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Reflecting Jewel: New book, album draw upon alt-folkster’s time spent homelessby HOLLY GLEASON
Jewel Kilcher needs me to wait. Ten minutes into our interview, she has something very important to attend to.
“My son’s driving up,” she says in her earth’n’honey speaking voice. “Let me go say ‘hi’ to him superquick.”
Kilcher—known to the world as the single-monikered post modern alternative folkie Jewel—shot to fame 20 years ago with the yearning “You Were Meant for Me,” the tugging “Who’ll Save Your Soul,” and the sultry “Foolish Games.” In spite of the glamour and global celebrity, the girl-living-out-of-her-van when she was discovered singing in a San Diego coffee house, the depths and details of the songwriter/singer’s life were never truly explored.
With the publication of her unflinching memoir Never Broken and her new album Picking Up the Pieces, a return to the more guitar-oriented folk that brought her to international acclaim, the barely post-teen turned superstar’s grit, determination, and hellish upbringing reinforces how powerful the decision to stop the interview to greet her son truly is.
“For the first time in 40 years, I don’t have any trauma to deal with in my life,” she explains. “It was the first time to draw a safe breath. Looking back, I was able to express a lot of the trauma.
“My outward image didn’t always line up with how I felt inside. The takeaway when you’re parents didn’t take care of you is that you’ve done something wrong—or you’re not worthy of that [kind of love and protection].
“I kinda had a revelation [writing the book and making Pieces]: What kept me safe wasn’t my hyper-vigilance, but how I handled pain. You can’t outrun pain. I never avoided it. I didn’t medicate it. I credit the outdoors and writing as the things that helped me through it.
“Because how you ingest your pain works to make you stronger and more graceful—or scarred and filled with that pain. It’s how you face it, and it’s not always something you realize.”
Jewel understands. She’s been there; she’s lived it. Reading her book—scaling the challenges of her mentally ill mother, the physically abusive alcoholic father, the humiliations of living on the street, the sexual attention of skeevy older men who feel entitled, and the force of a young woman determined not to succumb—it is obvious this is not a dilettante conjuring melodrama to flog the fires of fame.
“I really never believed in fame,” she confesses. “I looked at some things from the height of it, and I said, ‘No one is able to sustain this.’ So my self-worth was never tied up in my fame or success.
“I think your values help or hurt you. I love my work. I love being a Mom. I’ve never thought too much about the other. For me, it was trying to figure out how to make sense of a life that’s nonsensical, then to develop an opinion of yourself adrift in this world of reviews.
“Because it’s difficult to be an artist and put [yourself] out there and be judged by critics. As an artist you have to be porous, to be able to hear the real world—because that’s where [art] comes from. But also to protect yourself without getting hardened, about figuring out how to lose weight the right way when they called me Renée Zellweger’s fat sister, and not just give in to it.”
Compassion, for self as well as those around her, marks Kilcher’s way of seeing the world. Having just weathered a divorce from her partner for 16 years and husband of six years, that compassion fired her work on the book and the return to roots record that features the vulnerable “It Doesn’t Hurt Right Now,” featuring Rodney Crowell, the upside down topsy turvy of love “His Pleasure Is My Pain,” and the power of heritage “My Father’s Daughter,” with Dolly Parton.
“It was hard to talk about the relationship with my mom,” she explains, turning back to address the risks in such an unburnished memoir and record.
“When I was homeless and starting to write songs, I realized a lot of things. You hold shame in, and never let it out. When you try to communicate shame with strangers, you overshare—and they don’t know how to respond.
“When you’re looking at shoplifting or abuse impacting your life, your self-worth, giving things up for love, you learn a lot. Half of the things I wrote were addressed as having a conversation with my 18-year-old self.”
There is no pity here, no sympathy tug. Crediting a strong sense of self for always driving her, time spent in nature honing that reality and songs to give her a way to tap and release the pain, Jewel looks back on her work and forward at once.
“My first record was effortless, because I didn’t know any of those roles or rules they put on you: thinking about radio, and genre, and tempo, and crossover, and marketing. It was still difficult because I didn’t believe in myself, but we were free. I had no rules or boundaries, no time limits, no chorus—just the songs.
“We become domesticated over time. We learn the rules, they seep in and become part of [the way things are done]. I wanted my wild back, I wanted to get back to that.”
Believing we are the sum of our choices, she also knows sometimes there is no good choice. Or it’s so hard to see those choices when your back’s to the wall or your feet are tangled in the gunk in the gutter.
Nov. 8, the honeyed blond appeared at the premiere of Our Journey Home, a documentary she narrated for ReThink Housing to attempt to illuminate the gaps between the perceptions of the homeless and their reality. The film also makes tangible the impact of having a home on a person, how it changes everything from their outlook to their opportunities.
“I’m so moved by the heroism of disenfranchised people,” she offers. “It takes a lot to face every day when you don’t have a home, and the chaos that ensues from it. To continue to believe in yourself and not lose hope is so hard … and these people are doing that. They deserve our support.”
Experiencing the scorn of two women when washing up in a restroom before her big audition with Atlantic Records, the bone-shaking impact of judgment is something she knows intimately. Where there had been excitement, the shame being interjected requires heavy lifting—and her work with ReThink she hopes will inspire others to shift their thinking.
She knows its power. On the back end of the aftershocks of her divorce, she has once again found transformative powers in what could be devastating.
“The death of a part of your life … innocence, marriage … It’s not a death, but really a birth. There’s a lot there to grieve, but that darkness is also a very womblike place—and from death comes some kind of freedom. If you focus on that—being set free—you can find that grace [that gives you back your wild].”
