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Wherever 20-year-old Jewel Kilcher travels, she takes along a Tupperware container filled with soil dug from the 800-acre Alaskan homestead where she was raised. It's a reminder of the ground where she and her brothers played, where she worked long days haying and gardening, where she rode horses. It's also where Jewel was first introduced to music and to the perfection of the natural world.

Growing up on the Kilcher homestead luxuries were few. There was no shower, no TV, and the bathroom was an icy outhouse. But courtesy of her parents, an Alaskan singer/songwriter duo, there was always music and singing on the homestead. At age six, Jewel began joining her parents onstage and on the road, and soon her yodeling routine was a regular feature of the show. Later, when her parents divorced, she continued to tour with her father, singing in bars and restaurants for much of the next seven years.

Jewel's love of poetry took root at an early age. Her mother taught the three children about art, poetry, and music. "Through those lessons, I was given a tool," says Jewel. "After my parents got divorced, I started writing poetry a lot because I didn't always know how to express myself.

Kilcher spent her junior and senior years of high school at Michigan's Interlochen Fine Arts Academy on a vocal scholarship. It was at Interlochen, in her senior year, that Jewel took up the guitar and first began to write songs.

After graduation, Jewel joined her mother in San Diego for sun and surfing. "Despite my surroundings, this was a difficult time for me," she relates. "I felt a lot of social pressure to figure out what I was gonna do with the rest of my life. I had no desire to go to college but I also felt no peace in traveling or just bumming around. I got a number of dead-end jobs...got fired a couple of times. I was frightened and a little depressed. The idea of spending my life in a 9-to-5 job made me feel trapped and hopeless."

To be free from those pressures, Jewel decided to give up full-time work and live in her van. Happily camped out, living on a shoestring budget and a diet of carrots and peanut butter, she began to live her dream. She surfed, wrote poetry, and hung out in coffeeshops writing songs. Local musicians shared their gigs with her and soon the owner of the Innerchange Coffeehouse offered her a weekly gig.

To Jewel's surprise, ever-increasing crowds packed their way into the intimate Pacific Beach venue. Something was up. Her shows were consistent sell-outs and eventually local writers began to stop by. "Her voice is many things, all of them beautiful," wrote San Diego's Slamm magazine. "When she opens up, the sound is crystalline and pure."

Much of Jewel's music is about reaching out and making a personal connection, unfiltered and immediate. The 14 songs that make up "PIECES OF YOU" possess stark honesty and keen insight balanced by an ability to absorb life's realities and tell a story that somehow makes sense of it all. At its core, the album's instinctive wisdom is amply reflected in "Who Will Save Your Soul," the first single. As with many of Jewel's songs, the lyrics come from observing the people around her. "One of my favorite things to do is sit and watch people walking by," she says. "I remember the details of what people look like - their expressions, their posture, their words. I make up their lives to be tragic or boring or brilliant or normal."

Since the release of her first album, Jewel has branched out and toured the country. She has been on television shows such as Conan, Leno and Letterman. She performed at the 1997 Inaugural Ball. She was awarded the Best New Artist in the American Music Awards and the Best New Female Artist in the Blockbuster Entertainment Awards. She was also nominated for 2 Grammy's.

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