Jewel,
Restored
By Sandra Barrera
Los Angeles Daily News
Jewel thought about leaving her line of work for another altogether. But
that was before the singer-songwriter popular for the lilting folk songs
put out her latest platinum seller, This Way.
The album that Rolling Stone called "elegant, earthy, engaged" came as
a
result of a therapeutic two-year hiatus that found Jewel assessing her
career for much of the time along the open spaces of her rodeo champion
boyfriend's Texas ranch.
During that time, Jewel said, she had fallen out of love with the spotlight
and its never-ending demands.
"I promoted way more than I wrote and, for me, writing makes me
happy," the
28-year-old said from the
But even her writing began to suffer, leaving Jewel with a feeling of
desperation.
"I got into this job at 18 because it was the first thing I loved,"
Jewel said.
"To lose that was frightening. I thought I'd have to find something else,
and so it was nice at the end of two years that I fell back in love with it.
"I knew what kind of record I wanted to make," she said. "And I
knew what
things to change to guarantee it would not happen again."
Jewel's biggest problem was scheduling.
Following the breakthrough of 1995's Pieces of You, Jewel toured more than
a month at a time with no weekend breaks or holidays off.
One Christmas, she sang for President Clinton at the White House despite
being run down from pneumonia.
As Jewel puts it, "I wasn't getting better."
Constant touring had affected her hearing in one ear, and Jewel was told
that if she didn't rest soon, it would become permanent.
Jewel said that she started to feel ungrateful for the success that had
befallen her at the age of 22.
"This isn't a job you should be unhappy in," she said.
"That's another reason I wanted to quit. That and the fact that I talked to
a guy from England ... who saw me on two television shows at the time and
said he could tell that I didn't really want to be there. I'm really bad at
faking it when I'm not happy."
Fortunately for Jewel, who also is a best-selling poet, rest came shortly
after she finished promoting her 1998 follow-up to Pieces of You, Spirit.
For Jewel, rest meant getting back to the way she was raised in
Back to nature.
She said that it was the stillness there on her boyfriend's ranch that
allowed her time to reclaim both her health and creative voice, resulting
in what Billboard magazine called "[her] most ambitious effort yet,"
albeit
This Way is also her least accessible to the masses.
"You don't just make records for you; otherwise, you just sing in your
bedroom all day," Jewel said.
"If you don't have something useful to say and if you don't feel like
you're adding to the craft, you should just let your heroes do it. You
shouldn't be a part of it. But I didn't want to make a record until I felt
like I knew what I had to say and I felt like it was valuable."
Jewel said that she didn't have a problem. The songs off This Way flowed
with little effort.
"I wrote Jesus Loves You during a walk along a river," Jewel said.
"It took
me five minutes."
Many of the songs are reflective, such as Standing Still, which harbors two
meanings for Jewel.
The first, she said, is love.
"It's me wondering if me moving so much and my lifestyle causes my love
life to stand still," Jewel said, explaining there's also a more cryptic
meaning to the song that may not occur to people listening.
"I wrote it about the fact that fame really affords a prolonged adolescence
and that unless you're careful emotionally, you start standing still to
where you're a child and you're bratty and your writing quits developing
and many dangerous things like that."
As for her own life, Jewel said that she is no longer standing still but
taking charge of her singing career. She is touring
three weeks straight and then allowing for 10 days of reflection at a time.
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