FESTIVA INTERVIEW: Jewel

Many want to know why Jewel went country. She wants you to know she's always been a little country.

Born in Utah and raised in Alaska, Jewel grew up performing with her singer/songwriter parents. When her parents divorced, Jewel went on tour with her father at just 8 years old. At 15, Jewel earned a scholarship to a private arts school in Michigan and majored in visual art. She also learned to play guitar.

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A few years later, the young artist found her way to San Diego where she lived in a van and performed at coffeehouses in small Southern California beach towns. Quickly, Jewel had a cult following. Not long after, she signed to Atlantic Records and began her journey into stardom.

Jewel is best known for her folk/pop blend that lit up the charts in the mid-'90s. Songs like "Who Will Save Your Soul" and "You Were Meant For Me" were hits from her debut album Pieces of You that seemed to prompt a return to female singer/songwriter popularity.

Over the past decade, Jewel has released album after album, books of poetry, has guest starred on T.V. shows, acted in feature films and now she's gone country.

Perfectly Clear, her new album on a new label, is Jewel's foray into the country genre. But again, she's always been a bit country.

"For me it's a life-long passion. This isn't something I woke up on a whim and decided to do. These songs are songs I've been writing my whole life. Some of these songs date back to when I was 16 and 18. For me this is really about my life and the way I was raised. I was raised on a ranch in Alaska. My dad's a cowboy and he taught me how to write songs and a lot of my influence is in country music," she said.

She also points out that if she released her pop songs of the ‘90s today, they would most likely fit in the country music genre anyway - compared to what pop music today sounds like.

"‘You Were Meant For Me' actually is a country song on the album and it got recut without the country bass line," Jewel explained.

The Paisley Party Tour is a perfect opportunity for Jewel, more than anything, a storyteller, to perform for a different audience and a chance to gain a new fan base.

Fans of the Jewel of the past will likely be fans of the Jewel of the present. She's still a singer/songwriter, she's still a poet, she's still a storyteller - she just added a slight twang.

FESTIVA: Are there any avenues you expect to explore that you haven't yet?

JEWEL: There's a lot of stuff I like to do. I love cooking. I'd love to do a cooking show one day. I love lullabies and I'd like to make a record of lullabies. I tend to be pretty insatiable creatively.

FESTIVA: How do you feel about how the music industry has changed?

JEWEL: I'm glad I came out when I did. It was still the day of mammoth sales if you were lucky enough. A few of us were able to break through and have massive sales, able to sell 30 million records. And shockingly able to do it on really simple, earnest songs and build a fan base that, you know, I have a great relationship with and that will trust me to go where I want, musically. So I feel like I'm in a good position because I was able to build something at a time when things were built in a specific way. But it's an interesting time and a changing time. It's hard for everybody to figure out where the money's going to come from. A lot of the solutions are still taking it out of the artist's end, which won't do. I'm still waiting to watch how all that settles ... but I do think music will always win. People will always find their way to music.

Amy Nichol Smith covers features and entertainment for Festiva. She can be reached at (956) 683-4420.