(Click Images For Larger View)

I'm always mistaken for Baby Spice

Though bored with her rags-to-riches story, international star Jewel tells it once more for her fans here

The first thing that strikes you about Alaskan babe Jewel is her bubbly warmth, which is as thick as the frost that blankets her hometown. "Hi there," comes the greeting, and the fresh-faced lass accedes gamely to the request to have her pictures taken, even though she does not have makeup save for a hint of mascara.

The photo-call had been scheduled for later in the afternoon, "but it's okay, we can do this", she says in her lilting voice, and she flashes her slightly misaligned set of pearlies when told there is a tight deadline to meet.

For an international star who has graced the covers of Time, Rolling Stone, Vogue and Details styled to the nines, her lack of vanity amazes. There is no Major Star Attitude.

Lounging around the Hilton Hotel suite without the band members Doug Pettibone and Brady  Blade, she is as down-to-earth as her songs about love and life that have won her the adoration of fans worldwide.

Wearing a fuschia tank top and jeans, she has no hang-ups about her ige-a 24-year old sexy folk singer with a milk-and-cookies wholesome appeal.

"I'm a half-child-half-woman trying to grow up," she points out, when asked to define her image, for which she says there is no fixed formula.

'It is a young woman's prerogative to change her mind," she adds laughingly.

In town for the South East Asian leg of the Jewel Spirit Tour, she is in high spirits, swopping comments and chuckles with Pettibone and Blade throughout the 20-minute interview.

   "I love travelling. And it's great to get paid to travel," says the singer, a first-time visitor here.

With her delicate looks and heartfelt songs that mirror her concerns and emotions, she had endeared herself to legions of fans since her debut album, Pieces Of You, took off in 1996 after it was released in 1995.

That work, which features live solo acoustic performances recorded at Neil Young's Redwood Digital Studio, has sold more than 10 million copies.

But to Jewel, her maiden release, hailed as the one of of the top debuts of all time, will always be "the album that was not meant to be".

"It was a folk reacord.Folk records don't sell soo much, what with songs that last seven minutes and all," she says.

Four years down the road, Spirit, her second album, is on track to duplicate the success of her first. It sold more than four million copies in sales within three months of its release.

The album, which started out as a batch of Christmas tunes, is now a polished collection of "spiritual" ballads that mine ther inspiration from love, hope, faith and human experience.

"I wanted  the record to be very specific about how I've tried to stay alive- emotionally, physically, spiritually- over the last four years," she told Newsweek when Spirit was launcehed last November.

But there had been no drastic change in her evolution as a musician, she maintains. " I still look back to those early days and find that some of that stuff is really rare and pure," she says.

"You are bolder, cockier, more idealistic when younger, and you are pretty vocal about things."

Writing, be it songs, prose or poetry, has always been her tool of dealing with her experiences.

A Night Without Armor, her book of poetry published last May, is filled with adolescent musings on topics ranging from sexuality and first love to fame and homelessness, which she began writing about at 15.

She is working on a collection of short stories that is due out in July. "It's about what I want to tell people, what I wish I was told when  was a kid," she says.

Her rags-to-riches story has captured many imaginations, but it is beginning to bore her. Commenting on it once more, for the benefit of her fans here, she says patiently: "After a while, it feels like I'm talking about someone else. I feel so removed from it all."

But it still begs telling.

Born Jewel Kilcher to a family of artists and musicians, she was raised in a log cabin on a 320-ha homestead near Homer, Alaska, that had no electricity or running water.

After her parents divorced when she was eight, she stayed with her father and did gigs at local bars.

     She moved in with her mother, Nedra Carroll, in Anchorage at 15, and saw herself through an arts school in Michigan as a sculpture-class model.

The spin to the tale comes when, in 1992, mother and daughter moved to San Diego, and into separate vans, in an attempt to "cut down on living expenses".

Urged by her mother to "make herself available to her dream", she lived out of a blue Volkswagen van for about a year while her mother parked next to her for six months.

Discovered while singing at a coffeehouse, and signed up by Atlantic Records, she saw that her ascent to fame was of the sort that could jack up sales, and the press milked it for it was worth.

But it became a strain on her. "I feel like a comic book." she once said. 

She has a few bones to pick with the press, which has alternately idolised her for her insightful honesty and slammed her for her naivete and lack of depth.

"The press never had any real talent for recognising real talent," she offers, then laughs and adds : "Oh boy, am I going to get it for that."

She is puzzled, too, by rumours about her that find their way into the print. Her alleged obnoxious behaviour on the set of Lee Ang's Ride With The Devil is one. In the film, she makes her celluloid debut as a widow who falls for a soldier, played by Skeet Ulrich ( As Good As It Gets), in a coming-of-age drama set in the American Civil War.

Reports listed her lack of acting experience and guitar-strumming habit as behaviour that irked her colleagues.

"I don't know where that came from. Everyone was great. I was the only girl on the set, so people were all very nice." she says.

"And Lee, he was my saviour," she adds about the Taiwanese director of Ice Storm and Sense And Sensibility. "My job was just to please him."

If she could have a shot at altering anything that fame has sent her way, it is to shatter the rumour about her liaison with Jean-Claude Van Damme, she says.

For the record, she is dating Chris Douglas, soap-opera-turned-Montana-rodeo-cowboy.

The tidbit about Van Damme had its roots in a party, at which she never showed up. But reports the next day described a necking session she had with a beefy actor.

"Jennifer Aniston was probably there," she says cheekily, referring to the Friends actress who share the same flaxen long locks.

"Or it could be Baby Spice! I'm always being mistaken for Baby Spice," she adds, to loud guffaws from Pettibone and Blade.

Glimpes of the child in her are caught frequently from her interaction with the two, who, by flanking her, seems to be lending her morale support.

"Let's see whose shoes win," she says to her companions and begins to compare the aesthetic value of footwear midway through the interview.

After a few seconds of pondering the three pairs of feet in front of her, she declares to Pettibone : "Yours suck!"

The happy face belies the pressure and stress she encounters daily.

"You just have to be very strong and get on with it," she says, sober now. "I became so self-conscious once I couldn't even go on stage. I had no idea people were watching everything and all I wanted was to sing." 

Her mother, who is also her manager, she reveals, is her pillar of strength in her moments of darkness.

"She engages in reflection and meditation. She is fearless and impenetrable. That's what I'm trying to be," she says.

A knock on the door signals that time is up. She has many other journalists to meet for the day.

"Thank you for your time," she says sweetly.

Apart from a shining songwriting capability, Jewel, it appears, has a gem of a personality, too.