It took three years for her 'Pieces Of You' album of folk poetry and Rickie
Lee Jones-flavoured blue sky consciousness to hit pay dirt, but in July of
this year her Swiss C&W features graced the covers ofTime, Details,
and Interviewsimultaneously (Rolling Stonewas May). Her
ascent to a position where, aged 23, she gets to hang with Bob Dylan,
discuss arts funding with Bill Clinton and cause a national heart attack
with her see-through dress at the '97 Grammies is no less remarkable than
the mythological perfection of her life story. It sounds like a post
Thelma And Louisefilm script (with Sean Penn playing himself, since
Jewel was involved with him early on).
Jewel Kilcher was born into a poor, Swiss extracted family and raised in an
Alaskan cabin with zero amenities. The family caught salmon and made
Eskimo ice-cream, and from age six she sang as part of her parents' folk
review. When they divorced, she lived with her father and showed off her
yodelling in bar-rooms (she still yodels onstage, often in tandem with her
mother).
A phase of teenage wandering took her to Hawaii for a year, back to her
mom in Anchorage, on to a vocal scholarship course in Michigan and thence
to San Diego where she lived in a VW camper van, washed her hair in the
public toilets, waitressed, surfed, chilled and sang. At her residency at
the Innerchange coffee-house she caught the attention of Sean Penn, who put
her on the sountrack for The Crossing Guard and set her on the road
to Neil Young's studio and Sauna Folk domination.
Perhaps that self-sufficiency, that outcast drive, is what accounts for her
steely manner in dealing with cynical, trivia-obsessed journos.
In a neutral hotel room, she makes camomile tea, swats aside a question
about what she'd do if the Biblical Adam asked her to mow the lawn ("What
is the point of this line of questioning?") and ploughs on with the agenda.
"The last ten years' music's become such a scene," she says. "Concerts have
a lot more to do with what's going on in the audience than what's going on
on stage. But this tour seems to be about people who are really in love
with music again, in love with words and songwriting, and the craft of that."
Did you have any reservations about getting involved in something that zones
off women?
"Nothing to make me hesitate before doing it. You can't always worry about
how other people are going to perceive your actions. If I had to put the
tour together I don't know if I'd have had the guts to do what Sarah did.
It was a very gutsy thing she did to exclude men. However, with the reaction
it's getting I'm starting to think maybe it was necessary."
Were you experiencing gender bias three years ago?
"It was hard for women in the market back then. Maybe it's always been. But
I never felt inhibited. I was aware of times when on the radio it was up to
me or Joan Osborne to get a slot and it was pretty brutal between our
record labels. Because radio stations were only go to play one or two women
'cos to them we all look alike...haha. And we all sound alike! It's
ridiculous."
Are you pleased that women have been 'discovered' now?
"I don't believe that at all, I think it's shit actually. I can't stand all
this frigging 'girlie gang' thing, like when I was on the cover of Time
with it saying 'Jewel And The Gang'. Ueurghh. Gimme a break! It's not
a fucking gang! When did they ever call Pearl Jam, Red Hot Chili Peppers
and Nirvana a gang?
"I think that being bonded over our sex is kind of ridiculous and I find it
demeaning to the music actually, especially to people like Emmylou Harris
and Tracy Chapman who were around way before it was so fashionable for
promoters to like it. We're just musicians. We have a right to be treated
equally."
Do you think your own success is partly due to a shift in social attitudes?
"Yup. I think that's why my album didn't do well in the beginning. When my
album came out Nirvana was still going and people were still incredibly
hopeless. And then people like Tori Amos came along and so the climate did
change which helped me.
"I loved Nirvana, I still love Nirvana. Nirvana was honest and I love that
in musicians, actors, any art, I love it in people. I couldn't stand a lot
of the imitation bands that came along and started acting."
In 'Faith Poem' you wrote "This pen is scrawny and hardly seems to be
able to ink out or erase this plague that infests my generation".
"Ahuh. Disillusionment. I finally decided it's not out disillusionment
we're dealing with. Most of us are too young to feel incredibly
disillusioned. It's out parents' disillusionment that we're dealing with,
their loss of their 60's dream. They've handed that onto us. I don't think
any of us would've called ourselves Generation X or angst-ridden. All
that's bullshit, it's some adult that made up a media phrase.
"I remember when I was 18 going: 'What do I do? Do I become a lawyer and
prosecute cigarette companies, or do I join Greenpeace, or do I...' You
have all those ideas when you're young and naive. But I decided I had to
make my own life worth living before I did that. And by doing that I've
actually been able to touch millions more lives."
Some cynic suggested that Lilith Fair was just about marketing.
"That wasn't very intelligent. I don't think he looked into it. Actually,
I think he was being a knee-jerk."
Is it a problem for you being hailed as Lilith's 'sexy' performer?
~I'm not too aware of myself that way, and it's funny because generally
what I've loved about this tour is that Girl Power means something other
than showing your midriff. However, it doesn't mean that you have to be
wearing blue jeans or..."
Dungarees.
"Yeah, dungarees. Haha! You don't need that to be a real women. I think
women are sexy, women are sensual, that's just how women are. It's odd when
I think about it. I've always valued my sweetness and my spark. I never
thought I was very sexy. It's odd for me to think suddenly people now think
I'm sexy because I think generally most girls are raised thinking that
they're kind of dorky. I sure was, with the silly teeth and my nose."
What's wrong with your nose?
"Haha. I dunno I've always found things...And suddenly now that I'm in
front of people they're saying I'm sexy. I'm a little suspicious of it.
It's weird when I'm doing something that I think is really sweet onstage,
like, I was yodelling once...I mean, come on, yodelling's the car salesman
act of music. It was in DC and this girl said: 'I luuurve it when you move
your tongue like that' (salacious tongueing action). I blushed to the
point of... 'Cos it's like 'THAT'S NOT EVEN WHAT I WAS THINKING ABOUT!'
You know it stopped me dead in my tracks, like 'Erk!'. And sometimes when
I'm singing and I hear a guy going 'phwooarrr' I think: 'I'm trying to
communicate and he's just looking at my hips! YOU'RE MISSING THE POINT!
You're looking at the vehicle, and not where I'm going!' I do find it
rather disconcerting."
While Lilith draws the national consciousness away from the cliff's edge
and back into a lush, woman-tended meadow there are, of course, stragglers.
Down at the Molson Amphitheatre, the rain has watered the infertile concrete,
the damp sunflower girl has hugged her heroine Dayna Manning and pressed on
her the wilting petals. Sarah's strung her hammock of harmonies between the
speaker stacks and told the huggers that: "It's a thrill and honour to play
on the same stage as all these wonderful women."
And finally Jewel's there, crowning the night with a formidable display of
fire and ice folk, a little yodelling, and a rocked-out cover of Patti
Smith's 'Dancing Barefoot'. Downing her guitar for the piano ballad
'Foolish Games', she lets one hand dangle next to her tight, pale blue
velvet pants and, as she reaches for the high notes, absentmindedly caresses
her thigh.
Suddenly, a goon in the crowd springs to his feet. The empowering
spirituality's gone right over his baseball cap. He doesn't care that
Jewel cares about health provision and the elderly, reads Ibsen
chronologically and rides a horse called Mingus. He doesn't want to know
what she has to say about the healing properties of sound. He won't care
when Jewel moves on from folk to jazz and big band music.
"I LOVVVE YOU JEWEL!" he roars into the lavender stillness. And 12,000
female heads turn towards the poor Adam throwback with a look of deep
sadness in their eyes. It ain't about the jugs, sonny. It's the hugs, the
hugs, the hugs.
When Jewel was a little girl in Alaska she used to make dandelion wreathes
and give them out to people. "They only lasted for an hour," she says. Now
Sarah, Jewel and friends have made a big one for American Machismo RIP. And
this one's going to endure.
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