Jewel’s Journey to Now (Part 1 of 4)

Jewel (Kilcher) has defined success on her own terms. With a fascinating and unusual backstory, the Alaska native sailed against the prevailing musical tides of ‘90s grunge, proving that there’s always a place for sensitive singer-songwriters (one of her early songs even bore the title, “I’m Sensitive”). At the height of her fame, after a pair of blockbuster-selling albums, she took a break, and when she returned, she did what she had always done: make the kind of music that she wanted to make. Now, nearly 30 years after releasing her debut album (1995’s Pieces of You), Jewel is embarking on a co-headlining tour with another musical star, Melissa Etheridge. In this interview, Jewel talks with me about her beginnings, her fame, and the lessons she has learned along the way.

You started out playing in Anchorage. When you were young, what kind of lessons did you learn from that experience that you find are still useful today?

I learned a lot. I started singing with my dad when I was five, for dinner shows for tourists. So I learned to be professional by the time I was eight. I knew I had the bug. I didn’t think that would lead to a career, but I knew I loved it. It was intellectually fascinating; it was like a puzzle: “How do I get my voice to do this? How do I get it to change?” I learned to yodel at the time, and then my dad and I became a duet, and we started singing in bars . Those were five-hour sets with a lot of cover songs. My dad was a songwriter, so we did his originals mixed in there.

Musically, I was singing and listening to my dad sing. I sang harmony mostly, on some of the best songs of all time. I wasn’t raised listening to the Eagles or Elvis or the Rolling Stones, but I grew up singing harmony to their songs. I grew up hearing my dad. And having sung that many songs caused me to inherently understand storytelling and song structure. It taught me to be good with crowds. My dad never wrote a set list; he just read the audience. He would improvise lyrics to keep us entertained. He’d make up lyrics about the bald guy who was dancing, and make up stuff about people not listening.

But that taught me to improvise and to not be too precious. It taught me to read a crowd, and [how] to deal with drunks, which is a really critical part of our job. It taught me a lot of professionalism, to work very hard. Doing long sets like that teaches and trains your voice to have a lot of stamina. And it really taught me what I still think of as a blue collar attitude toward this job. I’m an entertainer. I’m not curing cancer. I am hired to do a job. And I think that has always kept me very grounded.

Tell me about how those experiences informed your adult career.

When I became a professional at 18, I had to start opening for Bauhaus and Belly and Catherine Wheel; I remember opening for the Ramones, too. I was a solo acoustic folk singer with a guitar in front of some unkind fan bases that did not want to hear songs like “I’m Sensitive” and “Pieces of You.”

All of that bar background made sure that I fought for people listening to me. You know, even street singing taught me that I am not background music. I want your attention. I am unwilling to let you walk by or talk while you eat. I have to have your attention, and that means I have to earn it. And so I will try a million tricks and strategies, like holding a long note out for a really long time or stopping in the middle of a song because you’re losing their attention and you stopping makes them say, “Did she just stop in the middle of a song?”

And then if you can find the right song, you’ve got everybody’s attention. If I can find the right song that matches the mood and where the crowd is, I can have them that way. There are a lot of tools, and you learn to be resilient and dig deep. And if it comes down to it, just flat out tell the audience to be quiet; kick people out of the audience, saying, “I get that you’re here not to see me. I understand. You may all go out in the lobby. I will wait for all of you to leave. And if there’s three of you left, I will sing for three of you.” I was opening for Bob Dylan, and that ended up being what made him mentor me, when he heard I was kicking people out of his shows.

Being an opening act is trial by fire, because people paid good money to see the headliner, not you. But I’m sure that there were at least some Ramones fans who were like, “You know what? She’s good.”

You know, it was actually one of my favorite shows because we played a shed [outdoor amphitheater with covered stage], and when I went on, the shed was empty. There were only people out on the lawn, so I was singing to an empty shed and tiny people way out on the grass. So I was like, “Hey, everybody, I know you don’t have tickets for up here, but nobody’s here. Come forward. Come stand in front of me.” And the guards wouldn’t let them! And I was like, “F the guards! Come on, get up here. Are we punk rock or are we not punk rock?” I got the whole grass area to mob over the seats and come up to see me, and afterwards we were like, “Wow, that was punk rock!”

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