The rarest Jewel
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.
This is the personal perspective that Jewel brings to her Atlantic debut
release, "PIECES OF YOU." Produced by Ben Keith (Patsy Cline, Neil Young's
"HARVEST" & "HARVEST MOON"), the album features live solo acoustic
performances recorded at a San Diego coffeehouse, along with tunes recorded
at Neil Young's Redwood Digital studio with support from his longtime band,
The Stray Gators.
Growing up on the Kilcher homestead - settled outside the town of Homer
by Jewel's immigrant Swiss grandfather - 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.
That, to me, is the real beauty of writing: it makes you more intimate
with yourself."
Kilcher spent her junior and senior years of high school at Michigan's
Interlochen Fine Arts Academy on a vocal scholarship. "My two years there
were a turning point," says Jewel. "I saw a bigger world. I immersed myself
in everything -
drama, dance, sculpture,
music." 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."
Possessed of a vibrant imagination fueled by the vastness of the Alaskan
wilderness, the musical instincts of a life-long performer, and the courage
to cut her own path in life, Jewel embodies a singular poetic voice. But
if you listen closely enough to "PIECES OF YOU," you may well discover
a piece of yourself lying somewhere within the songs.
(taken
from the Atlantic homepage)
UPON MOVING INTO MY VAN
by Jewel Kilcher
Joy. Pure Joy. I am
What I always wanted
to grow up and be
Things are becoming
more of a dream with
each waking day
the heavy brows of Daily Life
are becoming encrusted
with glitter
and the Shaking Finger
of consequence is
beginning to giggle
Grumpy old men
have wings
Bums sport halos
and everyday dullness
has begun to breathe
as I remember the
incredible lightness
of living