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Loner becomes Jewel in the crown of folk
Mike Davis talks to a gem of a singer-songwriter.
After five years of sharing a stage with little more than an electric guitar and a microphone ("I had to be affordable to the label," she says), American singer-songwriter Jewel is currently touring with a six-piece band.
The folk poet has turned rock chick, complete with leather trousers. And, she jokes, a superhero cape.
There are new arrangements, there's some rocking out, and people tend to stand up more. And when she comes off stage, she gets to share the buzz with the guys in the band rather than just a guitar technician saying "good one".
Other than that, the new Jewel is pretty much the same Jewel. Just several million more album sales down the line and writing songs more reflective of the maturer woman she is, rather than the somewhat precious early-twentysomething whose 1995 debut, Pieces Of You, became a record business phenomenon.
If you wrote Jewel's story as a movie script, it would be thrown out as too unbelievable. Born in Alaska in May, 1974, she comes from a fascinating creative background. The Kilcher family are actually Swiss, grandparents Yule (a singer and engineer) and wife Ruth emigrating to the Alaskan wilderness, raising eight kids, all to some extent or another either musical, literary or artistic.
Growing up in Anchorage, music was part of the Kilcher family daily life. Homesteader, social worker, logger, teacher, her father, Atz, and (now ex) wife Nedra sang around Alaskan clubs, as a duo and sometimes with their kids. After the divorce, while Nedra moved to California, Jewel stayed with her father, performing as a duo round the local bars, hotels and Eskimo villages, and learning to yodel, still a highlight finale to her stage show.
Then, at 17, she won a two-year scholarship to an arts academy in Michigan before moving to California, living in a VW van on San Diego beaches, mum in a matching vehicle alongside. Around early 1993 she began playing three to four hour sets of original material at the Inner Change Coffee House.
Good reviews and a growing audience followed, leading to her being signed to Atlantic, securing a support slot on a Bob Dylan concert, and touring across states playing her songs. Her debut album, recorded live at the Inner Change, was released in February 1995, and she became the first artist in 15 years to get her photo on the cover of Time magazine. Although initially slow to take off, the album suddenly exploded in 1997, having now notched up some 10 million sales in the US alone.
Listening to it, you can trace the Kilcher family's deep immersion in folk-country and, in the sense of space it often evokes, suggestions of the influence of the landscape in which she was raised.
"I can't really determine what part of my upbringing shaped my creative capacities," she offers. "But it certainly had an impact on what I am as a person. What moves me, what I draw strength from, is all relative to where I was raised. I had an insane family, I love them dearly, but they're psychotic as well! My grandfather was a linguist, and really into the origin of language. He had me read Nietzsche when I was ten.
"It didn't help me fit in very well at school but I think it made me a certain kind of person. I was a real book nerd and any music that I did listen to tended to be people like Piaf rather than pop culture. I was always fascinated with words, writing and reading. And through my family and the people who would come visit, I was always subjected to different languages, cultures, books, religions."
Spirit, her long-delayed second album, is a work of both musical and emotional maturity way beyond her debut. But although there was a lengthy gap between the two albums (a partially recorded follow-up was scrapped when Pieces began to take off), it didn't mean she wasn't busy.
Indeed, she's become fairly prolific in supplying songs (covers and originals) for films, her credits including Clueless, The Crossing Guard directed by close friend Sean Penn, I Shot Andy Warhol (a cover of Donovan's Sunshine Superman), John Travolta's Phenomenon and, although it never made it into the movie, Romeo & Juliet.
Being a jobbing songwriter might seem strange for someone whose own work is so personal and from the heart, but for Jewel it's all part of the creative diversity.
"I like the challenge of writing for something specific. It's not as hard as I thought it would be. I can't write a poem to a topic but songs are no problem, and it's nice to have an outlet that doesn't have to represent me as an artist. It makes you a lot more free to explore different styles."
And music isn't the only thing she's exploring. Later this year, she makes her movie debut co-starring in Ride With The Devil, the latest offering from director Ang Lee, the man behind Sense & Sensibility and The Ice Storm. And if this just sounds like another rock artist with a hankering to get into movies, the truth is that Jewel's dramatic ambitions date back to school.
While learning to sing opera at the Michigan Academy, she was desperate to get into the drama programme. School policy said no, Kilcher determination said yes - to the extent of getting the policy officially changed. Acting has always been on the cards, but timing is everything.
"I had to focus on my music, and I couldn't jeopardize that by quitting and doing a film. I had to wait until my career was stable. It really was a case of jumping in at the deep end. And the pressures were immense. With music, if I fail then it's just me. But in a movie, if you do a bad job you let all the others down too."
And as if songs, movies and a best selling book of poetry (A Night Without Armour) weren't enough, she and mother/manager Nedra have also found time to pour their energies into Higher Ground For Humanity, a non-profit foundation focusing on youth, education, environment, music and alternative healing projects. Among those HGH supports are an alternative health clinic in New Delhi and a foundation providing support to families whose children have died.
"This isn't all about music," she says with undisguised conviction. "Music is a wonderful expression and I love it, but the larger responsibility is to use the blessings of our lives to benefit humanity."
Music, acting, spirituality, hippie sensibility, good cause crusades - forget those Joni Mitchell comparisons, could Jewel perhaps be Alaska's answer to John Denver? Her laugh rings clear over the phone.
"Well, someone called me the Mariah Carey of the folk world. I always seem to be portrayed as a naive 25-year-old trying to impress adults. What can I say!"
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