Pictures by Emilie

"We are small, but we are might," remarked the Alaskan singer-songwriter at London's Mean Fiddler in 1997. Mighty, indeed. Jewel Kilcher was hardly known here, but Pieces Of You had already sold five million (nearer 10m, now) back home. It's a collection of songs about 'love and hope, anger and wasted lives, bigotry and redemption'. The follow-up, Spirit, features the 'G'-word and more heartfelt sentiments about love and human potential.
Jewel, dismissed then as a 'minor-league Sheryl Crow' (Independent), has been compared with Joni Mitchell, Suzanne Vega and Rickie Lee Jones, but her lyrics are all her own, born of a chequered history. Father Atz, Vietnam vet, social worker and part-time songwriter, won custody of the eight year old Jewel when he and mother Nedra divorced, and sought escape from grinding poverty by taking his daughter on the road as a duo. Of which, says Jewel, "I sang my brains out" in an effort to please him. It left its mark. 'Gonna rip your heart out the way you did mine, Daddy/Go ahead and psychoanalyse that', she sings in 'Daddy'.
At 16, she found her mother in San Diego, endured years of waitressing, developed a kidney infection which still plagues her. She and Nedra moved into a camper van so that she could quit work and concentrate on the songs. Then the long-sought deal and the album - which radio stations refused to play because it was 'uncommercial'. "I thought, oh yeah? I'm gonna tour my brains out just to prove you wrong!" So she did.