Jewel is sure not in Homer anymore. In fact, it’s hard to imagine a
setting more remote from her storied youth in that little town in Alaska,
riding bareback across the homestead, scribbling in her journals, and
yodeling shyly on stage alongside her dad. When Jewel rings me up for
this interview, she’s in a car in Miami, in transit with her band from
sound check to their posh hotel. Seven years after taking the pop charts
by complete surprise with her live-in-the-coffeehouse debut, Pieces
of You, Jewel is so accustomed to high-velocity multitasking that
she just giggles when her car has a minor accident, pausing only to
request that the other driver not be informed he’s having a scrape with
stardom.
This kind of breakneck schedule has taken its toll on Jewel in the
past, though: it’s the reason why her new album, This Way, follows
a two-year sabbatical from the music business. During that time she
channeled her creative energies into acting (Ride with the Devil)
and writing (the journal-based Chasing Down the Dawn, which follows
the best-selling poetry collection A Night without Armor), a
change of pace and medium that has re-energized her songwriting. This
Way captures for the first time on disc something of the spunk and
quick wit that are evident in concert and conversation, with nervy vocals
and playful, often rocking arrangements by Jewel and coproducer Dann
Huff that should help update her lingering image as a hyper-sincere
teenage siren.
Like the little fender bender, Jewel Kilcher seems to take all these
changes and challenges in stride. Only 27 but with more than 20 years
of gigging behind her, she reflects on the musician’s life like the
versatile veteran that she is.
I wanted to start by asking about your high school years studying
music at Interlochen in Michigan. What does that experience mean for
your singing and writing now?
Jewel I didn’t really study music.
I never took music theory. I was studying classical voice, but I couldn’t
read or anything like that. I majored in art as well, and I minored
in dance and acting. As long as I did good during my recitals, my [voice]
teacher would let me skip lessons. So I did maybe a third of the voice
lessons I was supposed to. But I think that was a good thing. I was
starting to write songs, and I enjoyed classical music a lot, but I
enjoyed creating and writing more. I was teaching myself guitar, and
other kids were playing—we were trading chords and things like that.
And I didn’t take the classical thing too seriously. I’m kind of glad.
A certain amount of training is fine, but it can homogenize your style.
One of the nice things about the way I grew up learning music on my
own and from my family is that I learned to have my own style.
And you were also doing singing gigs on the side, right?
Jewel Yeah, I got a partial scholarship,
so just to make the ends meet I was singing in piano bars and things
like that around town. I played with a jazz pianist, and he turned me
on to Bessie Smith and some killer recordings from the 1920s. We did
"St. Louis Blues," a lot of those old standards. We did cool versions
of Bob Dylan songs as well. He was real funky. He taught me a lot.
Your voice takes on so many colors and characters from song to song.
As a kid, did you spend a lot of time imitating voices?
Jewel That’s how I taught myself to
sing. I’d do Ella Fitzgerald until I could imitate her perfectly, and
then I’d do Edith Piaf until I could imitate her perfectly. It taught
me control of my instrument, and it taught me different colors, so that
eventually I could take a little bit of the blue of Billie Holiday,
a little bit of the bright tones from Nanci Griffith, things like that,
and bring them together to get across whatever I needed to emotionally
for any particular song. I get bored easily; you know, I’m a Gemini.
I don’t enjoy hearing singers who sing the same all the time, which
is why Ella Fitzgerald has always appealed to me. Her voice always sounded
like her, but it was really versatile. She could have round low notes
and crisp, bright, agile high notes, and she played around a lot with
it, which is something I’ve always enjoyed doing.
Do you ever have a sense of going into character when you’re singing,
like an actor?
Jewel It’s just whatever mood I’m
in; I don’t feel like I’m stepping into a character or anything that
premeditated. And if you ever see me live, you’ll hear the song 50 different
ways. "Who Will Save Your Soul" is different each night. It’s just improv,
keeping myself interested and trying to push the envelope every night.
In your songs, you often speak through different viewpoints.
Jewel That comes really naturally
to me. One of the first songs I ever wrote was called "Billy," and it
was from the male perspective. A lot of my songs are from a guy’s perspective.
A lot of them are character driven, I think because I came from a literary
background, from reading and writing stories and poetry.
Are there feelings you can access in character that would be hard
to reach otherwise?
Jewel It’s strange, but it’s first
person as well as stepping into another character. I take it through
me. I experience the emotions, and I don’t feel like anything is so
far detached that it’s completely another person and another voice.
Unlike a lot of artists, you embrace your younger work even when
you see its shortcomings. Do you look at writing as more of an ongoing
process than as a series of final products?
Jewel Hmm . . . A lot of songs on
this record are quite old. Some of them I wrote when I was 17. I wrote
"Love Me, Just Leave Me Alone" when I was 21, I think, and "Cleveland"
when I was 20 or 21, so a lot of my old work has stood up. I did work
on the arrangements a bit, but the bulk of the song is the same as when
I wrote it. There’s a lot I learn from my early work. The structure
wasn’t as solid, but I was really creative. I took a lot of chances,
and there weren’t really any rules. There’s a lot of swagger and bravado
that I think is really good. As you learn the craft, sometimes the swagger
and bravado can leave, and it can make songs less interesting but more
technically perfect.
I don’t think it’s my job to perpetuate a myth of perfection as an
artist. I really liked reading [Charles] Bukowski and Anaïs Nin
and authors who would let me see their process, let me see how they
developed. Because as a young kid, I thought, "OK, this is something
I can do. You don’t just start out writing The Grapes of Wrath."
And so I’ve never wanted to look more perfect than I am in the public
eye, because why would you want to alienate people from thinking they
can do what you do? I think a lot of artists like perpetuating the myth
that they are a special chosen race, but it’s not true. There are a
lot of songs I’ve written that aren’t very good, and all you can do
is put out what’s honest and keep going and just focus on development
more than anything. That’s why I put a lot of early poems in my poetry
book: so kids could see that you don’t start out writing sophisticated
stuff, you start out writing really simple stuff.
You’ve said that songs come to you pretty much whole—words and music,
straight out of your head—but on the new record there’s a lot of co-writing.
How does a co-writer fit into the process?
Jewel I write all the lyrics and all
the melodies, but I’m not a very good guitar player. I’m just not very
trained on guitar. So working with somebody like Rick Nowels, I can
go, "No, that’s not quite the voicing I want, I’m wanting something
that’s more dissonant and a little bluer," and he’ll just show me the
chord. It makes it go that much faster for me.
I had never really written with people besides Steve [Poltz, singer-songwriter
and co-writer of "You Were Meant for Me"], and it was really fun. I
was able to do a lot of things that I can’t do on my own.
Over time are your hands becoming more capable of playing what you
hear?
Jewel Oh, not particularly. I started
learning to play piano, just because it’s so much easier to get the
voicings out of it. I still play with different tunings, but I am a
lot better writer then I am a guitar player.
Do the new songs use open tunings?
Jewel Some of them. "Do You Want to
Play?" is a new tuning [D A E A A E]. I just do tunings by ear. To this
day, I have to screw around with "Do You Want to Play?" for a half hour
to get it.
You aren’t credited as a guitarist at all on this record. Are we
hearing you play aside from the two live solo tracks?
Jewel I didn’t play on this record.
I’m not very good in playing solid, solid time. I wanted to do this
record live—the band and my vocal live at the same time—and for me to
be able to sing good enough to keep a vocal take, and then to play good
enough to keep it in the take, it wouldn’t have worked. I would have
had to just play guitar. I add more as a vocalist than as a guitar player,
so I didn’t mind giving somebody else the acoustic guitar to do.
So how close are the recorded guitar parts to the way you wrote
these songs?
Jewel Pretty close. I am a slave driver
with my guitar players in the studio. I have a way of playing that involves
half strumming and half fingerpicking, and I’m very particular about
getting a player to imitate my feel.
Had you ever recorded live with a band before?
Jewel My first record was live, but
it was solo. And then on Spirit, the band recorded while I was
in the control room, and I would do separate days of vocals where I
would listen to the band on my headphones. And it just didn’t work for
me. It made me sing careful and cautious—not to mention there’s no audience,
I am in a quiet room, and it’s really loud in my ears.
So on this record, I kind of insisted [on recording live]. A lot of
producers like everything to be pristine, and it’s not common to have
a producer be cool with a whole band wanting to record a song at once
and have it be a take. But it worked way better for me. We peaked at
the same places, we came down at the same places, we just fed off each
other.
You mention in the liner notes that you hated recording "This Way"
as well as "You Were Meant for Me." Why?
Jewel Those two songs are sincere,
sweet love songs. There’s nothing else to them; they just embrace the
sweetness. I have always preferred songs that are a little more clever,
a little more layered lyrically. So it has been hard for me to find
peace with those songs. They make me feel like a simpleton, and I hate
being corny—it drives me nuts. But with "You Were Meant for Me" I learned
the value of being sincere and being sweet. It does translate and it
works.
Have you found it difficult to play large venues and feel a connection
with the audience?
Jewel It’s really different. Playing
with a band is a different thing than playing solo, too. I still feel
like even in huge venues, playing solo will connect better if you can
get the audience focused on you. But I really like both. There’s nothing
like rocking a stadium—it’s just fun. And who gets to do it? Not many
people, so you feel honored. But I wouldn’t trade theater shows or small
shows to save my life.
Were you always comfortable talking and just being on stage?
Jewel You know, my dad was really
good at it. He was always the one who would tell stories and make up
songs on the spot about audience members. We’d do four hour-long sets,
so we would walk around between sets and talk to everyone. I was really
shy and stiff on stage, real self-conscious. And then I went through
other phases where I’d been on stage so long, at ages 14 or 15, that
it would get way too comfortable—you’re too relaxed and you don’t
have any respect for it. You’re not entertaining, you’re just like in
your living room.
I think when I started playing my own music I came into my own, because
I just get lost in the emotion of the song—I don’t have to think about
it at all. And I grew up singing in so many bars and coffee shops that
I just learned to have a rapport with the audience and talk and tell
stories and joke around, and I began to enjoy that as much as singing.
I have to ask about the multiple references to disco in your latest
songs. Does this reflect a lot of hanging out in discos in recent years?
Jewel [Laughs.] I was traveling
abroad a lot, and discos are really big. On my last record, Spirit,
I think the word flame came up several times. I don’t notice
it when I am writing. Maybe it’s because I read Pablo Neruda, the poet.
There are words in all of his books that come up over and over—words
like blue, foam, rose, dust. They come up in almost every poem,
it’s like his own vocabulary, and I kind of do that in my writing. I
notice that words take on their own meaning for me and I use them repeatedly.
They’re like landmarks in songs that tie them together.
Is the experience of putting together books of poetry and prose
influencing your songwriting in new ways?
Jewel Reading has always influenced
my songwriting. I grew up writing prose and poetry, and I didn’t start
writing songs until I was about 17, so my background in creative writing
is more extensive. Songs like "Jupiter" and "Break Me" are affected
by Pablo Neruda. Things like "Jesus Loves You" are affected by Charles
Bukowski.
I really like writing and drawing, and I get bored doing one thing
too long. It’s like if you are a farmer and you plant the same crop
every year, it depletes the soil; but if you rotate crops it puts nutrients
back in the soil, so when you go back to the same crop, it makes it
stronger. For me, writing is like that. If I switch from songwriting
to poetry, my songwriting gets better in my absence. Whereas if I do
it all the time, it just burns me out. I don’t get any new information
that makes my songwriting better. Sometimes just doing visual art, concentrating
on pure shapes, makes my melody writing better. It makes my phrasing
stronger. It’s funny, but it all has a really good effect on my writing.
How would you compare poetry writing to lyric writing?
Jewel The real difference for me is
the structure. Songwriting has a very defined structure, and it almost
always sounds better when [the lines] rhyme or have some sort of internal
rhyming. If I try to take poetry and put it to music, it doesn’t work,
because it doesn’t fit the structure that a song needs: it needs to
have four lines pretty much, and it should have a chorus that recurs.
Poems don’t revolve around that at all. I can take little teeny lyrics
as long as I fit them into a songwriting structure—like in "Foolish
Games," "you were always so brilliant in the morning," that was out
of a poem. But line for line, I’ve never been able to put a poem to
a song.
For somebody who grew up with so much solitude, you live with an
awful lot of movement and noise now. Is it hard to find the space and
time for writing?
Jewel I’ve been lucky to be fairly
prolific wherever I go. I can write in hotels and airports, but it isn’t
what I enjoy most. I don’t get a lot back out of it. The way I was raised,
writing was just alone, just for the sheer enjoyment of creating, and
to this day I write better that way. I write better when I’m in Texas
on the ranch, being able to go way deep inside myself alone in the quiet.
I access pop culture, but my most socially relevant songs are written
the farthest from society. You get a better perspective that way. And
something I have insisted on during this record is not to tour for more
than two to four weeks without taking a ten- or 12-day break, so that
I can go away and write the way I enjoy writing. It makes me feel nourished
and fulfilled again.
I don’t know if I will have as big sales or as big hits, because I
am not going to be promoting or touring as hard—I certainly will not
make as much money because I won’t be touring as much. But at least
I’m going to have a rhythm that’s sustainable, that makes me feel like
I can do this for the rest of my life.
DISCOGRAPHY
This Way, Atlantic 83519 (2001).
Joy: A Holiday Collection, Atlantic 83250 (1999).
Spirit, Atlantic 82950 (1998).
Pieces of You, Atlantic 82700 (1995).
Excerpted from
Acoustic
Guitar magazine, April 2002, No. 112.
