Latest / I Do, Part 2 / Jewel Talks Fame, Mental Health and Why She Likes Her Space (Part 1)

Transcript

Jewel Talks Fame, Mental Health and Why She Likes Her Space (Part 1) · I Do, Part 2

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome everyone to this edition of Amy and TJ. You know,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: we haven't had a lot of guests this season, but
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: when we do have them, they are worth listening to.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we have to make sure they are worthy of
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: the podcast. No, that is not what we're saying. However,
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: this robes. Look, we've had guests on. It's an honor
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: to me and that we have much respect and our
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: fans of There's a different lane that our guest today occupies.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: For me and probably you, there's a time in your life,
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: rightly from probably junior high, high school through the end
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: of college. Whatever music you were listening to in that
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: lane is the music you will die with. And one
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: of those musicians and some of those songs hit in
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: that lane. And that's who we got in the studio epically.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: And you also know that you've made it when you're
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: known by one name, right you know, there aren't a
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: lot of artists that you can just say one name
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: and you know exactly who it is and why you
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: love them.
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: And that is our next guest.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Her name is Jewel, and she is in studio.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: Please welcome, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Jewel.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: It's funny we were talking before you walked into the
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: studio about how many of us had your cassette tape
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: or your CD. I was listening to your music all
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: through college. Uh, and it was just it was the
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: soundtrack of my coming up and just so much of
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: what you wrote about was so relatable to all of us,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: but it still is today.
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: So we are so honored to have you here. I'm
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: sure you hear that all the time. Oh, it's always
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: nice to hear. Thank you.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: Keep it coming. That's not a problem.
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: I know I'm going to visit you guys more, but
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: you know.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: It's hard to continue your enthusiasm. I tried to play
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: cool when you walked in, but I was as nervous
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: as all get out because Jewel is walking and I'm
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: glad I still get excited like that, even as a
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: forty eight year old guy. I am so honored to
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: meet you. This is just absolutely cool. Now, when you
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: were writing all that stuff at the time and performing,
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: were you making it for anybody other than you? Did
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: you have an eighteen year old freshman at the University
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: of Arkansas in mind when you were writing that stuff.
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: No, I, you know, really wrote as medicine for myself.
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: As music that I needed, it was words that I needed,
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: and to see that they helped other people and affected
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: them the same that they needed thouse words the same way.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: It was really humbling, you know that record. None of
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: my career has been to try and get popular, was
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: try and get healthy, and people helped me on that journey.
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: You know, it was a very unpopular style of music
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: when it came out. It was kind of the height
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: of grunge and moving into like space Girl's era, which
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: is I love all of that, but it definitely wasn't
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: what I was, and so the fact that people supported
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: it so passionately changed the course of my life.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: A young girl with her guitar and singing truth. You know,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: I think that authenticity and those lyrics are what hit
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: And obviously you have incredible musical talent, but I think
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: that being so open and honest and vulnerable that is
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: what brought so many people along with you. And for
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: fans of yours, I think they probably know your story,
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: but we'll try to hit a few of what got
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: you to sitting in this studio here in iHeart, but
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: you were a young girl who grew up in Alaska
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: with no running water, and you were on an Alaska homestead.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: We were just talking about how your family has had
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: a documentary, a long running documentary about their way of life,
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: but you ended up homeless and living out of a
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: van by the age of what was that sixteen seventeen
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: eighteen when you were just on your own and it
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: was music that saved you. Were you always musical or
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: was this just about you journaling your feelings that turned
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: into song lyrics that led you to music.
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: My family were musical. They were raised on this homestead.
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: My grandparents came from Germany, escaped the Second World War
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: and were raised in the middle of nowhere, and so
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: my grandmother had taught them all to write poetry and
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: to paint and to write. They were homeschooled, and so
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: I was raised in this very creative family, very rural
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: and isolated, but also very creative. And so I moved
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: out at fifteen, very young. I knew that statistically movies
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: don't end well for kids like me, and I wanted
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: to see if happiness was a learnable skill. Was it
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: a teachable skill. I didn't grow up in a very
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: happy home, and so I set off in kind of
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: an ambitious mission to see if I could change the
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: outcome of my life.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Wow, you said you didn't grow up in a happy home,
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: and do you think that. Obviously we're here to talk
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: about you have done so much powerful work in the
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: mental health space, and certainly that's become thankfully a growing
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: topic of conversation, something that I think was avoided for
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: so long that now we're so lucky to be a
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: part of this era where we actually are okay to
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: discuss it, to speak vulnerably, and to let people know
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: that they're not alone, which is the challenge, not alone challenge.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: We'll get into all of that, but I wanted to
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: get into some of the backstory. Do you think think
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: you were situationally affected in the fact that your depression
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: or any of your mental health instability came from the
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: situation you were in, or do you think.
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: It was inherited?
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: At what point did you realize I need help or
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: I need to do something about this.
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I realized that I was unhappy, you know,
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: before I moved out. Moving out at fifteen is a
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: pretty extreme thing to do, to take on the responsibility
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: of paying rent and getting yourself to school and those things.
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: But for me personally, I realized I could live in
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: a cabin, you know, with you know, my mom left
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: when I was eight. My dad took over raising us,
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: and he had a very traumatic childhood. You know, as
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: you grow up, you learn more about your parents and
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: you can grow more empathy for what they lived through.
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: My dad raised me a lot better than he was raised,
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: but it still wasn't fun, you know, And so I
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: still decided to go ahead and move out. And see,
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: I realized that, you know, we learned these emotional languages
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: in our households, and I was very fluent in the language,
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: that emotional language by the time I was fifteen. And when,
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: you know, I realized, as much as you have a
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: genetic inheritance that might give you a predisposition to heart disease,
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: I had an emotional inheritance that gave me a predisposition
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: toward whatever addiction or abuse or all kinds of things,
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: and that this was sort of a legacy. And we're
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: learning so much more about epigenetics and how trauma can
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: be actually passed on generationally. I think for me, it
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: just was when I decided to stop making excuses of
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: I had a lot of reasons to be unhappy, but
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: I stopped wanting to have any excuses that I couldn't
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: be and taking on that responsibility and that mantle of saying,
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: there's if I put my mind to this, if I
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: make this the most important thing in my life, I
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: think I can get a change.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: What age were you when that happened at that time? So,
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: but what happened? How did you get that? Maybe it
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: was just experience, but the idea of a fifteen year
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: old figuring that out and taking that on seems impossible
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: these days. What was it for you? Was it just
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: your upbringing?
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: Probably? I think being raised in nature. You know, I
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: was outside and it sound's funny, but I was taught
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: a lot. I was taught how to be a human
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: by watching nature. I can tell you, like lesson after
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: lesson that really guided me on my path and gave
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: me sort of a role model, if you will. And
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: reading a lot. I read a lot of philosophy and
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: just kind of learned to think critically through what I
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: was reading. And I also think it's kind of nice
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: when you don't have a safety net. There can be
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: perks to that, you know, if you can figure out
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: and realize, Like for me, when I realized nobody's coming
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: for me. Am I going to come for me? That
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: was a big moment.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: Am I willing to do that? Am I willing to
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: step up? Or do I just want to complain that
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: I don't have a safety net, and so I didn't
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: take a lot of the same I don't know. I
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: didn't have the safety net other kids had, and so
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: I didn't experiment with drugs. I didn't. I was careful
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: in ways that some kids don't have to be because
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: you do have some margin of error there. You know, Wow,
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: that's wild.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: I was just saying, someone told me once, I'm successful
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: because I never had a plan B. This was it.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: This was my one option, and I knew I had
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: nothing else to fall back on. That scared the hell
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: out of me because even sitting here, I feel like
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: I have some kind of a safety net. But that's
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: interesting to hear that at that age to figure that out.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's funny you use that term because my daughter,
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: who just left the nest at twenty two, I have
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: said to her multiple times when she starts to get
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: anxious or worried because she's in and she's in an
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: artistic field as well, and that doesn't necessarily always pay
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: all the bills. And I told her, hey, I'm I'm
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: I am cutting you off. But obviously if you got
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: into a really difficult situation, I'm your safety net.
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: And it's funny.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: Now I'm rethinking maybe I shouldn't have told her that.
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: No, it's important for us do better for it. It's
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: not fun. You always have just like do or die situations,
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: but it is motivated, like highly motivated.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: But he could also go the other way if you
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: felt if you feel that alone and you feel that desponded,
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: was there a human at all who helped along the way.
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: Gosh, you know, a lot of my safety and how
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: I learned to survive was going alone. Being alone, it
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: was much harder for me, and I had to work
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: a lot harder when I was older to like trust connection,
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: trust relationship. So yeah, I'd say in those early years
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: it was reading a lot that helped it. And then
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: just introspection. I again, being raised without a television causes
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: you to enjoy being alone, thinking, sitting in silence, and
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: so I learned a lot of my behavioral tools and
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: like how to stop shoplifting, how to handle my panic
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: attacks just through introspection and kind of through trial and error,
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: and you know, if you can learn to channel your
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: stubbornness into a way that works for you, you know,
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: that helps build your life instead of tear your life down.
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: That again, like it kind of became a superpower, became
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: stubbornly focused on like one thing at a time. I'm
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: going to learn how to stop shoplifting. So what is it?
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: Why am I doing it? When do I do it?
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: What helps me to do it? And then starting to
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: get very curious that way.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: You are describing something that people are spending thousands of
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: dollars in therapy trying to figure out. Right, what in
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: the world I think of a fifteen year old sixteen, seventeen,
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: eighteen figuring all this out. And I know you helped,
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: and mental health advocacy has been a huge part of
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: making sure young people and folks get access to help.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: What was your other option in terms of mental health
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: help at that time, if you didn't just figure it
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: out on your own, did you have another option for
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: getting some type of healing and help.
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there wasn't any kind of support. You know, I
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: was the type of kid that fell through cracks. I
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: made it through high school, I got a job in
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: San Diego taking I was taking care of a sick
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: relative and I had a job answering phones, and my
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: boss proposition to meet one day and you know, you
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: wouldn't give him a paycheck if I wouldn't sleep with them,
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: And luckily, being raised on a homestead, I was like,
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: I can live in a car. Thanks, you know, I'll
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: be on the street. I'm good, you know, And so
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: I think that was really helpful, just like going my
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: own way. And it was like while I was homeless
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: that I was like, oh my gosh. When I was fifteen,
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: I said on this ambitious mission to not be a statistic,
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: and here I am homeless in shoplifting, Like I'm still
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: a statistic eighteen yeah, despite like how hard I worked
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: to not be a statistic. And so I had to
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: really again look in the mirror and go I think
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: I remembered a stoic quote that was, happiness doesn't depend
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: on who you are, what you have, It depends on
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: what you think. And I was in this position where
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: I didn't have things, but I had what I thought,
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: and so I decided to see if I could turn
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: my life around one thought at a time, and that's
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: when I started tackling, like I call it a pain point,
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: one pain point at a time, and when I got successful,
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: I you know, misery is an equal opportunist. It doesn't
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: care if you're rich, white, black, poor, homeless, famous. It's
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: an equal opportunist. But to learn not to be miserable
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: is an education, and education costs many So therapy at
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: its best should be a re education and not everybody
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: has access to that, and that's unacceptable. There are real
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: tools that help, whether you're seeking professional guidance or not.
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: There are things you can do by yourself. And I
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: encourage connection and seeking help from other people, but if
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: you don't have that, there's still not a reason that
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: you can't find improvement.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: Wow. May I ask what books you were reading, because
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: they seem to have been incredibly powerful.
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: I didn't read self help books. I mean it was
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: I don't ever talk about the books I was reading,
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: but I was reading, yeah, a lot of philosophy. I
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: liked physics a lot. I liked reading about quantum physics
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: because I was like, gosh, if there's such a thing
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: as particle non locality, like the world is listening, Like
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: maybe I can make a difference in my life. It
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: made me feel empowered physics for some reason. Yeah wow,
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: And then oh sorry, how did that? How did you?
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: Then? I'm curious go from living in a van trying
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: not to be a statistic to becoming the world famous musician.
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: I mean, what was that timeline like?
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: And can you give us a sense of how that developed?
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah? So when I was eighteen living in San Diego,
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: got propositioned by the boss, turned him down, started living
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: in my car, My car got stolen, I was homeless
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: for about a year. Started singing in a coffee shop,
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: not to get discovered, but because I was raised singing.
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: I grew up bar singing with my dad and we
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: got paid for it. And so I was like, I
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: couldn't hold a job down. I had bad kidneys. You
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: start looking homeless, you know, you don't have an address
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: to put on your application even like and it's just
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: it's hard to describe how tiring being homeless is, and
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: just looking for food, water and safety is a full
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: time job. And so I was like, what if I
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: could find a gigs singing. All the venues in town
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: wanted to charge me to sing there because people were
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: getting signed at that era was like the height of
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: the nineties, kind of gold rush of brunch, and I
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: was like, I'm not here to get discovered, Like I'm
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: here to just try and get a house. And so
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: I found a place going out of business, and I said,
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: can you keep your doors open for one month? Give
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: me one month, and I get to keep the door
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: money and you can keep the coffee and you know,
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: food sales. And so I started to get like two people,
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: and then twelve people, and then twenty people, and then
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: it was standing room only, and then it was two
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: shows a night, and then record labels started coming. It
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: was it was crazy. It was like it was really
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: living in a like being a Cinderella.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: It was something sounds almost overnight, like how what was
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: that timeframe? You know?
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: It was interesting. I think it was about a year,
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: so that a year being homeless by the end of that.
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: And during that time I did develop tools to stop shoplifting,
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: to get a grip on my panic attacks. I was agoraphobic.
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: I got a real change in that. And so when
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: I got discovered again, I just looked at it really
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: practically and I was like, this probably isn't a great
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: idea for someone like me, because you read any autobiography
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: or watch any movie about a musician, they're all the same. Like,
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: fame doesn't seem to work out well for people, you know,
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: it leads to drugs and often death. And I was like,
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: I'm a real candidate for that, and I didn't want
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: to sacrifice the mental health ground that I had gained
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: to do something that I thought might be really risky,
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: which is God forbid I ever get famous. So I
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: almost turned it down. You know, I was offered a
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: million dollar signing bonus. I turned that down because I
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: read a book called Everything You Need to Know About
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: the Music Business, and I learned that that was in advance.
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: It was alone, basically, and it was alone against a
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: product I hadn't even made yet, which seemed ludicrous to do.
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: And so I made myself a promise one day on
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: the beach, I was like, my number one job is
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: to learn. I wrote to be a happy, whole human,
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: not a human full of holes, and that had to
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: be auditible and I had to have a system in
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: place for knowing like how do I know I'm doing better?
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: How do I know I'm doing worse? And being really
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: intentional about that and then my number two job was
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: to be a musician, and under that I wanted to
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: be an artist more than famous, and so armed with that,
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: I felt like if I could be loyal again, like
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: stubbornly loyal to that concept, I felt like I might
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: have a shot at handling whatever might get thrown my way.
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: Turned the money down, took a really big back end
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: so that if I ever sold albums, I would be rewarded,
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: and that really de risked me that way. A label
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: wouldn't drop me if I didn't sell records. You have
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: a big million dollar bounty, they really could drop you.
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: In sight, it's not worth it. Cutter losses, cutter loose,
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: And so I kind of started that way and then
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: went on to fail for several years. It's a very
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: good thing I didn't take that advance. And then slowly
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: things started to turn around. Bob Dylan took me out
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: on tour, and then Neil Young, and that's kind of just.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: A few picked up, just you know, lesser known artists
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: out there.
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I remember when Bob took me out. I was like,
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: nobody knew me. But I was like Bob k new man.
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: I'm like, we're good I'm good. That's amazing.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: Were there steps though you mentioned it you were concerned
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: about what being famous in the industry could do with
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: all the work you had done. Did you feel like
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: you took any steps back once the fame did come.
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: You know, life kept throwing things my way. I had.
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: The drama in my life continued. I wrote a book
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: called Never Broken, and people can kind of see at
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: a really difficult relationship with my mom that ultimately didn't
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: really come. I didn't come to terms with until I
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: was really thirty, and so I had a lot of
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: rough roads ahead of me. Still, fame I found to
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: be very traumatic. It is difficult to manage and handle
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: that much attention, that much energy, especially if somebody as
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: shy as me. I didn't know where it's like trauma
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: trigger But like one of my big triggers is like
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: strangers touching me. And when you're famous, people grab you.
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: They they turn you around, they like I hated it.
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: It's hard and it's hard to describe to people, but
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: it's and especially for a shy, introverted writer. I was like,
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: after my second album, I had to I had to
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: keep that promise to myself I made. I was like
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: this doesn't actually make me happy. I'm so thankful. I mean,
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: I've reached heights that were just impossible, and I love that,
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: and I love being an underestimated dark horse and winning,
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: like I'm for it. But it made me incredibly unhappy
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: and uncomfortable, and I realized I don't have to I
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: don't have to be this famous, and so I took
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: two years off and my fame went way down. I
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: could grocery shop, I didn't have to have bodyguards, and
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: I was like, okay, I actually do like music. I
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: just don't like the level of fame. And I gave
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: myself permission to not be that famous. And so that
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: just meant like changing genres, doing what I wanted creatively,
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: being willing to be hated, you know, or being told
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: you're washed up because you're not as popular as you
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: once were. All worth it. That's amazing.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: It's funny because literally two weekends, I believe it was
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: tjes and like people touching him and he is more
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: introverted or people, so he just someone had just kind
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: of come up and touched us. And then he was like, man,
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: I just don't like it when people come up and
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: touch me.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: Five four three two one.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: A woman comes up from behind and bear hugs like
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: puts her arms around him, and he just bristled. But yes,
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: I and we only know a fraction of the fame
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: you experience, experience, but it is one of those moments
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: where you do feel like a piece of meat, like
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: a piece of property. And people do view you if
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: they like you, especially if they love your music, they
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: feel like they own you that way. Did you get
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: you have that experience and that that is not a
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: good feeling to have.
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, it's it's isolating to be adored when
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: they don't know you. And it's not that it's I mean,
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: of course it's flattering, I guess, but they don't know you.
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: They don't know if you're a good person. You know,
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: they don't know if I'm kind my child. So it's oddly,
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: it's hard to describe it. It's kind of an isolating thing
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: to be adored when you haven't earned it. And I
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: think it's equally isolating to be hated when you haven't
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: earned that either, And so it's kind of a singular
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: thing to live through. And for me, it just really
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: staying grounded and like I care about being a good human.
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: I'm going to task myself every day to be proud
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: of myself and you know, be on this journey till
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: the day I die. And then the rest was, like
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: my fans have to say, like I was really able
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: to communicate to them, like you guys can't touch me.
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: And I was able to talk to my fans always
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: on the internet and it's really helpful because they really
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: would listen to me. And then so this day, if
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: you see one of my fans that really follow me,
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: they put their hands up in a gusture of safety.
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: It's amazing. And they go Jewel and they say, about
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: this far from me, and they say, I just want
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: to tell you it's so household in me, like I
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: can handle that.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: We walked in and now.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: He did because my hand was out. That is funny.
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: I can't tell if I don't remember meeting people the
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: same way.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: We're huggers here, we're huggers there.
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: That is a great chace to see exactly I can't remember.
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: And we'll have much more. With our conversation with Jewel.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: We just couldn't stop talking and so we have a
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: lot more to get to. We're going to talk about
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: her Not Alone Challenge, something that began as something very
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: simple and turned into now a major event and awards
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: show in Vegas.