inspired by the philosophy and sensibilities of singer/artist Jewel Kilcher, we believe we are all in this together and are truly each other's 'everyday angels', responsible to and for each other". To illustrate some of the ways in which members might benefit one another, and the world at large, there is an Everyday Acts of
Kindness Book, wherein individuals - earnest-sounding teenage girls for the most
part - have posted details of their experiences.
Unusual content for a pop artist's website. More unusual still is the fact find that Kilcher has her own
charitable initiative, a non-profit-making organisation called Higher Ground for Humanity.
Its mission, "is to join with others in the world community to create peace and generative prosperity for all
peoples". Which is nice, of course, though cynics might find themselves raising an eyebrow
at the scope of its interests (youth, alternative healthcare, the arts, spiritual development, the environment, global community building) and the variety of ways in which it hopes to achieve its ends (education, research, partnering and programme development).
HGH is the brainchild of Kilcher and her manager mother, Nedra - or "accomplished businesswoman, singer, artist and author Lenedra J. Carroll", as she is billed when appearing all across the American media, from Reader's Digest to The Oprah Winfrey Show (later in the day I buy a copy of her self-help book, The Architect of All Abundance, but find that its mixture of open-form poetry, jargon and spiritual insights prevent me
completing the journey to my own "source of inner light"). Jewel was eight when her parents divorced, and
father Aze took over responsibility for bringing up his daughter and two sons. At 15, she left the family home to
join her mother in Anchorage, later drifting south via Michigan to San Diego where the two make their domestic and operational base together today. A staff of around 40 concerns itself not just with the Jewel career but also with HGH's pet projects, particularly those involving children's computer-aided education and the bringing of fresh water supplies to Third World communities. Again, and commendably, this is far from your usual pop star stuff
"I'm well taken care of, believe me," says Kilcher. "I'm not giving away so much that I don't have anything
left. I'm looking out for my family. I'm making sure that I've got their education and medical costs and the effects of inflation covered. But beyond that, there's not an awful lot I want or need. I'm not a big shopper and
have never been attracted to real gaudy stuff. I'm not a Ferrari sort of girl. I don't feel the need to amass a huge personal fortune to hand down. The fact is that I've benefited greatly from others in my life. There was a time when I was living in a car and was dependent on hand-outs. There was a time when I wasn't a very
good person, yet others were still kind to me. The memory of that humbles me and inspires me to try and be more graceful in turn."
At this point, a door handle rattles and a man enters the room, his handsome, open face shaded by a pulled-down baseball cap. "Hey!" he says, and proffers the firmest of handshakes. "I'm the gimp you heard mentioned before."
Ty Murray stands 5ft 8in and weighs 11st 7lb. He is 32 years old, has a father named Butch and a mother named Joy (my information is courtesy of Ty Facts on his own designated website). He began riding calves at the age of two, but also shone as a junior gymnast, juggler and unicyclist. Later, he proved all but supreme at his career specialism - seven times World Champion All-Round Cowboy, twice World Champion Bull Rider. For $12.95 plus postage, you can even witness his prowess on VHS: "This is the video you have been waiting for! Ty Murray, King of the Cowboys, is back, and he's riding the rankest bulls and the wildest broncos
like there's no tomorrow!" Right now, though, he settles in a denim's breath away from Jewel, and accommodates an adoring Jango on his lap.
They met four years ago when she attended an event he was performing at in Denver, Colorado. And was it love at first...? "It took about a couple of months for, whatever, you know?" she says, suddenly
bashful. Because both travel extensively in their work, yet also have a lot of down time, she imagines that they achieve more quality space together than do most other young couples. In her published journal, a younger Jewel had worried that her pop-star schedule rendered her unlovable. "But then I was just a young kid.
I didn't really need a boyfriend," she offers now. "This wouldn't survive if I still worked as hard today as I did back then. A successful relationship takes more time than I had at my disposal. Ty deserves that time, and I deserve it, too."
It must help that both operate in what can broadly be termed as showbusiness. It is a sign of Murray's generic status that, at the time of writing, a dealer in rodeo memorabilia was inviting bids of $4,500 from visitors to the auction site eBay.com for one of his old leather waistcoats, as worn in competition. "Still looks and
even smells like it came right off the rodeo floor!" boasted the vendor, enticingly. Jewel, meanwhile, has her many legions of earnest young fans, ones who hang on her every recorded word and altruistic thought. Thus, he must understand the pressures on her, and vice versa. Certainly, the two appear deeply smitten. And, from
where I am sitting, I cannot but notice that a colossal diamond is spitting reflected lamplight in all directions... "Wrong finger!" she exclaims triumphantly, wiggling her hand to illustrate my mistake. But will they marry?
"Honey, he's gettin' kinda personal," complains Murray, but good-naturedly.
"I'm not in any hurry right now," says she. "I'll probably want to do it at some point - if we have kids - but I'm not someone for whom it's ever been a goal in life. I like the idea of belonging to someone, though, which I know is a tremendously un-modern thing to say. The idea of serving someone, and of being served."
When she is not out on the road, or spending time with her mother in San Diego, Kilcher lives with Murray on a ranch outside the small farming community of Stephenville, central Texas. He, brought up in Arizona, learnt to love the state when he moved there for college. "West Texas is dry and deserty, though, while the east is lots of pine trees and grass that's too weak for cattle. Where we are is the happy medium." Do tourists go there? "Nope!" says she. "Which is part of the reason why it's one of our favourite places. I don't remember having ever been asked to sign an autograph there. People pride themselves on not bothering you."
It was in Stephenville that Kilcher rediscovered her desire to write and play songs. "No sudden flash ofinspiration. Just a slow coming round to it, after two years of not knowing if I'd ever want to make another record again. It was all a question of getting back to what feeds the artist, which in my case is being alone and, more specifically, being outdoors, in the way that I was when growing up." The result is a third studio
release (here I am discounting Christmas 1999's Joy: A Holiday Collection), This Way, already high
in the American album charts. "It's been a while," she acknowledges to the faithful, on its back sleeve. "I was a worn-out little chick singer. I needed to go back to the woods."
She says her aim was to return with something eclectic. If anything, she has tried too hard : we are taken a little too close to Alanis's constituency at times, or Sheryl's, and conversely there is some unwelcome icky
whimsy in the closing minutes. But at its best, This Way is very good indeed. It reminds you to hope that she will continue to work at her craft and not merely follow the American music business fashion of turning oneself into a quasi-brand name (already she has published both a book of not very good poetry and that aforementioned and quite entertaining diary of life on tour, and has managed to make her acting debut in director Ang Lee's Civil
War drama Ride with the Devil).
Given the album's warm welcome in the US, it would seem that her marketability remains high. "But it's still a fickle thing, pop culture," she notes. "That's why it's been important for me to build that fan base, particularly through extensive touring. Now, as a result, I'm very lucky to have one that seems prepared to stay with
me whether or not I'm played on the radio. That gives me a freedom a lot of artists don't have, and one which I really appreciate."
Freedom? Yes. While Jango might be content to loll endlessly in central-heated luxury, his owners are clearly anxious to reclaim theirs. Such as it is. A car is waiting to take them to JFK from where, by private plane, they will be transported to Norfolk, Virginia. There, and directly on arrival, she must rehearse her guest
spot on a television special featuring Middle America's favourite singing son, Garth Brooks. All of which, when added to personal butlers and international press schedules, is a far remove from Texan ranch life. "But we'll get back there, honey" promises the champion cowboy, winking at his sweetheart and nudging her leg with his knee. Jewel holds his gaze just a little longer than is strictly necessary, given my proximity, and nudges him right back, only harder.
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