Crown Jewel
Jewel should feel right at home surrounded by trees and rocks at the Springs Preserve on Saturday. Soon, she hopes to feel equally at ease on the country music charts.
The singer opens the Preserve’s new amphitheater with a solo acoustic show, one of only a handful of summer dates interrupting work on her first country album.
“The way I was raised is almost more country than a lot of the country people,” she says. “I rode a horse to school and lived a really rural life.”
Jewel (Kilcher), 35, was born in Utah and raised mostly in Alaska by her father. Her rootsy upbringing and distinctive yodeling runs through most of the folk-flavored pop she has recorded since her big-selling 1995 breakthrough, “Pieces of You.”
“My whole career, people have been trying to get that out of my records and I guess I don’t have to now,” she says. “I’ve been wanting to do (a country album) my whole career, but my label would never let me. They were just horrified of it. But I don’t have a label now, so I can kind of do what I want.”
Jewel already has recorded 10 songs with producer John Rich, of country party band Big & Rich. Some are tunes she started when she was 16. She hopes to come up with a radio-friendly song or two and have the whole album ready to deliver by the time she signs with a new record label.
“I don’t think it’ll sound like a huge departure,” she says. “I honestly think if I came around today, ‘You Were Meant For Me’ (and other) songs would be considered country songs. Because pop has changed more than I’ve changed. The pop format now is pretty much urban music. If you’re a singer-songwriter, almost the only place left for you is country music right now.” That latter distinction is important, she adds. Jewel won’t be following the path of most reigning country queens, who choose from songs submitted by teams of writers.
“Pieces of You” has sold 12 million copies since 1995. By contrast, last year’s “Goodbye Alice in Wonderland” was her first album that’s yet to hit the gold mark of 500,000 units. But Jewel says she is as proud of the title track and some of the other songs “as I’ve ever felt of any song.” However the album fares commercially, “I go to sleep at night and I feel like I’m getting better. I’m getting better at my craft and I take it seriously.”
And she’s still serious about “0304,” her big 2003 pop album that she says was misunderstood or unfairly savaged by music writers. “I think it’s one of the best records I’ve ever written. I think it just got a bad rap because people either didn’t listen or didn’t really get the video (for “Intuition,” which had her cavorting in lingerie in front of electronic dollar signs). And I don’t know how you couldn’t get it if you watched the whole thing. It was a satire.
“I think the press just had a field day spinning it into something it wasn’t,” she adds. “I didn’t take that into consideration. I’d been around already, gosh, almost 10 years by then, and I think the press didn’t know what else to say about me.”
Jewel says that living in Texas and recording in Nashville keep her distanced from the cheesecake celebrity life of the “Intuition” video. (She and rodeo champ boyfriend Ty Murray do take part in ABC’s new NASCAR reality show, “Fast Cars & Superstars,” which started airing this week.)
“Being a famous musician doesn’t lend itself to curiosity and learning for most people. I think it usually leads to decadence and indulgence,” she says. “I think that they stop living a strong internal life, and it shows in their writing. Which is why I’ve chosen never to live in Hollywood.” She and Murray instead live on ranch land in Stephenville, Texas.
Saturday’s show at the new amphitheater is the singer’s preferred method of traveling light. Even in full touring mode to support a new album, she will split the tour between band and solo shows.
“I think my fans enjoy it more. I think you actually have a better time if you’re in a small venue than you would with a band,” she says. “A band’s more like drinking, partying, talking, having that kind of experience with the music supplying a soundtrack to it. A solo show is really like going to a show. If they’re good, you’re going to get to know that person. It’s like having a performer sing in your living room for you.”