A little over two years ago, a free-spirited 20 year old singer-
songwriter-surfer named Jewel Kilcher was living in her van, existing
on a diet of carrots and peanut butter. This year, she has a
different kind of life--thanks to a mega-platinum CD, two top ten
singles, sold-out concerts, numerous magazine covers (including
Rolling Stone) and just about all the media attention and fan
adulation one 23-year old woman can handle.
Jewel's supersonic ascent has elements of the classic old-
fashioned American Dream come true. Consider her beginnings: when
she was growing up on a 800-acre homestead near Homer, Alaska, she
lived a rustic life--no running water, no television and plenty of
hard work. At the same time, her parents, a singer-songwriter duo
with showbiz in their blood, welcomed their young daughter on stage
as part of the act while they did the circuit of hotels, bars, and
restaurants.
Thanks to her mother's tutelage, Jewel also got an early
appreciation for poetry. "Through those lessons, I was given a
tool," she says. "After my parents got divorced, I started writing
poetry a lot because I didn't always know how to express myself.
That, to me, is the real beauty of writing: it makes you more
intimate with yourself."
While on a vocal scholarship at Interlochen Fine Arts Academy,
the 16-year old Jewel took up the guitar and began writing songs.
"It was a natural progression," she says. After graduation, she
spent the months soul-searching, traveling, bumming around and
struggling against the 9-5 routine, which led to her residency in a
van parked near a San Diego beach. What began as a weekly stint
singing for free at the Innerchange Coffeehouse grew into something
bigger and soon Jewel was the hit of the Pacific coast, attracting
first local and eventually national attention, which blossomed into a
record contract with Atlantic.
Aside from the enormous success of her debut disc, Pieces Of You,
Jewel has also recently played Dorothy in the stage concert of The
Wizard Of Oz, shown as a cable TV special late last year. This
summer, she'll have a featured song on the soundtrack for Batman and
Robin, as well as a place on the much-anticipated Lilith Fair tour,
alongside Sarah McLachlan, Emmylou Harris, Paula Cole and others.
She'll also be finding time to put the finishing touches on her
second album, due out later this year.
WHEN YOU WERE GROWING UP IN ALASKA, WHAT KINDS OF THINGS INFLUENCED
YOU TO BECOME A SINGER-SONGWRITER?
My father's a songwriter, and I started singing with him and my
mother when I was six. They played in hotels, and put out two
albums. So that was always definitely a factor in my life. It
wasn't a weird thing to write songs. It was a very normal thing,
very easy for anybody to do. Also, my mom had poetry workshops with
us kids--from a very early age, we'd all sit down and write little
poems about the clouds and the birds and the sunshine (laughs).
After my parents got divorced, I started singing in bars and clubs
with my dad when I was eight. So I had a lot of influence that way.
Music was always part of my life, I always sang and I loved it.
CAN YOU RECALL WRITING YOUR FIRST SONG?
It was kind of a blues song (laughs), and it was a lot of work.
I'd noticed that I'd been going around making up songs in my head,
but I never really did anything with them. "Well maybe I'll just pay
attention to one of them," I thought. But it was hard, because I'm
not a trained musician and I didn't know format or that a verse is
four stanzas. I only had an ear and intuition, so I had to kind of
invent a method for remembering, I made up a little music chart on
how to remember notes (laughs).
WERE THERE PEOPLE YOU LISTENED TO AS A KID THAT SHAPED YOUR WRITING?
I never meant to write songs. I felt like I was a singer, so I
listened to Ella Fitzgerald a lot. There was a big potato patch we
had to weed everday after school--it was about an acre--and I had
this little broken tape player and I'd listen to Ella all day long.
To this day, I just love her voice more than any voice in the world.
Now that I think about it, something that really influenced my
writing was that in ninth grade, I got to take a philosophy class. I
never really thought I was stupid by any means, but before that, I
never really thought. I realized that so few kids were ever taught
to think. Being able to read Plato and Kant really taught me how to
think and it gave me a method to articulate and follow through with
ideas so your brain didn't just slip off into whatever little zone it
slips into (laughs). That changed my writing immensely. It made me
a very articulate writer at a very young age, and it made me
incredibly watchful.
I'VE READ THAT SOME OF YOUR SONGS GROW OUT OF POEMS. IS THAT A WAY
YOU LIKE TO WRITE?
Each song is a mystery. I don't know how I write. I started
playing guitar about five years ago and I didn't mean to, but I guess
since I've written so much poetry and that kind of thing that it was
sort of a natural process. When you pick up guitar and learn some
chords, you're naturally going to put some words to it. I'm just
getting old enough that I'm starting to see cycles in my life
(laughs), it's kind of exciting (laughs). I'm noticing that poems I
wrote when I was sixteen are now surfacing in my songs. I feel that
my better songs are from that, when I sit down with my journal and I
really put my brain to work, instead of just rhyming.
WHEN YOU'RE BEGINNING A SONG, DO YOU DO A LOT OF FREE ASSOCIATION?
It's the most mysterious process I've ever been involved in
(laughs). And now so much rides on it, not only my dream, but a lot
of people's careers and a lot of money is going into it. It's kind
of horrifying because I don't know how the hell I do it (laughs).
But I do free associate in the early stages. More than anything, as
long as I pick up my guitar and start playing and don't criticize
myself, then something is bound to come out. I guess that's the
hardest part for me, not over analyzing what I do and just letting it
come out.
DO YOU HAVE ANY METHODS TO SIDESTEP THE CRITIC?
I guess every time I hear it, I just say, "Shut up" (laughs). I
have to tell myself every other thought, which is a lot, "Just be
quiet, Jewel." I have a friend who I really respect as a songwriter
and the thing I respect most about him is that he doesn't judge it.
Even retarded babies deserve to live, you know? It's true, you have
no right to judge your own songs and it's hard with the pressure that
you have to write a hit, or something weird like that. Is this a hit?
That's the worst thing you can do. If I just sit down and write,
just follow a createve pattern and be true to it, it' going to be
its own cool thing. That's the best you can do.
DO YOU WRITE A LITTLE BIT EVERY DAY?
Yeah, I think like that all the time. My brain is always kind
of engaged in that, and I'm always watching people and I'm always
absorbing.
TELL ME ABOUT THE SONG "I'M SENSITIVE."
It was a song that I thought was really dumb. I have this thing
about cheesy, like I think cheesy is bad because cheesy is simple-as
though simplicity were wrong. I wrote that song for myself, and I
write very few for myself. And I started that song off saying, "I
think I might die today" (laughs). I had a really bad experience
with this one band member, and things were just getting to me. You
know this whole business that they say, the whole cynical, jaded
thing. I saw a recycling bin and I rememberd that someone once told
me that the power of the brain is to recycle thought. Like a water
filter, we can take a negative thought and turn it out as something
more beautiful. It really just turned the song around. It could
have been a really good hardcore song, but it turned right around and
I thought, "Well, more than anything we have to keep our faith, we
have to keep our hopes up." I thought I'll just write this for me,
no one has to hear it. But I happened to play it as a new song just
to try it out when I was recording live. When I heard it, I
thought, "Wow, I really like it." And people's reaction have been
really great, so I find it kind of shocking (laughs).
I LIKE THE LINE "WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE SO COMPLICATED?"
It's true. Things can be so much simpler (laughs). A lot of us
just crave simplicity, and we forget that it can be. I'm just trying
to take my reality with me wherever I go now and just say, "It's
going to be simple."
WHERE DID THE SONG "ADRIAN" COME FROM?
I don't know if you've heard of a band called The Rugburns. The
guy who writes for them is Steve Poltz, who I mentioned earlier--the
guy I really respect as a songwriter. He's as brilliant as John
Prine, Townes Van Zant and Bob Dylan, as far as I'm concerned. I'm
very lucky to have him as a mentor and as a friend. He and I write
songs together, and that was one we wrote together. I grew up
writing a lot of short stories, just making things up about people
and really getting into it. So that's all that was. He said, "Adrian
came home again last summer and things haven't been the same..." and
we went from there.
HOW ABOUT "PAINTERS"?
When I was studying philosophy in school, I was really fascinated
with the idea of immortality, and what made us immortal and why
wasn't I, and how could I be? (laughs) My favorite reading was
Plato's The Symposium. In it, he talks about how perhaps through
love and beauty we reach immortality. And that's something that
really stuck with me, because it was kind of a tangible, believable
thing. I guess I believe that through art, if you do it consciously
and with enough intent and passion, it will probably not only be the
most honest expresssion of yourself, but if you put that much life
into it, it does breathe. That's what the song's about for me,
people who put that much passion into their work.
"ANGELS STANDING BY"?
I believe in angels. I believe in that my loneliest moments, I
haven't really been alone. I must have a driving angel, because I
drive so bad that I should be dead (laughs). It's also written for
a friend that I'm not around very much, especially if I'm in a
relationship or traveling. It's kind of about that. I know that
I've gone through much of my life feeling alone and more than
anything, I just want people to know that we aren't.
NAME A FEW SONGS YOU WISH YOU WROTE.
Oh, there's so many. I wish I wrote a lot by Cole Porter. They
have such craftsmanship. When kids were listening to Cyndi Lauper
and Madonna, I was listening to the Cole Porter Songbook by Ella
Fitzegerald, and I think of that song "I Get A Kick Out Of You."
Also, "Too Darn Hot." Those songs were innocent, with really subtle
relationship play, but all in a really clean way. It was great
writing.
WHAT WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO ACCOMPLISH AS A SONGWRITER?
Just to keep writing (laughs). I want to be better at it, because
I don't think I'm very good yet. More than anything, I think
songwriting is a vehicle for me, it's a tool. I studied marble
carving, dance, drawing, and all that, and I think I was best at
wriitng because I've been doing it for so long. It's like a vehicle
to touch people, and it's a very accepted medium. So if anything, I
just want to refine the art of it and use it as a better and better
tool to just be with people.