No longer a Jewel in the rough

By Jane Stevenson -- Toronto Sun, Nov 19, 1999

Pieces Of You brought singer fame, wealth and a sense of perspective

The phone rings, I quickly identify myself and -- surprise, surprise -- it's a much-in-demand pop star calling 20 minutes early for a scheduled interview.

"Jewel Kilcher," blurts out a female voice down the line from New York in response to my caffeine-fuelled greeting.

"You're early," I say. "Just let me rewind my tape. I'm listening to Marilyn Manson."

Jewel, the multi-platinum-selling pop-folk vixen from Alaska, chuckles: "Well, you know, we're basically the same artist."

So the 24-year-old singer-songwriter, who released her much-anticipated sophomore album, Spirit, this week, has a sense of humour. Given the incredibly earnest Jewel tale thus far, it's a little surprising.

The now familiar story, which she often recited at her concerts, is one of a young girl raised by folk-singing parents in a log cabin in Homer. Jewel wound up living in her car and waitressing until enormous fame and fortune came her way following her 1995 debut, Pieces Of You, which contained songs she wrote when she was a teenager.

"Student artwork should never be critiqued with the big guys, you know," says Jewel.

"I didn't take my first record too seriously. I don't take anything I do overly seriously and to see the people taking it seriously was kind of amusing to me, because all you do with student art is you say, 'Hmm, they have potential if they keep going.' And that's how I always think of myself. I don't think of myself as, like, having arrived yet at all."

Maybe not, but Pieces Of You was the album that just wouldn't quit. Because of tour commitments, the release of a second album was postponed for so long that it was eventually scrapped.

"The record is not me now," she says. "And so I had to go in and make a whole new record that was who I am now. Some of the songs are on Spirit but not the same versions."

Pieces, in case you forgot, eventually sold over 10 million copies and garnered Jewel a best new artist Grammy nomination and the cover of Time. Now the music indutry is lumping Jewel's Spirit in with Alanis Morissette's recently-released Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie as the two sophomore albums to watch.

"To me selling too many records was a freakish side effect of doing what I do, and it won't always be like that and that's fine," says Jewel. "I don't think that's the goal either. The goal is to try and keep your music alive and to keep doing good art."

Spirit wound up being produced by frequent Madonna collaborator Patrick Leonard, who Jewel thought could make it "commercial and really poetic at the same time." (Canadian producer Daniel Lanois was also in the running.)

Meanwhile, the attention that came with the success of Pieces, which required "a huge adjustment" on Jewel's part, is addressed in some of the new songs.

So far, she says she's bought a new home with her songwriting royalites but still has the same "beat up Volvo with limp antenna."

In addition, Jewel has become something of a one-woman multi-media show. She will make her movie debut next spring as an 18-year-old bride in Ang Lee's Civil War drama Ride With The Devil and this summer published a poetry collection called A Night Without Armor.

This is where her ability to laugh at herself comes in handy. An NYU graduate has already parodied Jewel's poetry with a collection called A Night Without Armor II: The Revenge. "I think it's funny," says Jewel. "I'm not too precious."

Still to come is a still-untitled book of short stories in July, and maybe even more avant-garde forms of expression when Jewel's year-long Spirit tour comes to North America next summer.

"I wouldn't mind moving into performance art," she says.

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