October 11, 2025 • 21 mins
Four time grammy nominated artist Jewel sits down with Amy and T.J. in the iHeart studios this week, and the conversation was so good, we had to make it two parts! Here, in part one, Jewel talks about everything from her sudden rise to fame from homelessness to walking red carpets, her transition out of the spotlight and her focus on mental health awareness.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome everyone to this edition of Amy and TJ. You know,
we haven't had a lot of guests this season, but
when we do have them, they are worth listening to.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Yeah, we have to make sure they are worthy of
the podcast. No, that is not what we're saying. However,
this robes. Look, we've had guests on. It's an honor
to me and that we have much respect and our
fans of There's a different lane that our guest today occupies.
For me and probably you, there's a time in your life,
rightly from probably junior high, high school through the end
(00:35):
of college. Whatever music you were listening to in that
lane is the music you will die with. And one
of those musicians and some of those songs hit in
that lane. And that's who we got in the studio epically.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
And you also know that you've made it when you're
known by one name, right you know, there aren't a
lot of artists that you can just say one name
and you know exactly who it is and why you
love them.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
And that is our next guest.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Her name is Jewel, and she is in studio.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Please welcome, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Jewel.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
It's funny we were talking before you walked into the
studio about how many of us had your cassette tape
or your CD. I was listening to your music all
through college. Uh, and it was just it was the
soundtrack of my coming up and just so much of
what you wrote about was so relatable to all of us,
but it still is today.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
So we are so honored to have you here. I'm
sure you hear that all the time. Oh, it's always
nice to hear. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Keep it coming. That's not a problem.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
I know I'm going to visit you guys more, but
you know.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
It's hard to continue your enthusiasm. I tried to play
cool when you walked in, but I was as nervous
as all get out because Jewel is walking and I'm
glad I still get excited like that, even as a
forty eight year old guy. I am so honored to
meet you. This is just absolutely cool. Now, when you
were writing all that stuff at the time and performing,
were you making it for anybody other than you? Did
(02:03):
you have an eighteen year old freshman at the University
of Arkansas in mind when you were writing that stuff.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
No, I, you know, really wrote as medicine for myself.
As music that I needed, it was words that I needed,
and to see that they helped other people and affected
them the same that they needed thouse words the same way.
It was really humbling, you know that record. None of
my career has been to try and get popular, was
(02:30):
try and get healthy, and people helped me on that journey.
You know, it was a very unpopular style of music
when it came out. It was kind of the height
of grunge and moving into like space Girl's era, which
is I love all of that, but it definitely wasn't
what I was, and so the fact that people supported
it so passionately changed the course of my life.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
A young girl with her guitar and singing truth. You know,
I think that authenticity and those lyrics are what hit
And obviously you have incredible musical talent, but I think
that being so open and honest and vulnerable that is
what brought so many people along with you. And for
fans of yours, I think they probably know your story,
but we'll try to hit a few of what got
(03:11):
you to sitting in this studio here in iHeart, but
you were a young girl who grew up in Alaska
with no running water, and you were on an Alaska homestead.
We were just talking about how your family has had
a documentary, a long running documentary about their way of life,
but you ended up homeless and living out of a
(03:31):
van by the age of what was that sixteen seventeen
eighteen when you were just on your own and it
was music that saved you. Were you always musical or
was this just about you journaling your feelings that turned
into song lyrics that led you to music.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
My family were musical. They were raised on this homestead.
My grandparents came from Germany, escaped the Second World War
and were raised in the middle of nowhere, and so
my grandmother had taught them all to write poetry and
to paint and to write. They were homeschooled, and so
I was raised in this very creative family, very rural
and isolated, but also very creative. And so I moved
(04:11):
out at fifteen, very young. I knew that statistically movies
don't end well for kids like me, and I wanted
to see if happiness was a learnable skill. Was it
a teachable skill. I didn't grow up in a very
happy home, and so I set off in kind of
an ambitious mission to see if I could change the
outcome of my life.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Wow, you said you didn't grow up in a happy home,
and do you think that. Obviously we're here to talk
about you have done so much powerful work in the
mental health space, and certainly that's become thankfully a growing
topic of conversation, something that I think was avoided for
so long that now we're so lucky to be a
part of this era where we actually are okay to
(04:50):
discuss it, to speak vulnerably, and to let people know
that they're not alone, which is the challenge, not alone challenge.
We'll get into all of that, but I wanted to
get into some of the backstory. Do you think think
you were situationally affected in the fact that your depression
or any of your mental health instability came from the
situation you were in, or do you think.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
It was inherited?
Speaker 1 (05:11):
At what point did you realize I need help or
I need to do something about this.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Yeah, I mean I realized that I was unhappy, you know,
before I moved out. Moving out at fifteen is a
pretty extreme thing to do, to take on the responsibility
of paying rent and getting yourself to school and those things.
But for me personally, I realized I could live in
a cabin, you know, with you know, my mom left
when I was eight. My dad took over raising us,
and he had a very traumatic childhood. You know, as
(05:37):
you grow up, you learn more about your parents and
you can grow more empathy for what they lived through.
My dad raised me a lot better than he was raised,
but it still wasn't fun, you know, And so I
still decided to go ahead and move out. And see,
I realized that, you know, we learned these emotional languages
in our households, and I was very fluent in the language,
that emotional language by the time I was fifteen. And when,
(06:00):
you know, I realized, as much as you have a
genetic inheritance that might give you a predisposition to heart disease,
I had an emotional inheritance that gave me a predisposition
toward whatever addiction or abuse or all kinds of things,
and that this was sort of a legacy. And we're
learning so much more about epigenetics and how trauma can
be actually passed on generationally. I think for me, it
(06:21):
just was when I decided to stop making excuses of
I had a lot of reasons to be unhappy, but
I stopped wanting to have any excuses that I couldn't
be and taking on that responsibility and that mantle of saying,
there's if I put my mind to this, if I
make this the most important thing in my life, I
think I can get a change.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
What age were you when that happened at that time? So,
but what happened? How did you get that? Maybe it
was just experience, but the idea of a fifteen year
old figuring that out and taking that on seems impossible
these days. What was it for you? Was it just
your upbringing?
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Probably? I think being raised in nature. You know, I
was outside and it sound's funny, but I was taught
a lot. I was taught how to be a human
by watching nature. I can tell you, like lesson after
lesson that really guided me on my path and gave
me sort of a role model, if you will. And
reading a lot. I read a lot of philosophy and
(07:17):
just kind of learned to think critically through what I
was reading. And I also think it's kind of nice
when you don't have a safety net. There can be
perks to that, you know, if you can figure out
and realize, Like for me, when I realized nobody's coming
for me. Am I going to come for me? That
was a big moment.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
You know.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Am I willing to do that? Am I willing to
step up? Or do I just want to complain that
I don't have a safety net, and so I didn't
take a lot of the same I don't know. I
didn't have the safety net other kids had, and so
I didn't experiment with drugs. I didn't. I was careful
in ways that some kids don't have to be because
you do have some margin of error there. You know, Wow,
(07:58):
that's wild.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
I was just saying, someone told me once, I'm successful
because I never had a plan B. This was it.
This was my one option, and I knew I had
nothing else to fall back on. That scared the hell
out of me because even sitting here, I feel like
I have some kind of a safety net. But that's
interesting to hear that at that age to figure that out.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
I mean, it's funny you use that term because my daughter,
who just left the nest at twenty two, I have
said to her multiple times when she starts to get
anxious or worried because she's in and she's in an
artistic field as well, and that doesn't necessarily always pay
all the bills. And I told her, hey, I'm I'm
I am cutting you off. But obviously if you got
(08:38):
into a really difficult situation, I'm your safety net.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
And it's funny.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Now I'm rethinking maybe I shouldn't have told her that.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
No, it's important for us do better for it. It's
not fun. You always have just like do or die situations,
but it is motivated, like highly motivated.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
But he could also go the other way if you
felt if you feel that alone and you feel that desponded,
was there a human at all who helped along the way.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Gosh, you know, a lot of my safety and how
I learned to survive was going alone. Being alone, it
was much harder for me, and I had to work
a lot harder when I was older to like trust connection,
trust relationship. So yeah, I'd say in those early years
it was reading a lot that helped it. And then
just introspection. I again, being raised without a television causes
(09:26):
you to enjoy being alone, thinking, sitting in silence, and
so I learned a lot of my behavioral tools and
like how to stop shoplifting, how to handle my panic
attacks just through introspection and kind of through trial and error,
and you know, if you can learn to channel your
stubbornness into a way that works for you, you know,
that helps build your life instead of tear your life down.
(09:48):
That again, like it kind of became a superpower, became
stubbornly focused on like one thing at a time. I'm
going to learn how to stop shoplifting. So what is it?
Why am I doing it? When do I do it?
What helps me to do it? And then starting to
get very curious that way.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
You are describing something that people are spending thousands of
dollars in therapy trying to figure out. Right, what in
the world I think of a fifteen year old sixteen, seventeen,
eighteen figuring all this out. And I know you helped,
and mental health advocacy has been a huge part of
making sure young people and folks get access to help.
(10:34):
What was your other option in terms of mental health
help at that time, if you didn't just figure it
out on your own, did you have another option for
getting some type of healing and help.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
Yeah, there wasn't any kind of support. You know, I
was the type of kid that fell through cracks. I
made it through high school, I got a job in
San Diego taking I was taking care of a sick
relative and I had a job answering phones, and my
boss proposition to meet one day and you know, you
wouldn't give him a paycheck if I wouldn't sleep with them,
And luckily, being raised on a homestead, I was like,
(11:09):
I can live in a car. Thanks, you know, I'll
be on the street. I'm good, you know, And so
I think that was really helpful, just like going my
own way. And it was like while I was homeless
that I was like, oh my gosh. When I was fifteen,
I said on this ambitious mission to not be a statistic,
and here I am homeless in shoplifting, Like I'm still
a statistic eighteen yeah, despite like how hard I worked
(11:32):
to not be a statistic. And so I had to
really again look in the mirror and go I think
I remembered a stoic quote that was, happiness doesn't depend
on who you are, what you have, It depends on
what you think. And I was in this position where
I didn't have things, but I had what I thought,
and so I decided to see if I could turn
my life around one thought at a time, and that's
when I started tackling, like I call it a pain point,
(11:54):
one pain point at a time, and when I got successful,
I you know, misery is an equal opportunist. It doesn't
care if you're rich, white, black, poor, homeless, famous. It's
an equal opportunist. But to learn not to be miserable
is an education, and education costs many So therapy at
its best should be a re education and not everybody
(12:16):
has access to that, and that's unacceptable. There are real
tools that help, whether you're seeking professional guidance or not.
There are things you can do by yourself. And I
encourage connection and seeking help from other people, but if
you don't have that, there's still not a reason that
you can't find improvement.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Wow. May I ask what books you were reading, because
they seem to have been incredibly powerful.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
I didn't read self help books. I mean it was
I don't ever talk about the books I was reading,
but I was reading, yeah, a lot of philosophy. I
liked physics a lot. I liked reading about quantum physics
because I was like, gosh, if there's such a thing
as particle non locality, like the world is listening, Like
maybe I can make a difference in my life. It
made me feel empowered physics for some reason. Yeah wow,
(13:02):
And then oh sorry, how did that? How did you?
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Then? I'm curious go from living in a van trying
not to be a statistic to becoming the world famous musician.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
I mean, what was that timeline like?
Speaker 1 (13:16):
And can you give us a sense of how that developed?
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Yeah? So when I was eighteen living in San Diego,
got propositioned by the boss, turned him down, started living
in my car, My car got stolen, I was homeless
for about a year. Started singing in a coffee shop,
not to get discovered, but because I was raised singing.
I grew up bar singing with my dad and we
got paid for it. And so I was like, I
couldn't hold a job down. I had bad kidneys. You
(13:41):
start looking homeless, you know, you don't have an address
to put on your application even like and it's just
it's hard to describe how tiring being homeless is, and
just looking for food, water and safety is a full
time job. And so I was like, what if I
could find a gigs singing. All the venues in town
(14:02):
wanted to charge me to sing there because people were
getting signed at that era was like the height of
the nineties, kind of gold rush of brunch, and I
was like, I'm not here to get discovered, Like I'm
here to just try and get a house. And so
I found a place going out of business, and I said,
can you keep your doors open for one month? Give
me one month, and I get to keep the door
(14:23):
money and you can keep the coffee and you know,
food sales. And so I started to get like two people,
and then twelve people, and then twenty people, and then
it was standing room only, and then it was two
shows a night, and then record labels started coming. It
was it was crazy. It was like it was really
living in a like being a Cinderella.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
It was something sounds almost overnight, like how what was
that timeframe? You know?
Speaker 3 (14:48):
It was interesting. I think it was about a year,
so that a year being homeless by the end of that.
And during that time I did develop tools to stop shoplifting,
to get a grip on my panic attacks. I was agoraphobic.
I got a real change in that. And so when
I got discovered again, I just looked at it really
practically and I was like, this probably isn't a great
idea for someone like me, because you read any autobiography
(15:11):
or watch any movie about a musician, they're all the same. Like,
fame doesn't seem to work out well for people, you know,
it leads to drugs and often death. And I was like,
I'm a real candidate for that, and I didn't want
to sacrifice the mental health ground that I had gained
to do something that I thought might be really risky,
which is God forbid I ever get famous. So I
(15:33):
almost turned it down. You know, I was offered a
million dollar signing bonus. I turned that down because I
read a book called Everything You Need to Know About
the Music Business, and I learned that that was in advance.
It was alone, basically, and it was alone against a
product I hadn't even made yet, which seemed ludicrous to do.
And so I made myself a promise one day on
(15:53):
the beach, I was like, my number one job is
to learn. I wrote to be a happy, whole human,
not a human full of holes, and that had to
be auditible and I had to have a system in
place for knowing like how do I know I'm doing better?
How do I know I'm doing worse? And being really
intentional about that and then my number two job was
to be a musician, and under that I wanted to
(16:14):
be an artist more than famous, and so armed with that,
I felt like if I could be loyal again, like
stubbornly loyal to that concept, I felt like I might
have a shot at handling whatever might get thrown my way.
Turned the money down, took a really big back end
so that if I ever sold albums, I would be rewarded,
and that really de risked me that way. A label
(16:35):
wouldn't drop me if I didn't sell records. You have
a big million dollar bounty, they really could drop you.
In sight, it's not worth it. Cutter losses, cutter loose,
And so I kind of started that way and then
went on to fail for several years. It's a very
good thing I didn't take that advance. And then slowly
things started to turn around. Bob Dylan took me out
on tour, and then Neil Young, and that's kind of just.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
A few picked up, just you know, lesser known artists
out there.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Yeah. I remember when Bob took me out. I was like,
nobody knew me. But I was like Bob k new man.
I'm like, we're good I'm good. That's amazing.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Were there steps though you mentioned it you were concerned
about what being famous in the industry could do with
all the work you had done. Did you feel like
you took any steps back once the fame did come.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
You know, life kept throwing things my way. I had.
The drama in my life continued. I wrote a book
called Never Broken, and people can kind of see at
a really difficult relationship with my mom that ultimately didn't
really come. I didn't come to terms with until I
was really thirty, and so I had a lot of
rough roads ahead of me. Still, fame I found to
(17:41):
be very traumatic. It is difficult to manage and handle
that much attention, that much energy, especially if somebody as
shy as me. I didn't know where it's like trauma
trigger But like one of my big triggers is like
strangers touching me. And when you're famous, people grab you.
They they turn you around, they like I hated it.
It's hard and it's hard to describe to people, but
(18:04):
it's and especially for a shy, introverted writer. I was like,
after my second album, I had to I had to
keep that promise to myself I made. I was like
this doesn't actually make me happy. I'm so thankful. I mean,
I've reached heights that were just impossible, and I love that,
and I love being an underestimated dark horse and winning,
like I'm for it. But it made me incredibly unhappy
(18:26):
and uncomfortable, and I realized I don't have to I
don't have to be this famous, and so I took
two years off and my fame went way down. I
could grocery shop, I didn't have to have bodyguards, and
I was like, okay, I actually do like music. I
just don't like the level of fame. And I gave
myself permission to not be that famous. And so that
just meant like changing genres, doing what I wanted creatively,
(18:49):
being willing to be hated, you know, or being told
you're washed up because you're not as popular as you
once were. All worth it. That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
It's funny because literally two weekends, I believe it was
tjes and like people touching him and he is more
introverted or people, so he just someone had just kind
of come up and touched us. And then he was like, man,
I just don't like it when people come up and
touch me.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Five four three two one.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
A woman comes up from behind and bear hugs like
puts her arms around him, and he just bristled. But yes,
I and we only know a fraction of the fame
you experience, experience, but it is one of those moments
where you do feel like a piece of meat, like
a piece of property. And people do view you if
(19:37):
they like you, especially if they love your music, they
feel like they own you that way. Did you get
you have that experience and that that is not a
good feeling to have.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Yeah, you know, it's it's isolating to be adored when
they don't know you. And it's not that it's I mean,
of course it's flattering, I guess, but they don't know you.
They don't know if you're a good person. You know,
they don't know if I'm kind my child. So it's oddly,
it's hard to describe it. It's kind of an isolating thing
to be adored when you haven't earned it. And I
(20:08):
think it's equally isolating to be hated when you haven't
earned that either, And so it's kind of a singular
thing to live through. And for me, it just really
staying grounded and like I care about being a good human.
I'm going to task myself every day to be proud
of myself and you know, be on this journey till
the day I die. And then the rest was, like
my fans have to say, like I was really able
(20:30):
to communicate to them, like you guys can't touch me.
And I was able to talk to my fans always
on the internet and it's really helpful because they really
would listen to me. And then so this day, if
you see one of my fans that really follow me,
they put their hands up in a gusture of safety.
It's amazing. And they go Jewel and they say, about
this far from me, and they say, I just want
to tell you it's so household in me, like I
(20:52):
can handle that.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
We walked in and now.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
He did because my hand was out. That is funny.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
I can't tell if I don't remember meeting people the
same way.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
We're huggers here, we're huggers there.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
That is a great chace to see exactly I can't remember.
And we'll have much more. With our conversation with Jewel.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
We just couldn't stop talking and so we have a
lot more to get to. We're going to talk about
her Not Alone Challenge, something that began as something very
simple and turned into now a major event and awards
show in Vegas.
Welcome everyone to this edition of Amy and TJ. You know,
we haven't had a lot of guests this season, but
when we do have them, they are worth listening to.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Yeah, we have to make sure they are worthy of
the podcast. No, that is not what we're saying. However,
this robes. Look, we've had guests on. It's an honor
to me and that we have much respect and our
fans of There's a different lane that our guest today occupies.
For me and probably you, there's a time in your life,
rightly from probably junior high, high school through the end
(00:35):
of college. Whatever music you were listening to in that
lane is the music you will die with. And one
of those musicians and some of those songs hit in
that lane. And that's who we got in the studio epically.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
And you also know that you've made it when you're
known by one name, right you know, there aren't a
lot of artists that you can just say one name
and you know exactly who it is and why you
love them.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
And that is our next guest.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Her name is Jewel, and she is in studio.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Please welcome, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Jewel.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
It's funny we were talking before you walked into the
studio about how many of us had your cassette tape
or your CD. I was listening to your music all
through college. Uh, and it was just it was the
soundtrack of my coming up and just so much of
what you wrote about was so relatable to all of us,
but it still is today.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
So we are so honored to have you here. I'm
sure you hear that all the time. Oh, it's always
nice to hear. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Keep it coming. That's not a problem.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
I know I'm going to visit you guys more, but
you know.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
It's hard to continue your enthusiasm. I tried to play
cool when you walked in, but I was as nervous
as all get out because Jewel is walking and I'm
glad I still get excited like that, even as a
forty eight year old guy. I am so honored to
meet you. This is just absolutely cool. Now, when you
were writing all that stuff at the time and performing,
were you making it for anybody other than you? Did
(02:03):
you have an eighteen year old freshman at the University
of Arkansas in mind when you were writing that stuff.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
No, I, you know, really wrote as medicine for myself.
As music that I needed, it was words that I needed,
and to see that they helped other people and affected
them the same that they needed thouse words the same way.
It was really humbling, you know that record. None of
my career has been to try and get popular, was
(02:30):
try and get healthy, and people helped me on that journey.
You know, it was a very unpopular style of music
when it came out. It was kind of the height
of grunge and moving into like space Girl's era, which
is I love all of that, but it definitely wasn't
what I was, and so the fact that people supported
it so passionately changed the course of my life.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
A young girl with her guitar and singing truth. You know,
I think that authenticity and those lyrics are what hit
And obviously you have incredible musical talent, but I think
that being so open and honest and vulnerable that is
what brought so many people along with you. And for
fans of yours, I think they probably know your story,
but we'll try to hit a few of what got
(03:11):
you to sitting in this studio here in iHeart, but
you were a young girl who grew up in Alaska
with no running water, and you were on an Alaska homestead.
We were just talking about how your family has had
a documentary, a long running documentary about their way of life,
but you ended up homeless and living out of a
(03:31):
van by the age of what was that sixteen seventeen
eighteen when you were just on your own and it
was music that saved you. Were you always musical or
was this just about you journaling your feelings that turned
into song lyrics that led you to music.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
My family were musical. They were raised on this homestead.
My grandparents came from Germany, escaped the Second World War
and were raised in the middle of nowhere, and so
my grandmother had taught them all to write poetry and
to paint and to write. They were homeschooled, and so
I was raised in this very creative family, very rural
and isolated, but also very creative. And so I moved
(04:11):
out at fifteen, very young. I knew that statistically movies
don't end well for kids like me, and I wanted
to see if happiness was a learnable skill. Was it
a teachable skill. I didn't grow up in a very
happy home, and so I set off in kind of
an ambitious mission to see if I could change the
outcome of my life.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Wow, you said you didn't grow up in a happy home,
and do you think that. Obviously we're here to talk
about you have done so much powerful work in the
mental health space, and certainly that's become thankfully a growing
topic of conversation, something that I think was avoided for
so long that now we're so lucky to be a
part of this era where we actually are okay to
(04:50):
discuss it, to speak vulnerably, and to let people know
that they're not alone, which is the challenge, not alone challenge.
We'll get into all of that, but I wanted to
get into some of the backstory. Do you think think
you were situationally affected in the fact that your depression
or any of your mental health instability came from the
situation you were in, or do you think.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
It was inherited?
Speaker 1 (05:11):
At what point did you realize I need help or
I need to do something about this.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Yeah, I mean I realized that I was unhappy, you know,
before I moved out. Moving out at fifteen is a
pretty extreme thing to do, to take on the responsibility
of paying rent and getting yourself to school and those things.
But for me personally, I realized I could live in
a cabin, you know, with you know, my mom left
when I was eight. My dad took over raising us,
and he had a very traumatic childhood. You know, as
(05:37):
you grow up, you learn more about your parents and
you can grow more empathy for what they lived through.
My dad raised me a lot better than he was raised,
but it still wasn't fun, you know, And so I
still decided to go ahead and move out. And see,
I realized that, you know, we learned these emotional languages
in our households, and I was very fluent in the language,
that emotional language by the time I was fifteen. And when,
(06:00):
you know, I realized, as much as you have a
genetic inheritance that might give you a predisposition to heart disease,
I had an emotional inheritance that gave me a predisposition
toward whatever addiction or abuse or all kinds of things,
and that this was sort of a legacy. And we're
learning so much more about epigenetics and how trauma can
be actually passed on generationally. I think for me, it
(06:21):
just was when I decided to stop making excuses of
I had a lot of reasons to be unhappy, but
I stopped wanting to have any excuses that I couldn't
be and taking on that responsibility and that mantle of saying,
there's if I put my mind to this, if I
make this the most important thing in my life, I
think I can get a change.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
What age were you when that happened at that time? So,
but what happened? How did you get that? Maybe it
was just experience, but the idea of a fifteen year
old figuring that out and taking that on seems impossible
these days. What was it for you? Was it just
your upbringing?
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Probably? I think being raised in nature. You know, I
was outside and it sound's funny, but I was taught
a lot. I was taught how to be a human
by watching nature. I can tell you, like lesson after
lesson that really guided me on my path and gave
me sort of a role model, if you will. And
reading a lot. I read a lot of philosophy and
(07:17):
just kind of learned to think critically through what I
was reading. And I also think it's kind of nice
when you don't have a safety net. There can be
perks to that, you know, if you can figure out
and realize, Like for me, when I realized nobody's coming
for me. Am I going to come for me? That
was a big moment.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
You know.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Am I willing to do that? Am I willing to
step up? Or do I just want to complain that
I don't have a safety net, and so I didn't
take a lot of the same I don't know. I
didn't have the safety net other kids had, and so
I didn't experiment with drugs. I didn't. I was careful
in ways that some kids don't have to be because
you do have some margin of error there. You know, Wow,
(07:58):
that's wild.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
I was just saying, someone told me once, I'm successful
because I never had a plan B. This was it.
This was my one option, and I knew I had
nothing else to fall back on. That scared the hell
out of me because even sitting here, I feel like
I have some kind of a safety net. But that's
interesting to hear that at that age to figure that out.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
I mean, it's funny you use that term because my daughter,
who just left the nest at twenty two, I have
said to her multiple times when she starts to get
anxious or worried because she's in and she's in an
artistic field as well, and that doesn't necessarily always pay
all the bills. And I told her, hey, I'm I'm
I am cutting you off. But obviously if you got
(08:38):
into a really difficult situation, I'm your safety net.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
And it's funny.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Now I'm rethinking maybe I shouldn't have told her that.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
No, it's important for us do better for it. It's
not fun. You always have just like do or die situations,
but it is motivated, like highly motivated.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
But he could also go the other way if you
felt if you feel that alone and you feel that desponded,
was there a human at all who helped along the way.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Gosh, you know, a lot of my safety and how
I learned to survive was going alone. Being alone, it
was much harder for me, and I had to work
a lot harder when I was older to like trust connection,
trust relationship. So yeah, I'd say in those early years
it was reading a lot that helped it. And then
just introspection. I again, being raised without a television causes
(09:26):
you to enjoy being alone, thinking, sitting in silence, and
so I learned a lot of my behavioral tools and
like how to stop shoplifting, how to handle my panic
attacks just through introspection and kind of through trial and error,
and you know, if you can learn to channel your
stubbornness into a way that works for you, you know,
that helps build your life instead of tear your life down.
(09:48):
That again, like it kind of became a superpower, became
stubbornly focused on like one thing at a time. I'm
going to learn how to stop shoplifting. So what is it?
Why am I doing it? When do I do it?
What helps me to do it? And then starting to
get very curious that way.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
You are describing something that people are spending thousands of
dollars in therapy trying to figure out. Right, what in
the world I think of a fifteen year old sixteen, seventeen,
eighteen figuring all this out. And I know you helped,
and mental health advocacy has been a huge part of
making sure young people and folks get access to help.
(10:34):
What was your other option in terms of mental health
help at that time, if you didn't just figure it
out on your own, did you have another option for
getting some type of healing and help.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
Yeah, there wasn't any kind of support. You know, I
was the type of kid that fell through cracks. I
made it through high school, I got a job in
San Diego taking I was taking care of a sick
relative and I had a job answering phones, and my
boss proposition to meet one day and you know, you
wouldn't give him a paycheck if I wouldn't sleep with them,
And luckily, being raised on a homestead, I was like,
(11:09):
I can live in a car. Thanks, you know, I'll
be on the street. I'm good, you know, And so
I think that was really helpful, just like going my
own way. And it was like while I was homeless
that I was like, oh my gosh. When I was fifteen,
I said on this ambitious mission to not be a statistic,
and here I am homeless in shoplifting, Like I'm still
a statistic eighteen yeah, despite like how hard I worked
(11:32):
to not be a statistic. And so I had to
really again look in the mirror and go I think
I remembered a stoic quote that was, happiness doesn't depend
on who you are, what you have, It depends on
what you think. And I was in this position where
I didn't have things, but I had what I thought,
and so I decided to see if I could turn
my life around one thought at a time, and that's
when I started tackling, like I call it a pain point,
(11:54):
one pain point at a time, and when I got successful,
I you know, misery is an equal opportunist. It doesn't
care if you're rich, white, black, poor, homeless, famous. It's
an equal opportunist. But to learn not to be miserable
is an education, and education costs many So therapy at
its best should be a re education and not everybody
(12:16):
has access to that, and that's unacceptable. There are real
tools that help, whether you're seeking professional guidance or not.
There are things you can do by yourself. And I
encourage connection and seeking help from other people, but if
you don't have that, there's still not a reason that
you can't find improvement.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Wow. May I ask what books you were reading, because
they seem to have been incredibly powerful.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
I didn't read self help books. I mean it was
I don't ever talk about the books I was reading,
but I was reading, yeah, a lot of philosophy. I
liked physics a lot. I liked reading about quantum physics
because I was like, gosh, if there's such a thing
as particle non locality, like the world is listening, Like
maybe I can make a difference in my life. It
made me feel empowered physics for some reason. Yeah wow,
(13:02):
And then oh sorry, how did that? How did you?
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Then? I'm curious go from living in a van trying
not to be a statistic to becoming the world famous musician.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
I mean, what was that timeline like?
Speaker 1 (13:16):
And can you give us a sense of how that developed?
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Yeah? So when I was eighteen living in San Diego,
got propositioned by the boss, turned him down, started living
in my car, My car got stolen, I was homeless
for about a year. Started singing in a coffee shop,
not to get discovered, but because I was raised singing.
I grew up bar singing with my dad and we
got paid for it. And so I was like, I
couldn't hold a job down. I had bad kidneys. You
(13:41):
start looking homeless, you know, you don't have an address
to put on your application even like and it's just
it's hard to describe how tiring being homeless is, and
just looking for food, water and safety is a full
time job. And so I was like, what if I
could find a gigs singing. All the venues in town
(14:02):
wanted to charge me to sing there because people were
getting signed at that era was like the height of
the nineties, kind of gold rush of brunch, and I
was like, I'm not here to get discovered, Like I'm
here to just try and get a house. And so
I found a place going out of business, and I said,
can you keep your doors open for one month? Give
me one month, and I get to keep the door
(14:23):
money and you can keep the coffee and you know,
food sales. And so I started to get like two people,
and then twelve people, and then twenty people, and then
it was standing room only, and then it was two
shows a night, and then record labels started coming. It
was it was crazy. It was like it was really
living in a like being a Cinderella.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
It was something sounds almost overnight, like how what was
that timeframe? You know?
Speaker 3 (14:48):
It was interesting. I think it was about a year,
so that a year being homeless by the end of that.
And during that time I did develop tools to stop shoplifting,
to get a grip on my panic attacks. I was agoraphobic.
I got a real change in that. And so when
I got discovered again, I just looked at it really
practically and I was like, this probably isn't a great
idea for someone like me, because you read any autobiography
(15:11):
or watch any movie about a musician, they're all the same. Like,
fame doesn't seem to work out well for people, you know,
it leads to drugs and often death. And I was like,
I'm a real candidate for that, and I didn't want
to sacrifice the mental health ground that I had gained
to do something that I thought might be really risky,
which is God forbid I ever get famous. So I
(15:33):
almost turned it down. You know, I was offered a
million dollar signing bonus. I turned that down because I
read a book called Everything You Need to Know About
the Music Business, and I learned that that was in advance.
It was alone, basically, and it was alone against a
product I hadn't even made yet, which seemed ludicrous to do.
And so I made myself a promise one day on
(15:53):
the beach, I was like, my number one job is
to learn. I wrote to be a happy, whole human,
not a human full of holes, and that had to
be auditible and I had to have a system in
place for knowing like how do I know I'm doing better?
How do I know I'm doing worse? And being really
intentional about that and then my number two job was
to be a musician, and under that I wanted to
(16:14):
be an artist more than famous, and so armed with that,
I felt like if I could be loyal again, like
stubbornly loyal to that concept, I felt like I might
have a shot at handling whatever might get thrown my way.
Turned the money down, took a really big back end
so that if I ever sold albums, I would be rewarded,
and that really de risked me that way. A label
(16:35):
wouldn't drop me if I didn't sell records. You have
a big million dollar bounty, they really could drop you.
In sight, it's not worth it. Cutter losses, cutter loose,
And so I kind of started that way and then
went on to fail for several years. It's a very
good thing I didn't take that advance. And then slowly
things started to turn around. Bob Dylan took me out
on tour, and then Neil Young, and that's kind of just.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
A few picked up, just you know, lesser known artists
out there.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Yeah. I remember when Bob took me out. I was like,
nobody knew me. But I was like Bob k new man.
I'm like, we're good I'm good. That's amazing.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Were there steps though you mentioned it you were concerned
about what being famous in the industry could do with
all the work you had done. Did you feel like
you took any steps back once the fame did come.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
You know, life kept throwing things my way. I had.
The drama in my life continued. I wrote a book
called Never Broken, and people can kind of see at
a really difficult relationship with my mom that ultimately didn't
really come. I didn't come to terms with until I
was really thirty, and so I had a lot of
rough roads ahead of me. Still, fame I found to
(17:41):
be very traumatic. It is difficult to manage and handle
that much attention, that much energy, especially if somebody as
shy as me. I didn't know where it's like trauma
trigger But like one of my big triggers is like
strangers touching me. And when you're famous, people grab you.
They they turn you around, they like I hated it.
It's hard and it's hard to describe to people, but
(18:04):
it's and especially for a shy, introverted writer. I was like,
after my second album, I had to I had to
keep that promise to myself I made. I was like
this doesn't actually make me happy. I'm so thankful. I mean,
I've reached heights that were just impossible, and I love that,
and I love being an underestimated dark horse and winning,
like I'm for it. But it made me incredibly unhappy
(18:26):
and uncomfortable, and I realized I don't have to I
don't have to be this famous, and so I took
two years off and my fame went way down. I
could grocery shop, I didn't have to have bodyguards, and
I was like, okay, I actually do like music. I
just don't like the level of fame. And I gave
myself permission to not be that famous. And so that
just meant like changing genres, doing what I wanted creatively,
(18:49):
being willing to be hated, you know, or being told
you're washed up because you're not as popular as you
once were. All worth it. That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
It's funny because literally two weekends, I believe it was
tjes and like people touching him and he is more
introverted or people, so he just someone had just kind
of come up and touched us. And then he was like, man,
I just don't like it when people come up and
touch me.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Five four three two one.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
A woman comes up from behind and bear hugs like
puts her arms around him, and he just bristled. But yes,
I and we only know a fraction of the fame
you experience, experience, but it is one of those moments
where you do feel like a piece of meat, like
a piece of property. And people do view you if
(19:37):
they like you, especially if they love your music, they
feel like they own you that way. Did you get
you have that experience and that that is not a
good feeling to have.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Yeah, you know, it's it's isolating to be adored when
they don't know you. And it's not that it's I mean,
of course it's flattering, I guess, but they don't know you.
They don't know if you're a good person. You know,
they don't know if I'm kind my child. So it's oddly,
it's hard to describe it. It's kind of an isolating thing
to be adored when you haven't earned it. And I
(20:08):
think it's equally isolating to be hated when you haven't
earned that either, And so it's kind of a singular
thing to live through. And for me, it just really
staying grounded and like I care about being a good human.
I'm going to task myself every day to be proud
of myself and you know, be on this journey till
the day I die. And then the rest was, like
my fans have to say, like I was really able
(20:30):
to communicate to them, like you guys can't touch me.
And I was able to talk to my fans always
on the internet and it's really helpful because they really
would listen to me. And then so this day, if
you see one of my fans that really follow me,
they put their hands up in a gusture of safety.
It's amazing. And they go Jewel and they say, about
this far from me, and they say, I just want
to tell you it's so household in me, like I
(20:52):
can handle that.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
We walked in and now.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
He did because my hand was out. That is funny.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
I can't tell if I don't remember meeting people the
same way.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
We're huggers here, we're huggers there.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
That is a great chace to see exactly I can't remember.
And we'll have much more. With our conversation with Jewel.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
We just couldn't stop talking and so we have a
lot more to get to. We're going to talk about
her Not Alone Challenge, something that began as something very
simple and turned into now a major event and awards
show in Vegas.
Hosts And Creators
Amy Robach
T.J. Holmes
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