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An Audience with Jewel
The Singer/Songwriter Prefers the Stage to the Studio
 Listen to Bob Edwards' report.
 Hear a selection of Jewel's songs.
July 1, 2002 -- Jewel says she prefers performing before a live audience to the sterile environment of the recording studio. It's no wonder: Jewel Kilcher took the stage when she was eight, yodelling with her father in Alaska, where she grew up.
"I'm so thankful for those (early) years, on so many levels," the singer-songwriter, author and actress tells Morning Edition host Bob Edwards in an interview. "My dad was an excellent showman. He really knew how to work a crowd and never lost a crowd."
Learning from that experience, by age 18 she was comfortable standing before large audiences -- even some that weren't sympathetic. "I was alone with an acoustic guitar at the height of grunge opening for Bauhaus, a Goth band, and able to still gain some fans out of it and kind of keep going," she says.
But, still the crowds -- especially when she opens for other acts -- can be rough. "There's been a lot of times I've gone out on stage knowing I was a bit of a lamb to the slaughter. Opening isn't easy. You're dealing with really word-driven music. Opening for Crazy Horse and Neil Young, (whose fans) may not want to hear you alone with your guitar... but you persevere, you try not to act spoiled and you still try and do your best and win people over."
Jewel's albums, starting with her smash 1995 debut, Pieces of You -- which was propelled by the hits "Who Will Save Your Soul," You Were Meant for Me" and "Foolish Games" -- have sold more than 23 million copies.
Her recently released third album, This Way, was constructed with Jewel's goals in mind -- eclectic musical styles and a raw, not overproduced, sound. The songs on this CD include "Jesus Loves You," which Jewel says is "about fame" and the idea that "the only time you're worth something is if you're on a magazine cover."
Jewel laments the pressures placed on today's youth who are exposed to television shows like Spring Break, with its "half-dressed women gallivanting around and young 12-year-olds wearing push-up bras. There's such a tremendous hunger in youth to understand how to live in the world, how to actualize dreams. And there's a tremendous desperation... instead of kids really being given skills to address it, they are sort of given a drug on television. And it's a kind of mindlessness that I think is very dangerous, especially considering the times we're in."
"I'm around kids all the time and I see a tremendous longing that's just unanswered," she says.
For Jewel, the main challenge as a songwriter has been to learn to maintain the "sheer inventiveness and curiosity" that she began with. She says her early writing "wasn't about craft, it wasn't about hits, or any of those kind of manufactured things. And I've had to learn how to maintain that and sort of learn to do something organic in a really inorganic environment. I've never been very good in the studio. I've never been very comfortable singing with no audience..."
Other Resources
• Read an excerpt from Jewel's book, Chasing Down the Dawn.
• Visit Jewel's official Web site for tour information, song samples and videos.
• Read a biography of Jewel, watch a video interview and read news about the artist.
• See a discography and learn more about Jewel.
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