Jewel Kilcher

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THE SHAPING OF JEWEL
THE STREET-SMART OPTIMISM OF POP'S NEW GODDESS
RISES FROM A LIFE OF NEAR POVERTY IN ALASKA AND SAN DIEGO

The Many Faces of 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.

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

-Courtesy of The Official Jewel Site-

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