JEWEL RETURNS TO THE ROAD IN SUPPORT OF AN INTIMATE NEW ALBUM

BY CHRIS M. JUNIOR PHOTO BY LYNDA CHURILLA

Jewel Kilcher’s backstory always had the makings of a really good book.

The condensed tale goes like this: She grew up in Alaska, left home at 15, and eventually wound up in San Diego, where she was homeless for a spell and played her music in coffee shops before finding fame with her debut album. She also famously called her car home for a brief period while traveling the country doing gigs.

But there’s so much more to the life and career of the singer, songwriter, and guitarist known professionally as Jewel: for starters, the complicated relationships with her divorced parents and winding up being broke at 30. She delves into those topics and more in her memoir Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story (Blue Rider Press, 2015).

“The book reads like the lives of 12 different people!” Jewel told the San Diego Union-Tribune last year. “[It goes] from stealing cars to living on a homestead in Alaska; from being a kid playing in bars [in a musical duo] with my dad to being a girl living in Hawaii to being famous and playing for the pope. It’s been an unbelievable ride, and it’s hard to figure it all out…. interesting for sure.”

That unbelievable ride continues this spring, as Jewel tours in support of the new album Picking Up the Pieces, which was released by Sugar Hill Records in conjunction with her memoir.

“It’s going to be really fun to get back out on the road,” Jewel said in a January post on her website. “I’m excited to share the stories behind some of my favorite and most personal songs in such an intimate setting.”

The album centers on her voice and acoustic guitar, much like Pieces of You, her 1995 folk mega-debut for Atlantic Records, which sold 12 million discs and spawned three Billboard pop-chart hits: “Who Will Save Your Soul” (which peaked at No. 11 in 1996), “You Were Meant for Me” (No. 2, 1997), and “Foolish Games” (No. 7, 1997).

Other hits followed (such as “Hands” and “Standing Still”), as did more platinum-certified albums (among them 1998’s Spirit and 2001’s This Way). Over the past 10 years, in addition to her recording career, Jewel served as a judge on various TV singing competitions, most recently NBC’s The Sing-Off. On the personal front, she married rodeo cowboy Ty Murray in 2008, gave birth in 2011 to their son, Kase, then split with Murray in 2014.

“It’s funny, most people go through a divorce and are like, why didn’t I just get drunk and have meaningless sex?” Jewel told Time magazine last year. “And I write a memoir and a heartbreaking record, peel off every scab I’ve ever healed, and stick my finger in them and write about it. That’s how I dealt with it. But I think it was the best thing I could have done.”

Jewel
will perform at The Borgata’s Music Box on
Saturday, April 16, at 9:00 P.M. 1 Borgata Way,
Atlantic City / 609.317.1000 / theborgata.com