Jewel's New 'Spirit'
Although she's only 24, Jewel has made a big impact on the music scene. Tuesday, in honor of World AIDS Day, the singer-songwriter performed for an audience of people living with AIDS, and CBS This Morning Contributor Eleanor Mondale was on hand.
Jewel's performance was part of a program sponsored by Hearts and Voices, an arm of Lifebeat, that brings entertainers into hospitals and residential care facilities for people living with AIDS in New York City.
"It's important," says Jewel. "It's the reason I got into music, to try to make a difference. And it's nice that after only four years of work, I'm in a position of influence [so] I can help."
Tracy, one of the patients who heard Jewel sing, tells Mondale, "I feel really, really great. She gave me a hug. She's a wonderful person. She's got a great voice, and she makes people laugh and feel good inside."
Jewel herself downplays her effect on her audience.
"I don't want to kid myself. I don't think I change people's lives," she says. "I think you help somebody get through their day better, and help people keep hope and faith. It helps me being up there [on stage] as much as anything."
Jewel's second album, Spirit, hit the stores last week, exceeding sales for the new releases from Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey.
"It was a surprise," Jewel says. "I didn't even think I was in the same category."
Not that she doesn't know that she is a best-selling artist. Her first album, Pieces of You (1996), sold 10 million copies worldwide.
"The first album took four years [to prepare], and over those four years, I gotÂ…comfortable with the idea that I might be popular," says Jewel.
Have her goals changed? "Not really," she says. "I've exceeded any goal I have ever set for myselfÂ… I don't know what else there is to conquer, except to see how else I can make myself available to help."
Jewel credits her mother, Nedra, with helping her to stay grounded. Her mother joins Jewel for two songs on Spirit, and Jewel will make her motion picture debut next spring in the movie Ride With the Devil, in which she plays a young widow during the Civil War.
Jewel's full name is Jewel Kilcher. She was born in Utah, but was reared in a remote town in Alaska, without television, telephone, or indoor plumbing. Her parents were musicians, and she began performing with them when she was 6 years old. Back then, her yodeling was the most popular part of the act.
Her parents divorced when she was 8, and Jewel continued to perform with her father, Atz, and lived with him until she was 17. (She also lived for a couple of years with an aunt in Hawaii.)
Jewel, who has dyslexia, was educated partly at the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan. After raduation, she moved to San Diego, where she wound up living in a camper, surviving mainly on carrots and peanut butter. Her mother also lived in a van, parked in the same lot as her daughter. They performed at coffee houses together, and Jewel says her primary possessions were a backpack, a surfboard, and a mattress.
On the day that record executives first came to hear Jewel, the singer reportedly thought she ought to wash her hair, so she went to a local restaurant and washed it in the ladies room sink.