Jewel: At 18 She Lived In A Car. A Best-Seller And 20 Million Albums Later, She's Definitely in The Driver's Seat - ViewWoman - Interview

Atlantic Records has just released Jewel's fourth album, This Way, her first after a two-year hiatus. After rocketing to stardom in the mid-1990s and selling aver 20 million copies worldwide of her first three albums; after a best-selling, critically lauded book of poetry and a book of prose; after starring in the Ang Lee movie Ride with the Devil (1999); and after years of zigzagging around the globe for concerts and media blitzes to promote it all Jewel disappeared to a ranch in Texas to reflect on where's she been and where's she going.

MARTHA McPHEE: Why the two years off?

JEWEL: I thought about quitting entirely. I felt like it was really important to give myself the freedom to understand I'm not obligated to do this because I'm supposed to or because it's what I thought I wanted from my life. I'd been pushing myself so hard, but it seemed inherently ungrateful to question the dream I had dreamed for myself at 18. I had to look at the situation reasonably and give myself permission to believe that I would find something else to do with my life, if that's what I wanted to do. Oddly, it was the same question I asked myself when I was 18 and living in my car: What do you want to do with your life? It is such a simple question, but so many voices fill your head that aren't necessarily your own. I took a long time off so that I could calm myself enough to answer the question rationally without being completely terrified.

MM: How did you stop the machine?

J: There are two phases to stopping. The first involves stopping your job--you stop touring, stop records, stop movies, stop books, stop all the outward acts. The other phase involved going through the mental process, and getting myself to a place where I could be myself. I lived in Texas. I stayed outdoors a lot.

MM: Your boyfriend's a rodeo star.

J: He has a large ranch in Texas and I had been craving the outdoors, a place familiar to my childhood [in Alaska]. I was raised outdoors, and learned to write and solve problems by being in open space. It's geography that is actually helpful to me in understanding my process.

MM: You were pretty still for those two years?

J: Very still. I continued to write; that was the nice thing. I'm prolific. I've always had that blessing.

MM: Tell me about recording This Way.

J: A year had passed without doing a record, and then two years passed.

Finally I understood that I would always write and always perform. I just didn't know at what level, and I didn't know if I still had the desire to apply for homecoming queen again and again every year. Because that's what promoting a record is like.

MM: Does the music become secondary?

J: I began to feel that way by the end of the second record, and that was actually what I found the most frustrating. I found the difference between what I do and how people perceive me to be really hard to reconcile. I think there's a hypnotic rhythm when you have number-ones and you have best-sellers and you're in an elite group of five other artists who are selling the way you are. You're expected to have another number-one hit and you're expected to have more 20-million sales and it's seductive. You get into the habit of trying to outdo yourself constantly. It's very counter to how I create. Another reason I took so much time off was that I wanted to make sure I was doing music because I loved to and not because I was trying to write a hit.

MM: How is the process of writing for a hit different than writing for the love of it?

J: It's discipline-of-thought process. It's not letting those voices into your head that know that if you did A, B, C and D it would be a recipe for big sales. I don't want to be a part of that recipe.

MM: Now that you are returning to the spotlight, what are your expectations? How have they evolved with this latest album?

J: I am happy that I made a record I really like, and that I was able to control it. It sounds the way I wanted it to and it's the image that I had desired. I've also decided to pace myself differently with this record and to make sure that I am able to get away during this process.

MM: You mean back to the ranch?

J: Back to the ranch or that type of place so that as an artist I can keep creating without depleting myself. don't want to need another two years off at the end of it.

MM: In what ways do you have more control this time around?

J: I've always had the freedom to control my career. The problem is when you're inexperienced, you don't always know how to do it.

MM: So would you say that was a problem for you before This Way?

J: I really like my earlier stuff. I love Spirit [1998]. It's honest about who I was at that age. I had to tackle the craft of the studio. With my first album [Pieces of You, 1995] I was uncomfortable with the studio, so I recorded it live. I was at the mercy of the people that knew the studio and they interpreted what I wanted, which can be an uncomfortable feeling since it isn't always exactly what you wanted. With the new record you hear much more maturity. I knew how to do what I wanted to do and I had the confidence and studio craft to do it.