From: owner-jewel-digest@smoe.org (jewel-digest) To: jewel-digest@smoe.org Subject: jewel-digest V5 #97 Reply-To: jewel@smoe.org Sender: owner-jewel-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-jewel-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk jewel-digest Saturday, March 18 2000 Volume 05 : Number 097 * If you ever wish to unsubscribe from this digest, send an email to * jewel-digest-request@smoe.org with ONLY the word * unsubscribe in the BODY of the email * . * For the latest news on what Jewel is up to, go to * the OFFICIAL Jewel web site at http://www.jeweljk.com * and click on "what's new" * . * PLEASE :) when you reply to this digest to send a post TO the list, * change the subject to reflect what your post is about. A subject * of Re: jewel-digest V5 #xxx or the like gives fellow list readers * no clue as to what your message is about. Today's Subjects: ----------------- * Transcript to Jewel's interview on Exhale - Part 2 of 3 [Sabato229@aol.] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2000 20:26:01 EST From: Sabato229@aol.com Subject: * Transcript to Jewel's interview on Exhale - Part 2 of 3 **Exhale Transcript** part 2 of 3 CB: Welcome back to Exhale. I am Candice Bergen and I am talking with Jewel. Um, I see you're wearing this really beautiful cross.... JK: Um..hmm.... CB: Is that, the fashion accessory that it's become, d'jour today? Or is it really that you are religious, or...? JK: Just cuz it sparkles, No...... A Lot cuz it sparkles. I'm not, I like wearing crosses. I wasn't raised with a religion, particularly,really..... CB: That's what I was wondering. JK: where I do, I mean, I do believe in God and.... CB: You had said before that you had lost touch with your Alaskan roots......how? Completely? JK: Not that I lost it, but for the first time in my life I hadn't been able to go back. And for me when I had problems as a kid growing up, I could go outside.... and just keep things balanced out because being in the natural world there's such a balance you really can't continue to feel bad or depressed, I couldn't. It was a very spiritual thing for me, it always helped me stay centered and focused. It kinda like an antidote..it would feel full of faith again. And the hardest thing, for me about touring, is basically been that I've been constantly on the road, and I haven't been able to use the tool I was raised with to get centered. So I've had to find other ways....I've depended on writing a lot more. But it was hard for me to feel God, you know in a tour bus or in a crappy hotel room, you know? CB: But, JK: I was used to seeing...feeling it outdoors. CB: Jewel, you've reached this level now, where I mean, you are this pop and musical icon. Do you have to tour continuously? Is that the catch-22 of it all, that in order maintain it, you can't stop? JK: Yea, I don't know. I think that it depends what kind of level you want..you know? I look at people, I honestly don't know. Like I look at Mariah Carey's life,and I look at Madonna's life and I think "Wow, they've been doing it" for, Madonna's been doing it and keeping hits out and that takes such a tremendous amount of energy. I don't know what kind of life she's had on the side or not, and I don't know if it's something I want or don't want. And it's something, actually I'm just thinking about you know? Trying to figure out what kind of career do I want? How important is it to me to have hits? What brings me satisfaction? You know, what other ways are there of doing things. Like in business,like....um, there's people now looking very, you know, high powered, very smart business woman that are looking for places to work. That aren't as "toothy" and "mean" and "back-biting" and "scary" to work at, they want to find places that are safe to work at and use there intelligence. Like me starting Higher Ground, I have some great people working for me who were looking for the opportunity, that you were saying you have here... CB: Well, talk to us about Higher Ground. Explain,that's a foundation you founded with your mother? JK:Hmm..mm CB: that is dedicated too..... JK: Umm, just humanity really. Um, I wanted, we both wanted to kind'of start a foundation that wasn't just helping rain forests or just helping woman or just helping you know, just one specific thing. We've created an umbrella organization called,Higher Ground for Humanity, that has many non-profits existing beneath that umbrella. Uhh... it could be as many or as few, it can be organizations we start, and well, you know... from ground up. CB: What are the organizations that are dedicated to specifics? JK: To all aspects of humanity from hunger to environment to spiritual needs to all those types of things. We have,ahh...The Jenna Drugg foundation that is somebody else's that we fund. That helps people deal with the loss of children, families who've lost children. Huh...we have clinics in India helping people there. One of our own projects we started is called the clear water project and it's, umm putting technology into third world countries to clean water, and they'll eventually be able to bottle their own water and,ahh... sell it themselves, and make money off of it. Umm...and there are many different, many different things that we have been doing. CB: And then you tie the certain amount of your earnings to that? JK: Yea, zero money of the organization is spent on fund raising. Um, 40% of my income, I think, last year went to it and 60% of my mom's. And that's just something that we started out to do before I even got famous, and I thought if I can get popular and use that as a platform and I do that as it's sort of always was a goal. And after only 4 or 5 years we've got to do that. CB: Umm, I don't mean to be vulgar, but umm.... if you tied 40% of your, of this year's income, and then you pay 50% taxes..... JK: YEA!! CB: And 10,20,30 to managers are you just in a debt? JK: Umm... I have great money people working with me, and it is an interesting thing, and sometimes I worry, you know? I think "Oh,what am I doing"? and, but... CB:40% is high! JK: Yea, my mom is kinda....she gives 60 and makes less money than I do, she makes a percent of what I do than she gives more than half of that to that, but I've just really.... I have enough to live on, and I'm gonna be fine. I can retire if I wanted, so it's like how much money is in the bank? I just always have to ask myself that. I'm okay, I'm well taken care of that way, and the rest I don't necessarily need.and a lot of my, you know business expenses, you just.... a lot of mine has gone into things, building businesses and things like the Clearwater Project will start making money, to start funding, you know....going back into other non-profits. So it's really just what I feel right about. CB: It's Great. It's Great, that your so young to be so organized. Umm... JK: That's my mom. I mean my mom is a person who is unwavering commitment in grace and execution, Ahh, and she set up all of these businesses, I sort of been the front runner, you know...the like horse out there doing it's job and umm... she organized these things with tremendous vision, and just grace. She puts really neat businesses and companies together. CB: So you success, and the fact that the two of you work so closely together, has not driven a wedge between you or what sounds lie just the opposite. If it's not to personal, when you grew up in Alaska, uh...you..ah, you grew up with your two brothers and you were raised, basically without electricity, without television, with poetry, with wonderful music and then your mother left when you were 8. JK: Hmm,mmm CB: Umm... did you choose to stay in Alaska, were there reasons that you didn't go with her? And then you re joined her when you were 14? JK: Yea...my mom didn't leave, my parents got divorced, and we all tried to live together as a divorced family in the same house and then that obviously didn't work. And so my dad moved to Homer...and my dad's the one that had the income and so we moved with him. My mom had no income. And,uh.... she started getting job skills, you know...she was a Mormon housewife and she had to start. She lived in Anchorage and became a glass artist and started making a business and doing things that would bring her income, so we could see her more than just on holidays. CB:Ah,huh. JK: Hmm, so it's not like my mom left or anything like that, it's just my dad had a good income and we lived there for the majority of the time. CB: Now, I didn't think she...abandoned you, I just didn't quite understand how,umm...that worked. And then when you re-joined her,umm...you had to, you had a time of real turbulence, around the age of 18? JK: Yea, hmmm...just mainly because I'd gone through high school and realized college wouldn't do anything but help distract me from figuring out what I was doing with my life. And,uhh... I wanted to figure that out. I've always had felt real restless, where like we should be doing something. I just had no idea what it was. And it made me desperate, umm... and my mom's always been so focused on....believing what's un seen is just as real as what's seen....and really helping me with my internal emotions and figuring out, why am I here? You know....help an 18 year old with questions like that....that maybe an 18 year old wouldn't always ask themselves and it encouraged me to stick with that, instead of just hiding from it.....cause it was scary enough that maybe I would have just got married and never had thought about it again Hmmm... so she really stuck with me and so it was a very turbulent time but also one of those times where it just changes your entire life. You know.....and it,and it did change my entire life. CB: And so she helped to guide you to a kinda of a epiphany about what you wanted to do with your life? JK: Uh...ummm... CB: Hmmm... JK: I remember, when i told her "Ok, I want to sing, that's what I want to do" Which took me forever to get to, even though you think...cuz I was raised singing, CB: Yea... JK:it would be a natural thought....but it....I never thought I was good enough to make a real living at it, you know? But, when I, as I wanted to sing, she says "well, that's fine. I'll help you do whatever you want, but you have to tell me why." And I had to go back, I had to write a list down, why I wanted to sing and I thought.... well mine's gonna be great! and then I thought Well...boy that won't do anything for me really and then I thought...well everybody loving me would be great! Oops! you did that whole popularity contest your whole life,Jewel.....you know? You weren't popular in high school you don't have to take it on the rest of your life. CB: You showed them! JK: And then see Johnny who never liked me.... And then I realized it's cause I wanted to help people and that's what my mom was looking for. Was something that would anchor me enough that it would keep me grounded through a career that she knew would ask me to remain grounded, if I was gonna remain at all.... CB: Does she do counseling? She sounds remarkable..... JK She's really cool CB" Umm... then you did a film last year with really gifted director,Ang Lee. How did that happen? JK: I've been looking at doing films since the beginning of my music but never could take time off from my music. CB: When I..... JK You know? CB: watched tapes of you,ummm.... you are so focused and you take stage in a way that's so natural and so confident that it seems a very logical step for you to take. JK: They're pretty different, I found. It does lend itself, like I think if I hadn't been in front of cameras and people so much, and acting/pretending on stage, I would have felt weird about it. That definitely helped....but, it's a real different thing. I am pretty used to performing in front of an audience...like all of my timing, works off an audience, you know? My timing, my jokes, all those kinds of things, when to break someone's heart. I just grew up on the stage, so I am used to that, and doing it in front of a camera I had a real hard time feeling my timing, you know....it was a real different thing and there's no one to impress. It was like if your a tree falling in the forest, why would you make a noise if no one is listening? You know....it was sort of.... CB: Yea, we could understand that here..... JK: CB: how did..uh, just tell us one of the reasons that he cast you, well we're sort of going back to your tooth, right? JK: Right..... I had period teeth he said. JK: You know I was egging on. I was kinda like fishing for a compliment, cause I just had such a low self esteem, you know, like why are you choosing me? You could have anybody you want! You now I was looking for a little bit of a bolster, he wouldn't give it to me. He was like..."'cause you have period teeth". I'm like CB: JK: Okay CB: Yea, my orthodontist was a bear JK: CB:Hmmm... what did, did you find it,umm.... over whelming in terms of the technical things that you didn't know, when you were acting marks and camera angles? Were you helped by the actors in the movie? JK: Never, felt.... CB:Or did...? JK: like I jumped in at the deep end of the pool, you know... CB:Yea...'Cause it was a very demanding part. JK: Yea,umm... I was glad to cuz I was really needing a change...you know? I felt like this limb is a singing and song writing limb and the rest of my creative body was just atrophying, and I was beginning to feel useless. And I wanted to keep myself alive, creatively......ummm...but I didn't realize how scary it would be until I actually got there and realized how behind I was, on those things, like you said those technical aspects and everybody was really.....really helpful and you know.....it took me, I had to scramble and I kinda got to the point where I got the basics down. CB: Was it exhilarating to do something so frightening that you, that you weren't so at home in? Something that was that challenging? JK: It was great! I mean it was frightening, it really was one of the most frightening things I've done. 'Cause singing is just so, natural to me. Now, you know all the phases I went through at learning it were a long time ago. So by the time I got in the public, on stage, like when that time I hit...you know, when I got signed I had a lot under my belt. So I got to do it pretty gracefully, and this...you know, I had to learn an camera, and that's embarrassing, you know? You have to like make mistakes when your famous, and that's a much scarier thing. CB: Yea, no kidding. Umm...stay right here we'll be right back. *** CB: Welcome back to Exhale. I am Candice Bergen and I am talking with Jewel. Ummm. did you ever rebel against your parents? It's seems like there was nothing to rebel against in your house-hold.... JK: CB: I, what do you do? You become Martha Stewart?.... I mean to rebel against..... JK: CB: Was there anything to....? JK:There was a lot of things about my childhood that weren't real fun. Ummmm.... CB: Like? < Continued in Part 3 of 3 > ------------------------------ End of jewel-digest V5 #97 **************************