This One's About Me. And This One...

May 1999 Q, March 4, 1999, By David Sheppard

This One's About Me. And This One...

At The Palais, Melbourne, Australia

Alone on a scarlet-lit stage the tiny woman in the over-sized Stetson is wiggling her be-denimed posterior in time to the bump-and-grind of her low-slung guitar riffing. On and on she goes, quivering booty aimed resolutely stalls-wards, hammering out primitive ZZ Top chops with the remorseless swagger of the small-town show-off let loose in a local music store.

Slowly the hip-swivelling rocker is joined by an ambling retinue of dark-clad figures who mass around the various instruments that litter the stage; and, as she notices their arrival, the petite hat act reluctantly halts her voracious twanging. But there is no respite. For even as her final clanging chord fades away, another cacophonous din commences, the apocalyptic screeching only Formula One racing cars can make. Jewel and her six-piece band kick in to reduce even the over-revving endeavours of Schumacher, Irvine and co to a background buzz. Melbourne, right now, is a very noisy place to be.

For 24-year-old multi-million-selling, 20-gallon-hat-wearing troubadour Jewel Kilcher being a big noise is all in a day's work. And while she and her band soundcheck at this Ocean-side Victorian music hall, the eyes, not to mention ears, of the sporting world are concentrated on nearby Albert Park and practice sessions for the Australian Grand Prix. The town is buzzing with anticipation and though local taxi drivers are better informed about Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve than about visiting Swiss-American folk pop divas, the city's bookshops are full of Jewel's two-million-selling poetry volume A Night Without Armour and Spirit, while the follow-up to her all-conquering debut Pieces Of You, remains a fixture in the upper echelons of the Australian charts.

Soundcheck over, cars garaged, Jewel, shakes her blonde mane free from the headgear, nestles in a front row seat alongside Q to chew the fat about touring ensemble after five years spent emoting to the world with just an acoustic guitar and an ambitious streak as wide as Alaska for company.

"This is a breeze compared to the solo years," she confides, flashing that wonky-toothed smile (she prefers not to have it fixed, perhaps fearing crown-in-the-Jewel puns). "It's so much less lonely now. We get along and have a lot of fun together, which makes a change from doing a show, getting straight back in the car and heading off."

But surely for someone with time-consuming passions for sculpture, poetry and acting (a part in Ang Lee's forthcoming Ride With The Devil), the mega-tour must seem a mite stifling?

"All my heroes - Bob Dylan, Neil Young, the Stones - toured constantly. It's the intimate contact that counts. The strict promotional bit is a drag sometimes, but a necessary evil. Basically I love doing shows. Touring is like being an astronaut though: essentially it's about where you are in your head. It's a unique privilege to be able to get up there and say something to people every night."

Three months into the Spirit world tour, tonight's show at the Palais - a crumbling mirage on the palm-strewn St. Kilda beach for which the term "faded grandeur" might have been coined - confirms Jewel's penchant for chat. Interspersed with consummate readings of her oeuvre, the 3,000-strong, mainly female audience are treated to extended monologues essayed with the élan and timing of a seasoned raconteuse. One particularly engaging yarn concerns a jaunt to Mexico with guitarist Steve Poltz that begins as a whale-watching holiday and closes with the duo entangled in a police drug bust. It's hilarious, partly because its urbane, streetwise delivery seems so incongruous coming from a woman notorious for the preciousness of her lyrics, a good deal of which make Alanis Morissette's sound like Lemmy by comparison.

And it's those lyrics that most have turned out for tonight. Right from the songstrel's discreet entrance - or as discreet as it's possible for anyone to be wearing leather trousers and a vest - the Melbournites sing along to practically every syllable with a restrained reverence that evolves into football chant accompaniment on the hits. They're also keener to clap along in rhythm than any audience since the demise of The Good Old Days.

After the practically a cappella opening, Near You Always, the band slink on and launch into the country-ish Deep Water with Doug Pettibone's spiralling electric guitar freeing a mic-wielding Jewel to prowl the stage-front and throw kittenish shapes that involve catching her navel in the spotlight glare. It's the full rock-chic shtick.

Spirited folk-rock workings of the homily-laden What's Simple Is True and melodious paean to self-improvement Hands follow, highlighting Jewel's coruscating vocal arsenal, capable of swinging from helium-like soprano to feisty Patsy Cline baritone in the space of a bar. The emotive force of those vocal chords would melt even the hardest antipodean heart, not that there are many of those tonight. In fact, as many gravelish male voices as votive female ones repeat the "we love you Jewel" mantra that punctuates proceedings. Even the odd old-school wolf whistle gets chucked in, notably after a vamping Jewel purrs the puckish, "I could spend my life travelling the length of your body," line that distinguishes the downright steamy Jupiter.

After a short solo interlude, during which she takes and plays requests from the crowd, the singer who's worked them like a circus barker all night, invites the throng to vacate their seats. They dutifully respond by stampeding to the front for a scorching Down So Long - Steven George's florid electric piano to the fore - followed by a new song, Love Me Just Leave Me Alone. It's as immediately familiar as the ersatz Texan boogie number Jewel was banging out at the soundcheck and it unfurls into blistering bluesiness that fans of her stark early work would barely recognise. Likewise the jovial reggaefied makeover of Who Will Save Your Soul? but not the signature jaw-dropping, heckler confounding speed-yodelling that rounds off the set to tumultuous applause. Australia seems to have taken to Jewel.

"I really like it here, it's like the best bits of England and the States. People are unaffected. It reminds me of Alaska too, all the wide open spaces." And what of the world tour, is it playing catch-up with a 10-million-selling debut?

"My goal is not to sell so many million records every time. When you get too concerned with sales it starts making you write backwards. You can't be cheerleader every year."

With a straightforward live show is she trying to shake the mythology of tortured sub-Arctic melancholia that surrounds her?

"All that raised by wolves, yodelling at the moon stuff is funny. It's not so bad in Europe but in the States I still get the whole freak thing attached to me. Alaska's an odd place, the rest of the States doesn't really get it: they can't understand someone coming from a working rural background, they assume you have hippy parents. They have no concept of farmers or where their food comes from."

Touring so much are her boyfriends destined to be road-widowers?

"It's funny, the better known I've become, the more men seem to want to take care of me. Before, I was just so self-sufficient. Who knows, maybe one day I'll want to have kids and slow down, but at the moment I'm enjoying the pace of my life."

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