"I kind of did it for myself to help myself fall asleep when I really worried, like when I was homeless and I'd fall asleep in my car," ...Read More |
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Jewel's Coffeehouse Blend
Jewel's Coffeehouse BlendOH, TO BE YOUNG, gifted and bear a name like Jewel. And have a first album out on Atlantic Records barely three years after you first strummed a guitar. And open for Bob Dylan and Liz Phair. Such are the fortunes of Jewel, formerly Jewel Kilcher, a 20-year-old angel-faced Alaskan singer who excited New York in February with a month of unpolished performances at Ludlow Street Cafe, and who takes the stage at Fez on Tuesday. Jewel hates the term folky, but her sweet, plain guitar and ethereal voice bring the word to mind. So do her lyrics, which often begin as poems about racism and infidelity, and ring with earnestness. But there's wit and fire behind the innocence. As with the most compelling performers, there's romance in her bio, which reads like a Gen X version of a picaresque tale: Jewel was reared on an 800-acre farm near Homer, Alaska, learned to yodel at 6 and took the stage with her singer-songwriter parents before graduation from kindergarten. "We did dinner shows at hotels," she says. "We'd show this documentary about the family [they were early homesteaders; her grandfather helped draft the state charter]. They'd sing Alaskan folk songs and I'd yodel." After her parents split, Jewel lived with her father, wove willow baskets and drove a tractor, then flew off to study opera and sculpture at an arts high school in Michigan. Next, she and her mother decamped in San Diego (each in her own van), where Jewel surfed, waitressed and, following a "premature midlife crisis," began performing newborn songs at a coffeehouse. "I cried the first few gigs because there were only three people," says Jewel, who giggles more than most people. "But I got better fast and I got a following." The coffee ouse esthetic pervades Jewel's music even her album, "Pieces of You," was recorded partly in a San Diego cafe, the rest at Neil Young's studio/ranch. At 20, she is still a gem in the rough, crisscrossing the line between preachy naivete and elegant simplicity. But this is a Jewel that will only get brighter with age. With Candy Butchers at Fez, 380 Lafayette St. (212) 533-2680. |