May 27, 2022 • 37 mins
The singer, songwriter and mental health activist discusses the recording her latest album 'Freewheeling Woman,' her first collection of original material in seven years. She also opens up about using songwriting as a form of self-therapy to transcend her difficult upbringing, and describes her current relationship to older songs like "Hands" and "Who Will Save Your Soul."
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Inside the
Studio on iHeart Radio. My name's Jordan Runtag, But enough
about me. Apologies for the COVID related silence last week,
but we are back and we're so excited to share
with you our latest conversation. My guest today is a singer,
songwriter and mental health activist. She used music as a
form of self therapy to transcend the difficult circumstances of
(00:24):
her upbringing in Alaska. Ultimately, the same songs that brought
solace to her touched millions. Her album Pieces of You
has become one of the best selling debuts of all time,
earning her praise from the likes of Bob Dylan and
Neil Young. A fierce independent spirit, her work has spans
genres and mediums. This creative wonder lust not to menure.
(00:46):
Her lust for life is a parent in the title
of her latest record, Free Wheeland Woman, her first collection
of original material in seven years. It's a rich and
diverse musical sampling that draws elements of pop and muscle.
Shoals are in and there were familiar folks sound. Altogether,
the album is a portrait of an artist who says
prolific and singular as ever, brimming with optimism and passion.
(01:09):
She's about to kick off her summer tour in early
June when she can bring you this positivity in person.
But hopefully you'll get a little of that positive energy
come with your speakers right now, is you listen in.
I'm so happy to welcome Juel. You're an incredibly prolific writer,
and you have this staggering cash of of unheard songs.
(01:30):
I think I've read upwards of a thousand. But for
this album, you said you started from scratch and wrote
songs specifically for this record. What led you to take
that approach this time around? I'm a glutton for punishment.
I'm not get it. It's like I have sitting there
perfectly good songs, and now there was a specific reason
(01:56):
I really wanted to this album to be who and
what I am now. Um, you know, songs are like
little time capsules. Um, it's kind of a complex little narrative,
but I'll try and say it really simply. When when
I was eighteen and I got discovered, my goal was
to be It's ambitious. I know it's a little assible,
(02:17):
but my goal is to be one of the best
singer songwriters of all time. I wanted to push myself
to be a great writer, and I knew that that
was gonna be really hard for me as a woman.
Um well, it's just a hard goal period. Um. But
when I looked at the steelsa like, who do I
look up to? Who has done this as a woman,
(02:38):
It's kind of hard. You know, you have luminarums like
Joni Mitchelin and Cheetie Jones and Carl Kane, and you know,
the list goes on. We're not shy on talent and
the female singer songwriter category, but as the women aged,
they never, in my opinion, got to enjoy the same
ticket sales and prestige that their male counterparts like Bob
(03:00):
Dylan Emil Young. And that's troubling, right because I was
a girl wanting to try and pull off something where
I haven't seen a lot of women get a chance
to pull it off. And there were women in the
pop side, you know that had become icons, but that
was Madonna and Share and that's just not who I am. Um.
(03:22):
I wanted to do it as a singer songwriter, so
it meant navigating and trying to build my career in
a way that I hope would foster my writing. You know,
where I kept writing, I kept doing things that were
for me inventive, that pushed myself, whether they were or
weren't in thinks with where a culture was to take
risks musically. You know that has to be part of
(03:43):
your plans. But you I still have to head to
face this, like, well, what do women in the middle
age do with that job? It's not cute, you know,
like you see most women in their middle age still
trying to dress like they're young and be super cute
and hopefully have a really catchy and I just think,
I don't know, abysmal to me in a way. If
(04:06):
it's who you authentically are, that's awesome, but it just
doesn't happen to be how I want to do it.
So me doing this record this way from me with
these things one saying, I wanted to push myself to
write in a way I've never written before. I wanted
to find a new gear and a new muscle that
felt fresh, that felt uh like I wasn't just covering
(04:28):
ground is covered before. That pushed me vocally in a
way I've never been pushed before that, hopefully it was
you know, well crafted, um, but it wasn't contrived and reactionary,
and it gets really hard in your middle age. Like,
I definitely see why why David Bowie and so many
other artists did a lot of drugs at the stays
in the care to get like a new sounds, because
(04:50):
it's hard to get rid of the old versions of
yourself and to get rid of the stuff like you know,
as chorus could come thirty seconds into a song or
a song to the three minutes, all that just makes
garbage music. Um. And you have to figure out how
to get old versions of yourself and bad information out
of your head and come from a really new, authentic place.
(05:10):
And that's work. It was a lot of work to
write the songs on this album UM, to push myself.
I think I wrote two hundred songs to get the
like UM and it was nuts. It was a Nettie process.
Drugs would have been new Years like the silber was hard, um,
but I'm really proud of the result. So that was
(05:32):
one aspect of wanting to do it. The other aspect
is I wanted this frombody who I was at the
fourty seven year old female I wanted it to. So
now proud I am because I am. I'm proud. I
wanted this album to be empowering. Um, the decisions that
I've made, like you know, quitting after Spirits, you know,
I quit for two years because I couldn't psychologically adjust
(05:54):
to the level of same I got. There was nobody
celebrating that at the time. You know, nobody was like, well,
good for her, He's doing this for her mental health.
Mental health wasn't a word, and everybody's like, she's already
washed up, Like it was really cruel narrative of suppressive
and for me to have the courage to do it
in way until I tell my label and tell my
managers like nope, I am gonna have a pycal break
(06:16):
down if I don't figure out how to handle the
level of same I've gotten. I make really full decisions
in my whole career that we're not always understood. And
so I'm just proud. You know, I wanted this record too. Yeah,
I don't know, serve as a sort of I don't know,
a glimpse into what it's like to be a female
singer songwriter. UM, what it's like to be middle aged
(06:40):
and to say, I really believe I'm writing at the
heights of my power. I really believe I was singing
at the height of my power. Um and I feel
like we think we see talent diminished with time, and
you have to fight for that to not be the case.
And that's, you know, a thought that I've been aggressive
with with myself. So long answer, more experiences, more inside.
(07:01):
I mean, it makes sense that you'd be at the
peak of your powers. I'm stopping up on the two songs.
That is incredible to me. What was the calling process
like for for choosing the songs for this record? Where
you did you pick the ones that you felt like
reflected who you are in this moment the best, or
just purely ones that were your favorite for reasons like
you like the melody or something like that. I found
(07:23):
out when writing very proficiently. But I think I was
writing pretty safe. And I'll honestly, I think that I
never wrote the same since everything went down with my mom.
I think that there was some kind of like psychological governor,
I guess you could say, And it was hard for
(07:43):
me to access a really really deep, raw place with
my writing, and I had to fast tackle that and
I've never realized that I've written any references them. By
the way, Picking Up the Pieces is actually probably a
favorite album I've ever recorded. It's a lot of old songs. Um,
My new stuff just wasn't as I don't know, chrisp
(08:04):
or Raw or new. You know. It was like, oh,
this kind of sounds like something I've already written, and
I knew it. You know, nobody else might know it,
but I could tell. I could hear it in the writing,
and so I just didn't let myself settle until it
broke through that and that was a real intense process. Also,
you know, writing anything in the same genre is hard.
(08:24):
You know, if you sit down, you may not write
a good song, probably won't write. I look at it
like mining for gold. You just some daysy get dirt,
you know, and some dasy to diamonds. You don't have
control over it, so you have to put hours in,
you know, to find that magical diamond. Um, unless you're contrived. Right,
If I was just trying to write a pop hit,
that would kind of be different. Um, But when you're
(08:46):
trying to find something just fresh or new, this is
sort of it's a collaboration with the unknown you know,
you can't control that process. Um, and then getting it
in the same genre. So a good song that happens
to kind as via a scene, because when I sit down,
I can't control the style. It sometimes comes out countries
and then come out full because sometimes comes out rock.
(09:08):
I don't always. I just don't have control over that.
And so getting things that felt like they were good
and new and of a piece, you know, where they
made sense together just really took time. And it's funny.
It wasn't if I haven't listened to the album since
I made it, which was two years ago. Um, but
I heard it the other day and I was like,
oh wow, it didn't dawn on me. This is the
(09:29):
first album where I finally got all my styles on
one record. I thought I was really making an album
that felt like of a piece, and hopefully it does,
but I didn't realize. Also, like there's straight up folk music,
and then there's country stuff, and then there's real pop stuff. Um.
And then introducing you know, and paying homage to an
influence I've never had a chance to do before, which
(09:49):
is full uh, and those the full style of writing
like the Weathers as well as the great singers Oh,
I was gonna say, I love the diversity of arrangements
on this It's so compelling to me. I mean, something
like Grateful is something right out of muscle shoals, and
you've got like the Memphis stax horns from Love Winds
and it's and then you've got something stripped back and
(10:10):
so delicate like almost. I mean, I love how just
the styles and the arrangements are so diverse, And and
you hear that in your head as you're writing these songs.
You hear the kind of the the vague style that
it would take as you're writing it. Yeah, you feel
the mood for sure. Um, Like I knew when I
was writing almost that you know, it's like having lace
(10:33):
that would dissolve in water, Like that song is so
delicate but so sharp at the same time that it's
just can't handle production and just know that it's just
going to be what it is. Guitar, no voice. Um.
Whereas when I was writing Love Winds, like all of
a sudden, I was like, what is this? This is
like like and Tina Turner era, like, you know, you
(10:56):
start feeling that flavor sort of as you're writing it.
You mentioned listening to the album back for the first
time in two years since you've made it. Do you
ever learn anything from about yourself from listening to your songs?
(11:19):
I mean I overuse this analogy, but almost like a
like a good dream reading. Do you ever hear a
song back that you wrote and actually get new perspective
on on what's going on inside of you? Mm hmm,
not particularly. Um, that's my poetry. For me, when I
look back and read my poetry, poetry has been the
(11:40):
thing I've written consistently, more consistently than any other thing
in my life. I don't publish it ever, but I
have boatloads of it swimming around. Um. And if I
go back and read my poetry and like, wow, I
saw the writing on the wall and I didn't even know.
I thought, definitely has much more of like a tea
leave thing of like holy smokes. But I don't know
experienced my songwriting that way particularly. That's so interesting, I love.
(12:05):
I mean, when speaking to people who are blessed with
the ability to write music, I'm just so interested to
hear what compels them to do it in the first place.
And for you, it sounds like this came from a
fulfilled a very specific purpose early on, which was kind
of as an exercise in mindfulness. And I wanted to
ask you more about that because that's so interesting to me.
When I was eight, my parents got divorced. My mom
(12:28):
left us, and my dad took over raising us, and
he became he started drinking. He was trauma triggering, but
you know, the words trauma trigger were not a well
known thing at the time. He started drinking to try
to mitigate that, and it went pretty predictably um and
so he became abusive. Uh. We were singing them bars.
So I was in a lot of pain, is the
(12:49):
bottom line. And I was watching a lot of people
in pain because I was singing them bars. And when
you sing them bars, you know five hours sets, you're
kind of seeing the regulars. You're not seeing the person
comes in, you know, casually, or seeing people medicate. And
I didn't know those words at the time, but I
could tell people from pain. I recognized that because I
was in it and I noticed this. I was always
(13:12):
just an observant person. I was like watching people and
I felt like, Wow, I have this front seat road
to people being just like living their lives so out
loud because they're integrated right or high, and they have
no filter um. And so I watched people drinking to
handle pain. I watched people doing drugs. I watched people
having sex, not literally, but you know, these relationships that
(13:34):
were wallable and would play out. And I realized, like,
oh my gosh, nobody outruns pain, but we're not taught
what to do with it. And I wanted to try
and handle my pain as it happened, because they I
see in pictures, and so I just saw these people
had some kind of pain, and then they covered that
pain up with a lot of bad choices, and it
(13:56):
led to more pain, and then it was suddenly like
this mountain that they never could face, and it would
have been better if they could just found a skill
or the courage to just face the original pain. You
can't outrun pain, was my takeaway, and so I tried
to like assess, like what did I have that helped
me with pain? And writing help. I was journaling at
(14:16):
a really young age. I was trying to write poetry
to young age, and I felt better. I felt noticeably
better when I wrote, and so I just sort of
turned to that as my coping mechanism. I guess, UM
never thinking it would be a job. You know, it
was just a way of seeing patterns and of seeing
things about myself that I didn't know I saw, of
(14:38):
seeing things about my dad, for instance, I didn't know
I saw, and it helped me. It kind of felt
like a ladder up and out of my pain or
myself for my situation and been little did I know
how literal that would be. It would be a literal
letter out. I mean, you've you've mentioned this. Really, I'm
a huge admirer of your mental health advocacy work you do.
(15:00):
You on for the Inspiring Children Foundation and the wellness
practices that you have on Jewel Never Broken dot com.
Everyone should check it out, especially after the last two
years we've had. I've found so many of the practices
that you've shared so helpful personally. And you've mentioned the
notion of using anxiety as an ally and as an
anxious person myself, I found this to be a very
(15:21):
hopeful sentiment. Um And I think, as you mentioned, a
lot of us are trying to eliminate anxiety or pain
from our lives, which is kind of a fool's errand
um And you used writing, I mean, what are some
other ways that that you know you you suggest, um
turning this anxiety into something productive for people? UM, I
(15:42):
guess I just start by saying, you know, mindfulness For me,
I would just give a definition. It means being consciously present.
That's it. You know, this is a word we hear
all the time, and it's kind of a word we
don't really know what it means. So mindfulness is being
consciously present. It doesn't mean that will your life will
change instantly. It just means you'll be consciously present, which
puts you in a position to change your life. I
(16:04):
liken it to a car. If your body was a car,
your brain isn't the driver. It's like a steering wheel,
but it can go on autopilot, a neurological autopilot if
you're not consciously present to drive the car. So being
consciously present is like getting off of autopilot and getting introl.
Being a neutral won't change your life, but it gets
(16:24):
you in a position to get in a new gear.
What actually will change your life is what I call mindfulness,
and motion is something practicable. Now that you're consciously present,
what are you going to do with that? Um? So
I notice I'm angry. I stop I take a breath,
I get consciously present. I'm now observing. Okay, I'm I'm angry.
(16:46):
Now what do I want to do? That is that
gap where you stop and insert a new tool instead
of you know, just reacting off of an old tool, right,
yelling you're stop in your breathe. Okay, Okay, I really
want to yell, but I'm not going to actually going
to go right or call my therapist or call of friends. Whatever.
The new thing is that changes your life, that actually
(17:08):
starts to starve old neural networks and help you build
new ones. UM. And for some reason, I don't know why,
but when I was homeless, I I started developing songs
and I started developing these tools for myself just to
get results, ready to make myself stop feeling, to help
myself with panic attacks. And I would tackle it one
(17:29):
pain point at a time. Right, I would tackle steeling
and that's all I would focus on. Or I would
tackle my panic attacks and that's what I would focus on.
And so those skills are what I've been able to
share and create curriculums out of UM without therapy. Not
that I'm against therapy, it's just that that everybody has access.
And so what about those people? You know, what about
(17:49):
kids that don't have support systems or therapists or god forbid?
What if your therapy just isn't getting you the change
you want? Does that mean you're unlucky? You know? Can
you still be happy? Um? And so that's what really
been striving me. Yeah, these last several years. One of
those concepts is anxiety as an ally. UM. For me,
when I figured this out, it just really changed everything.
(18:10):
Nothing can change in isolation, right, Imagine it just like
chemical chemical or chemistry. Like can we have an atom?
It will stay itself unless it's introduced to something new,
like fire or something. Now it's chemical composition can begin
to change. It happens in relationships. So we try to
disassociate from an aspect of our own personality. We cannot
(18:34):
expect it to change. We can only expect it to
maybe to not notice it, to do something louder. Right,
That's why we get high risk behaviors to drown out
the pain of our anxiety. Let's say, but you actually
have to invite it closer, because your anxiety is your
body's way of saying, you just consumed something that doesn't
(18:54):
agree with you. It's a thought of feeling for an
action or an interaction. So I started to get excited
every time I was anxious and go Okay, then I'd
stopped and I go, what was I just thinking? Feeling
or do? And it was hard right to identify the
thought that gave me that anxiety, because sometimes we think
things without noticing we think them, and our whole body triggers.
(19:15):
You know. Um, But if you stay really faithful to that,
and you get curious and invite your anxiety closer, and
then more importantly, if you can abstain from it, you're
going to make a huge change in your life. You know,
if you can say, all right, I'm no longer going
to allow myself to beat myself up because every time
I say X to myself, I feel crappy. I'm going
(19:35):
to insert a different thought and you have to be
willful about it. But it really does change. I mean,
just getting to the place of actually being excited to
experience your anxiety because you know that your body trying
to tell you something. I mean, that's that's gonna be
a tough place to get to. I imagine too, because
that that takes a certain amount of courage, because it's uncomfortable.
Anxiety is thankful. Yeah, And so you know, dysfunction is painful.
(20:03):
Feeling is painful, it's hard healing, it's hard work. But
at least there's a better possible outcome, not a guarantee,
but at least there is light at the end of
that tunnel. Whereas I already know me running from my
anxiety doesn't work, you know, so that's a known outcome,
and so you do kind of have to be a
little bit logical um, which is kind of funny in
(20:25):
a mindfulness practice, but you kind of have to go, Okay,
I've tried a thing that doesn't work and makes me six.
Am I willing to try something new? Am I willing
to look at it like an experiment and take notes
and see if there's a difference. And that's where it
kind of gets fun is you should see a difference.
It's not like, oh I think I think I feel better.
It's like, holy smokes, I was able to stop my
(20:46):
panic attacks. You know, you start to see real changes
and that begins to be rewarding. Like working out. You know,
when you start working out, it sucks. So you start
like developing an app, and you're like all right, I'm
into it. The payoff. Yeah. Was there at any kind
of a lightbulb moment or a moment for you where
(21:07):
songwriting went from being sort of an exercise in mindfulness
and something that was more for you to being something
that gave you a career direction, was something that you
kind of wanted to let other people into. Mm hmm.
Let's see. I mean I was singing with my dad
and bars, and that was like a blue collar job,
(21:28):
five hour sets of cover songs. He wrote too. He
would sing some of his UM. I never thought I
would be like a professional musician. I ended up homeless
because I wouldn't have sex with the boss and you
wouldn't give me my paycheck. So I started living in
my car thinking I would get a new job, but
I didn't. Uh. I had that kidneys and my car
(21:49):
got stolen and it was just like a ship show. UM,
and I started writing songs. I was writing prior to this, UM,
but I was trying to up stealing, and so I
was trying to replace the behavior of stealing with a
different behavior, which was writing. And I was a really
prolific fief. I became a really prolific writer. Again, not
(22:11):
thinking it would uh lead to a career. Um, I
don't know. I was just trying to figure out how
to quit stealing. And I loved writing. You know, it
was really fun for me. I just I guess I
thought careers in music were for other people. I don't know. Um,
it wasn't until record label started coming to see me
when I was homeless stilled it. I was like, holy smokes,
(22:33):
like this could be a career. Like and I. That's
something I talked to my kids in my foundation a lot,
and a lot of my talks is every time you
invest in your character, it seems bleak, right, like me
turning my boss down, refusing to have sex with him.
How to do back? Just consequence like I had to
live in my car and then my car got strolling
(22:53):
that I needed a point. That's a really bad outcome.
But it was investing in my character, right. I refused
to be leveraged, and I was willing to say fine,
all being a really uncomfortant position so that I'm not leveraged.
That that investment I made in my character paid off
dividends on the characters stock market for something I don't
(23:16):
know how it works, but it's magic and every time
I've seen anybody do it, refused to compromise their full
It paid dividends in unexpected ways. You know, if I
had kept that job it was kept. It kept me
very busy, right and barely scraping by, I wouldn't have
had time to really write. I you know, it's crazy
(23:37):
that it ended up leading me to music, because I
don't think I would have ended up there. Maybe I
would have, um, but it was an an unexpected side
effect of investing in my humanity, in my character, um
and just not believing that lie. You know, a million
times in my career people been like, well, we're never
gonna be famous if you don't x y Z. Well bullshit,
(23:59):
you don't just keep insisting. And that's the thing about
me too, I feel like doesn't really get recognized. You
can walk, you can tell people to f off, you know,
and it's it works out, It will work out. We
just don't see a lot of examples in it in
our society. I think maybe on some level people are
more free than they give themselves credit for. You can
(24:21):
only have a choice, yeah, and that's the really free
thing is you know, I figured out how to be
happy when I was homeless with nothing, you know, And
when I stopped thinking somebody else bothe me, you know,
when I stopped thinking somebody else would come save me,
and I started going, maybe I owe myself. What am
I capable of? My happiness is my own and if
(24:44):
I'm unhappy, I have to be accountable to that. And
there was a lot of, you know, things I could
make excuses about. I was having a terrible life like
that point. I really was lots of reasons, you know
what I mean, lots of excuses. But as long as
you're making excuses, your life won't change because you're spending
all your time on those excuses, no matter how valid
they are. Um. And so for me, realizing I could
(25:06):
be happy even when homeless was very powerful because it
put me you can't negotiate with a person like that,
you know. I was offered a million dollars signing bonus
as a homeless kid, and I turned it down, which
nobody could believe. Um, and I took the biggest back
end anybody had ever been rewarded because I believed that well,
that million dollars was alone. I'd have to sell a
(25:27):
ton of records to earn back. Right, a million dollars
for the label to recoup. The odds of me being
dropped from a label were very high. I mean, I
was making a folk album at the heights of grunge,
and even though there was a sitting war, I think
that was just labeled competing right and getting caught up
in the competition. Um. And so having that type of
approach for me was was really important and I was
(25:51):
happy to walk And you know, that's always just that's
a powerful place, you know, when you're unwilling to compromise
when you're saying I value my happiness and my you know,
my internal freedom more than I value saying or money.
They're going to make better choices. You can't be compromised.
And I think it's really served me in my career.
(26:13):
Oh absolutely, I mean, and that's a that's a tough
lesson to not only to learn but also integrate. I mean,
here's the here's a question with no easy answer. Do
you think that that happiness is teachable? Absolutely? That was
my big missions. Like when I moved out at fifteen,
you know, I knew statistically kids like me end up
(26:35):
repeating the cycle, and that just like I had a physical,
genetic inheritance that might give me a predisposition for diabetes.
I had an emotional inheritance and it was every bit
as real and would affect me every bit as much.
It's not more than my genetic inheritance. But nobody was
talking about it. But I said, I see in pictures.
(26:56):
So I saw like this river, and it was like
I was standing in this river and my dad and
his dad and his dad, and that emotional current, that
emotional language that I was raised speaking, would lead to
a known outcome of abuse of addiction in some various way,
shape or form. And that was depressing. You know, it's
(27:20):
depressing to be fifteen and go, oh my god, like
the odds of me speaking a new emotional language about
to me getting out of this emotional river and into
a new one, or very spect against me. And there's
no school for it. You know, there's needs to put
to school for Spanish. But where was I going to
go to learn a new emotional weights reflating to the world?
Very daunting. So my goal was to see if happiness
(27:43):
was a learnable skill, was it as teachable skill? And
that's what set me off on my journey, and that's
why I was writing songs like cloth your Soul or
hands um. A lot of the stuff I wrote was
was me trying to work through this kind of thing
and the answer is yes. The slogan on my Jewel
Never Broken website is learn to make a habit out
(28:05):
of happiness. Happiness is the side effect of choices. You
can't just be happy like its impossible. It's a side
effect of a choice. And your choices are a side
effect of your motivation. Your motivations are usually the side
effect of unconscious prompts, and so if you can start
making the unconscious prompts more conscious, which are used by
(28:27):
being consciously present, you start to really change your life.
And it takes those behavioral components um, which again for
some reason I had a knack for creating, and those
are on that free website you are Never Broken. There
(28:54):
was something you said on the podcast Second Life recently
which absolutely floored me. You were discussing sort of the
battle between nature versus nurture when shaping a person in
their personality, and you said that you worried that your
nurture was so intense for you that you wouldn't get
to know your own nature. And I just thought that
was such a beautiful way to articulate a concern that
I think a lot of people have, which is, you know,
(29:15):
will I get to know my own soul and not
allow my personality to become a series of reactions to
what I've experienced in the past. I just thought that
was a beautiful way to put that, and I just
wanted to ask you a little more about that and
your journey to sort of knowing yourself and your own nature.
I just I thought that was such a really succinct
and beautiful way to articulate this, I think real tribal
(29:36):
concern that a lot of people have. Thank. Um, it's
so amazing to me that I just spent my whole
life murding out on these movie kind of vague, nuanced,
strange philosophical threads, and that it's turned into a job.
Isn't just like blowing my mind? You know? Um? So
(29:57):
the trip for me to hear you say that, Um, yeah,
it's interesting nature versus nurture, nurture of conditioning nature is
hopefully our authenticity maybe. Uh And if my nurture was
so bad, was I screwed? You know what? It keep
me from knowing my authentic self? Because trauma alters us.
(30:18):
It does alter us, right, it changes us? And so
how do you handle that? You know? I had really
really bad traumatic experiences over and over well up into
my thirties and forties. Um, the kind that are just
life senders, you know, like what happened my mom is
just a mind sender. How do you recover? Um? Again?
(30:42):
Because I see in pictures like I saw an orange,
which sounds really silly, but an orange has appeal and
if all you relate to his appeal, you'd have no idea.
There's this the amazing thing inside of it. And that's
how I look at nature versus nurture. You know, our
nurture is affecting our feel I look at our personality
(31:04):
as a series of decisions that you make and choices
you make to respond to your environment. You know, if
you had a really traumatic environment, your personality would form
as a suspicious person, as a hyper vigilant person. You know,
we can start to apply adjectives to somebody based on
their nurturing, and that forms your personality. But your personality
(31:29):
is fluid, it's not sick. Um. We can lift that skin,
you know, that psychological skin of our conditioning, of our nurture,
how we formed our personality over time, and we can
start to develop a relationship to what's inside of it.
(31:49):
And that again is where mindfulness is really magical. You know,
mindfulness should be used to build the muscle, but being
consciously present and then once you're consciously present, going down
and in our whole culture wants us to go up
and out. You know, we're distracted all the time. We're
relating to our personality all the time, we think because
(32:11):
the way of a feeling, it's gospel m it's just
an extension of our personality in a lot of ways.
Isn't always a physic you know, it can just be
a conditioned with emotional response to when your nurture make
It's a little tricky. Where it gets easier is if
you just go down and in um, you meditate, you
(32:31):
learn to go down and end. When you're anxious, you
learn to go down and end. You go learn to
get to a still point in you where you go,
how do I feel about that underneath my conditioning, and
you start to develop a relationship with a much more
authentic part of you. For me, it's actually why I
called the website never Broken. For me, realizing, wait a minute,
(32:52):
you know what is my anxiety and my trauma and
all my reactions and hyper vigilance doesn't mean something wrong?
But what does it mean something's right with me? You
know what if every time I'm having neurotic reaction, it
means I shouldn't be having that thought or feeling. Can
I participate in something that doesn't give me anxiety? Because
my own nature shouldn't give me anxiety? And again that's
(33:13):
where our anxiety is Like the most powerful ally, if
I had a thought that made me anxious, I was
willing to say, what if that thought isn't authentically who
I am? What if that's a thought I've learned or
been conditioned to have? What other thought could I have?
What thought takes my anxiety down? For instance, like the
(33:34):
thought I don't know what I'm doing you said, just
unravel me. I don't know why, it would just freak
me out. And the truth wasn't you know, the opposite
affirmation of I know what I'm doing. That was a lie.
I didn't know what I was doing. I was in
too many difficult situations. The truth less, I'll figure it out,
I don't stop, and I can take that to the
bank and having that thought calmed my nervous system down.
(33:57):
So that meant that thought was much more in alignment
was my authentic nature than it was an alignment too,
you know, my trauma. And so it takes a lot
of you know, conscious presence. It takes a lot of uh,
being patient with yourself every time you notice yourself have
that thought, replacing it with another thought. But it really works, um,
(34:17):
it really will change your life. What is your relationship
like with with music on a daily basis? Is it
something that you incorporate like some people meditate every day
and some people jog every day. Is it's something that's
that's a daily part of your life. Not really, Um,
I sing every day just while I'm walking or doing things.
(34:39):
I'm always kind of practicing and in the background, but
I don't sit down with my guitar every day. I
think becoming a mom definitely impacted how I relate to that.
I do write every day. Uh, Poetry for me has
been the most consistent thing, and I I don't think
a day goes by very often when I don't write.
(35:01):
I wanted to end by asking about the title free
wheel and Woman, and I love the word free wheel,
and it just to me it has all the independence
of freedom, but with an added dose of just vivaciousness
and boldness and enthusiasm. I just think it's such a
great word. I wanted to ask you, what does the
title free Wheel and Woman mean to you today? I
think most of us, with time, become more afraid of love.
(35:27):
We become less potent. Maybe I think a lot of
us wonder if our magic has gone? Are the best
days behind us? I think we feel ground down and
we read from life and I have really fought for
my happiness. I have fought for joy. It wasn't you know,
(35:51):
something that came easy to be with my life, And
so I wanted this album to be a celebration of that,
you know, to be able to say, I'm a forty
seven year old man in the music business, and I'm
happier than I've ever been, and I'm writing better than
I've ever written, and I'm singing better than I've ever written,
and I feel like my magic is back. And yes,
there was a time when I was worried it was gone,
(36:12):
that life was just beating me down, and I fought
for that um and I'm proud I'm really proud of it.
And I wanted this record to be a celebration of
a lot of the odds. Yet I feel like I'd
beat that, um as a one of them, a couple three,
as a singer songwriter in the industry, and just as
a human. You know that has to wade true life
(36:32):
like everyone else, UM, who we are and who we
become with time is has to be intentional. Um. So
I just wanted it to be as solidation of it
and to like I'm I'm proud to be a woman
that's made in my own living in my own way
in the world with words. I mean, how impossible was that?
(36:53):
I never thought that would be the case, But I've
made a living them words bring up. So You've enriched
so many people's lives, including my own and so many
of my loved ones, with your music and everything you've
taught and everything you've said today. It's been such a
joy speaking with you. Thank you so much for sharing,
Thank you so much for your time today, and most importantly,
thank you so much for music. It's been a real honor.
(37:16):
Thanks really enjoyed it. We hope you enjoyed this episode
of Inside the Studio, a production of i heart Radio.
For more episodes of Inside the Studio or other fantastic shows,
check out the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or
wherever you listen to your favorite podcast.
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Inside the
Studio on iHeart Radio. My name's Jordan Runtag, But enough
about me. Apologies for the COVID related silence last week,
but we are back and we're so excited to share
with you our latest conversation. My guest today is a singer,
songwriter and mental health activist. She used music as a
form of self therapy to transcend the difficult circumstances of
(00:24):
her upbringing in Alaska. Ultimately, the same songs that brought
solace to her touched millions. Her album Pieces of You
has become one of the best selling debuts of all time,
earning her praise from the likes of Bob Dylan and
Neil Young. A fierce independent spirit, her work has spans
genres and mediums. This creative wonder lust not to menure.
(00:46):
Her lust for life is a parent in the title
of her latest record, Free Wheeland Woman, her first collection
of original material in seven years. It's a rich and
diverse musical sampling that draws elements of pop and muscle.
Shoals are in and there were familiar folks sound. Altogether,
the album is a portrait of an artist who says
prolific and singular as ever, brimming with optimism and passion.
(01:09):
She's about to kick off her summer tour in early
June when she can bring you this positivity in person.
But hopefully you'll get a little of that positive energy
come with your speakers right now, is you listen in.
I'm so happy to welcome Juel. You're an incredibly prolific writer,
and you have this staggering cash of of unheard songs.
(01:30):
I think I've read upwards of a thousand. But for
this album, you said you started from scratch and wrote
songs specifically for this record. What led you to take
that approach this time around? I'm a glutton for punishment.
I'm not get it. It's like I have sitting there
perfectly good songs, and now there was a specific reason
(01:56):
I really wanted to this album to be who and
what I am now. Um, you know, songs are like
little time capsules. Um, it's kind of a complex little narrative,
but I'll try and say it really simply. When when
I was eighteen and I got discovered, my goal was
to be It's ambitious. I know it's a little assible,
(02:17):
but my goal is to be one of the best
singer songwriters of all time. I wanted to push myself
to be a great writer, and I knew that that
was gonna be really hard for me as a woman.
Um well, it's just a hard goal period. Um. But
when I looked at the steelsa like, who do I
look up to? Who has done this as a woman,
(02:38):
It's kind of hard. You know, you have luminarums like
Joni Mitchelin and Cheetie Jones and Carl Kane, and you know,
the list goes on. We're not shy on talent and
the female singer songwriter category, but as the women aged,
they never, in my opinion, got to enjoy the same
ticket sales and prestige that their male counterparts like Bob
(03:00):
Dylan Emil Young. And that's troubling, right because I was
a girl wanting to try and pull off something where
I haven't seen a lot of women get a chance
to pull it off. And there were women in the
pop side, you know that had become icons, but that
was Madonna and Share and that's just not who I am. Um.
(03:22):
I wanted to do it as a singer songwriter, so
it meant navigating and trying to build my career in
a way that I hope would foster my writing. You know,
where I kept writing, I kept doing things that were
for me inventive, that pushed myself, whether they were or
weren't in thinks with where a culture was to take
risks musically. You know that has to be part of
(03:43):
your plans. But you I still have to head to
face this, like, well, what do women in the middle
age do with that job? It's not cute, you know,
like you see most women in their middle age still
trying to dress like they're young and be super cute
and hopefully have a really catchy and I just think,
I don't know, abysmal to me in a way. If
(04:06):
it's who you authentically are, that's awesome, but it just
doesn't happen to be how I want to do it.
So me doing this record this way from me with
these things one saying, I wanted to push myself to
write in a way I've never written before. I wanted
to find a new gear and a new muscle that
felt fresh, that felt uh like I wasn't just covering
(04:28):
ground is covered before. That pushed me vocally in a
way I've never been pushed before that, hopefully it was
you know, well crafted, um, but it wasn't contrived and reactionary,
and it gets really hard in your middle age. Like,
I definitely see why why David Bowie and so many
other artists did a lot of drugs at the stays
in the care to get like a new sounds, because
(04:50):
it's hard to get rid of the old versions of
yourself and to get rid of the stuff like you know,
as chorus could come thirty seconds into a song or
a song to the three minutes, all that just makes
garbage music. Um. And you have to figure out how
to get old versions of yourself and bad information out
of your head and come from a really new, authentic place.
(05:10):
And that's work. It was a lot of work to
write the songs on this album UM, to push myself.
I think I wrote two hundred songs to get the
like UM and it was nuts. It was a Nettie process.
Drugs would have been new Years like the silber was hard, um,
but I'm really proud of the result. So that was
(05:32):
one aspect of wanting to do it. The other aspect
is I wanted this frombody who I was at the
fourty seven year old female I wanted it to. So
now proud I am because I am. I'm proud. I
wanted this album to be empowering. Um, the decisions that
I've made, like you know, quitting after Spirits, you know,
I quit for two years because I couldn't psychologically adjust
(05:54):
to the level of same I got. There was nobody
celebrating that at the time. You know, nobody was like, well,
good for her, He's doing this for her mental health.
Mental health wasn't a word, and everybody's like, she's already
washed up, Like it was really cruel narrative of suppressive
and for me to have the courage to do it
in way until I tell my label and tell my
managers like nope, I am gonna have a pycal break
(06:16):
down if I don't figure out how to handle the
level of same I've gotten. I make really full decisions
in my whole career that we're not always understood. And
so I'm just proud. You know, I wanted this record too. Yeah,
I don't know, serve as a sort of I don't know,
a glimpse into what it's like to be a female
singer songwriter. UM, what it's like to be middle aged
(06:40):
and to say, I really believe I'm writing at the
heights of my power. I really believe I was singing
at the height of my power. Um and I feel
like we think we see talent diminished with time, and
you have to fight for that to not be the case.
And that's, you know, a thought that I've been aggressive
with with myself. So long answer, more experiences, more inside.
(07:01):
I mean, it makes sense that you'd be at the
peak of your powers. I'm stopping up on the two songs.
That is incredible to me. What was the calling process
like for for choosing the songs for this record? Where
you did you pick the ones that you felt like
reflected who you are in this moment the best, or
just purely ones that were your favorite for reasons like
you like the melody or something like that. I found
(07:23):
out when writing very proficiently. But I think I was
writing pretty safe. And I'll honestly, I think that I
never wrote the same since everything went down with my mom.
I think that there was some kind of like psychological governor,
I guess you could say, And it was hard for
(07:43):
me to access a really really deep, raw place with
my writing, and I had to fast tackle that and
I've never realized that I've written any references them. By
the way, Picking Up the Pieces is actually probably a
favorite album I've ever recorded. It's a lot of old songs. Um,
My new stuff just wasn't as I don't know, chrisp
(08:04):
or Raw or new. You know. It was like, oh,
this kind of sounds like something I've already written, and
I knew it. You know, nobody else might know it,
but I could tell. I could hear it in the writing,
and so I just didn't let myself settle until it
broke through that and that was a real intense process. Also,
you know, writing anything in the same genre is hard.
(08:24):
You know, if you sit down, you may not write
a good song, probably won't write. I look at it
like mining for gold. You just some daysy get dirt,
you know, and some dasy to diamonds. You don't have
control over it, so you have to put hours in,
you know, to find that magical diamond. Um, unless you're contrived. Right,
If I was just trying to write a pop hit,
that would kind of be different. Um, But when you're
(08:46):
trying to find something just fresh or new, this is
sort of it's a collaboration with the unknown you know,
you can't control that process. Um, and then getting it
in the same genre. So a good song that happens
to kind as via a scene, because when I sit down,
I can't control the style. It sometimes comes out countries
and then come out full because sometimes comes out rock.
(09:08):
I don't always. I just don't have control over that.
And so getting things that felt like they were good
and new and of a piece, you know, where they
made sense together just really took time. And it's funny.
It wasn't if I haven't listened to the album since
I made it, which was two years ago. Um, but
I heard it the other day and I was like,
oh wow, it didn't dawn on me. This is the
(09:29):
first album where I finally got all my styles on
one record. I thought I was really making an album
that felt like of a piece, and hopefully it does,
but I didn't realize. Also, like there's straight up folk music,
and then there's country stuff, and then there's real pop stuff. Um.
And then introducing you know, and paying homage to an
influence I've never had a chance to do before, which
(09:49):
is full uh, and those the full style of writing
like the Weathers as well as the great singers Oh,
I was gonna say, I love the diversity of arrangements
on this It's so compelling to me. I mean, something
like Grateful is something right out of muscle shoals, and
you've got like the Memphis stax horns from Love Winds
and it's and then you've got something stripped back and
(10:10):
so delicate like almost. I mean, I love how just
the styles and the arrangements are so diverse, And and
you hear that in your head as you're writing these songs.
You hear the kind of the the vague style that
it would take as you're writing it. Yeah, you feel
the mood for sure. Um, Like I knew when I
was writing almost that you know, it's like having lace
(10:33):
that would dissolve in water, Like that song is so
delicate but so sharp at the same time that it's
just can't handle production and just know that it's just
going to be what it is. Guitar, no voice. Um.
Whereas when I was writing Love Winds, like all of
a sudden, I was like, what is this? This is
like like and Tina Turner era, like, you know, you
(10:56):
start feeling that flavor sort of as you're writing it.
You mentioned listening to the album back for the first
time in two years since you've made it. Do you
ever learn anything from about yourself from listening to your songs?
(11:19):
I mean I overuse this analogy, but almost like a
like a good dream reading. Do you ever hear a
song back that you wrote and actually get new perspective
on on what's going on inside of you? Mm hmm,
not particularly. Um, that's my poetry. For me, when I
look back and read my poetry, poetry has been the
(11:40):
thing I've written consistently, more consistently than any other thing
in my life. I don't publish it ever, but I
have boatloads of it swimming around. Um. And if I
go back and read my poetry and like, wow, I
saw the writing on the wall and I didn't even know.
I thought, definitely has much more of like a tea
leave thing of like holy smokes. But I don't know
experienced my songwriting that way particularly. That's so interesting, I love.
(12:05):
I mean, when speaking to people who are blessed with
the ability to write music, I'm just so interested to
hear what compels them to do it in the first place.
And for you, it sounds like this came from a
fulfilled a very specific purpose early on, which was kind
of as an exercise in mindfulness. And I wanted to
ask you more about that because that's so interesting to me.
When I was eight, my parents got divorced. My mom
(12:28):
left us, and my dad took over raising us, and
he became he started drinking. He was trauma triggering, but
you know, the words trauma trigger were not a well
known thing at the time. He started drinking to try
to mitigate that, and it went pretty predictably um and
so he became abusive. Uh. We were singing them bars.
So I was in a lot of pain, is the
(12:49):
bottom line. And I was watching a lot of people
in pain because I was singing them bars. And when
you sing them bars, you know five hours sets, you're
kind of seeing the regulars. You're not seeing the person
comes in, you know, casually, or seeing people medicate. And
I didn't know those words at the time, but I
could tell people from pain. I recognized that because I
was in it and I noticed this. I was always
(13:12):
just an observant person. I was like watching people and
I felt like, Wow, I have this front seat road
to people being just like living their lives so out
loud because they're integrated right or high, and they have
no filter um. And so I watched people drinking to
handle pain. I watched people doing drugs. I watched people
having sex, not literally, but you know, these relationships that
(13:34):
were wallable and would play out. And I realized, like,
oh my gosh, nobody outruns pain, but we're not taught
what to do with it. And I wanted to try
and handle my pain as it happened, because they I
see in pictures, and so I just saw these people
had some kind of pain, and then they covered that
pain up with a lot of bad choices, and it
(13:56):
led to more pain, and then it was suddenly like
this mountain that they never could face, and it would
have been better if they could just found a skill
or the courage to just face the original pain. You
can't outrun pain, was my takeaway, and so I tried
to like assess, like what did I have that helped
me with pain? And writing help. I was journaling at
(14:16):
a really young age. I was trying to write poetry
to young age, and I felt better. I felt noticeably
better when I wrote, and so I just sort of
turned to that as my coping mechanism. I guess, UM
never thinking it would be a job. You know, it
was just a way of seeing patterns and of seeing
things about myself that I didn't know I saw, of
(14:38):
seeing things about my dad, for instance, I didn't know
I saw, and it helped me. It kind of felt
like a ladder up and out of my pain or
myself for my situation and been little did I know
how literal that would be. It would be a literal
letter out. I mean, you've you've mentioned this. Really, I'm
a huge admirer of your mental health advocacy work you do.
(15:00):
You on for the Inspiring Children Foundation and the wellness
practices that you have on Jewel Never Broken dot com.
Everyone should check it out, especially after the last two
years we've had. I've found so many of the practices
that you've shared so helpful personally. And you've mentioned the
notion of using anxiety as an ally and as an
anxious person myself, I found this to be a very
(15:21):
hopeful sentiment. Um And I think, as you mentioned, a
lot of us are trying to eliminate anxiety or pain
from our lives, which is kind of a fool's errand
um And you used writing, I mean, what are some
other ways that that you know you you suggest, um
turning this anxiety into something productive for people? UM, I
(15:42):
guess I just start by saying, you know, mindfulness For me,
I would just give a definition. It means being consciously present.
That's it. You know, this is a word we hear
all the time, and it's kind of a word we
don't really know what it means. So mindfulness is being
consciously present. It doesn't mean that will your life will
change instantly. It just means you'll be consciously present, which
puts you in a position to change your life. I
(16:04):
liken it to a car. If your body was a car,
your brain isn't the driver. It's like a steering wheel,
but it can go on autopilot, a neurological autopilot if
you're not consciously present to drive the car. So being
consciously present is like getting off of autopilot and getting introl.
Being a neutral won't change your life, but it gets
(16:24):
you in a position to get in a new gear.
What actually will change your life is what I call mindfulness,
and motion is something practicable. Now that you're consciously present,
what are you going to do with that? Um? So
I notice I'm angry. I stop I take a breath,
I get consciously present. I'm now observing. Okay, I'm I'm angry.
(16:46):
Now what do I want to do? That is that
gap where you stop and insert a new tool instead
of you know, just reacting off of an old tool, right,
yelling you're stop in your breathe. Okay, Okay, I really
want to yell, but I'm not going to actually going
to go right or call my therapist or call of friends. Whatever.
The new thing is that changes your life, that actually
(17:08):
starts to starve old neural networks and help you build
new ones. UM. And for some reason, I don't know why,
but when I was homeless, I I started developing songs
and I started developing these tools for myself just to
get results, ready to make myself stop feeling, to help
myself with panic attacks. And I would tackle it one
(17:29):
pain point at a time. Right, I would tackle steeling
and that's all I would focus on. Or I would
tackle my panic attacks and that's what I would focus on.
And so those skills are what I've been able to
share and create curriculums out of UM without therapy. Not
that I'm against therapy, it's just that that everybody has access.
And so what about those people? You know, what about
(17:49):
kids that don't have support systems or therapists or god forbid?
What if your therapy just isn't getting you the change
you want? Does that mean you're unlucky? You know? Can
you still be happy? Um? And so that's what really
been striving me. Yeah, these last several years. One of
those concepts is anxiety as an ally. UM. For me,
when I figured this out, it just really changed everything.
(18:10):
Nothing can change in isolation, right, Imagine it just like
chemical chemical or chemistry. Like can we have an atom?
It will stay itself unless it's introduced to something new,
like fire or something. Now it's chemical composition can begin
to change. It happens in relationships. So we try to
disassociate from an aspect of our own personality. We cannot
(18:34):
expect it to change. We can only expect it to
maybe to not notice it, to do something louder. Right,
That's why we get high risk behaviors to drown out
the pain of our anxiety. Let's say, but you actually
have to invite it closer, because your anxiety is your
body's way of saying, you just consumed something that doesn't
(18:54):
agree with you. It's a thought of feeling for an
action or an interaction. So I started to get excited
every time I was anxious and go Okay, then I'd
stopped and I go, what was I just thinking? Feeling
or do? And it was hard right to identify the
thought that gave me that anxiety, because sometimes we think
things without noticing we think them, and our whole body triggers.
(19:15):
You know. Um, But if you stay really faithful to that,
and you get curious and invite your anxiety closer, and
then more importantly, if you can abstain from it, you're
going to make a huge change in your life. You know,
if you can say, all right, I'm no longer going
to allow myself to beat myself up because every time
I say X to myself, I feel crappy. I'm going
(19:35):
to insert a different thought and you have to be
willful about it. But it really does change. I mean,
just getting to the place of actually being excited to
experience your anxiety because you know that your body trying
to tell you something. I mean, that's that's gonna be
a tough place to get to. I imagine too, because
that that takes a certain amount of courage, because it's uncomfortable.
Anxiety is thankful. Yeah, And so you know, dysfunction is painful.
(20:03):
Feeling is painful, it's hard healing, it's hard work. But
at least there's a better possible outcome, not a guarantee,
but at least there is light at the end of
that tunnel. Whereas I already know me running from my
anxiety doesn't work, you know, so that's a known outcome,
and so you do kind of have to be a
little bit logical um, which is kind of funny in
(20:25):
a mindfulness practice, but you kind of have to go, Okay,
I've tried a thing that doesn't work and makes me six.
Am I willing to try something new? Am I willing
to look at it like an experiment and take notes
and see if there's a difference. And that's where it
kind of gets fun is you should see a difference.
It's not like, oh I think I think I feel better.
It's like, holy smokes, I was able to stop my
(20:46):
panic attacks. You know, you start to see real changes
and that begins to be rewarding. Like working out. You know,
when you start working out, it sucks. So you start
like developing an app, and you're like all right, I'm
into it. The payoff. Yeah. Was there at any kind
of a lightbulb moment or a moment for you where
(21:07):
songwriting went from being sort of an exercise in mindfulness
and something that was more for you to being something
that gave you a career direction, was something that you
kind of wanted to let other people into. Mm hmm.
Let's see. I mean I was singing with my dad
and bars, and that was like a blue collar job,
(21:28):
five hour sets of cover songs. He wrote too. He
would sing some of his UM. I never thought I
would be like a professional musician. I ended up homeless
because I wouldn't have sex with the boss and you
wouldn't give me my paycheck. So I started living in
my car thinking I would get a new job, but
I didn't. Uh. I had that kidneys and my car
(21:49):
got stolen and it was just like a ship show. UM,
and I started writing songs. I was writing prior to this, UM,
but I was trying to up stealing, and so I
was trying to replace the behavior of stealing with a
different behavior, which was writing. And I was a really
prolific fief. I became a really prolific writer. Again, not
(22:11):
thinking it would uh lead to a career. Um, I
don't know. I was just trying to figure out how
to quit stealing. And I loved writing. You know, it
was really fun for me. I just I guess I
thought careers in music were for other people. I don't know. Um,
it wasn't until record label started coming to see me
when I was homeless stilled it. I was like, holy smokes,
(22:33):
like this could be a career. Like and I. That's
something I talked to my kids in my foundation a lot,
and a lot of my talks is every time you
invest in your character, it seems bleak, right, like me
turning my boss down, refusing to have sex with him.
How to do back? Just consequence like I had to
live in my car and then my car got strolling
(22:53):
that I needed a point. That's a really bad outcome.
But it was investing in my character, right. I refused
to be leveraged, and I was willing to say fine,
all being a really uncomfortant position so that I'm not leveraged.
That that investment I made in my character paid off
dividends on the characters stock market for something I don't
(23:16):
know how it works, but it's magic and every time
I've seen anybody do it, refused to compromise their full
It paid dividends in unexpected ways. You know, if I
had kept that job it was kept. It kept me
very busy, right and barely scraping by, I wouldn't have
had time to really write. I you know, it's crazy
(23:37):
that it ended up leading me to music, because I
don't think I would have ended up there. Maybe I
would have, um, but it was an an unexpected side
effect of investing in my humanity, in my character, um
and just not believing that lie. You know, a million
times in my career people been like, well, we're never
gonna be famous if you don't x y Z. Well bullshit,
(23:59):
you don't just keep insisting. And that's the thing about
me too, I feel like doesn't really get recognized. You
can walk, you can tell people to f off, you know,
and it's it works out, It will work out. We
just don't see a lot of examples in it in
our society. I think maybe on some level people are
more free than they give themselves credit for. You can
(24:21):
only have a choice, yeah, and that's the really free
thing is you know, I figured out how to be
happy when I was homeless with nothing, you know, And
when I stopped thinking somebody else bothe me, you know,
when I stopped thinking somebody else would come save me,
and I started going, maybe I owe myself. What am
I capable of? My happiness is my own and if
(24:44):
I'm unhappy, I have to be accountable to that. And
there was a lot of, you know, things I could
make excuses about. I was having a terrible life like
that point. I really was lots of reasons, you know
what I mean, lots of excuses. But as long as
you're making excuses, your life won't change because you're spending
all your time on those excuses, no matter how valid
they are. Um. And so for me, realizing I could
(25:06):
be happy even when homeless was very powerful because it
put me you can't negotiate with a person like that,
you know. I was offered a million dollars signing bonus
as a homeless kid, and I turned it down, which
nobody could believe. Um, and I took the biggest back
end anybody had ever been rewarded because I believed that well,
that million dollars was alone. I'd have to sell a
(25:27):
ton of records to earn back. Right, a million dollars
for the label to recoup. The odds of me being
dropped from a label were very high. I mean, I
was making a folk album at the heights of grunge,
and even though there was a sitting war, I think
that was just labeled competing right and getting caught up
in the competition. Um. And so having that type of
approach for me was was really important and I was
(25:51):
happy to walk And you know, that's always just that's
a powerful place, you know, when you're unwilling to compromise
when you're saying I value my happiness and my you know,
my internal freedom more than I value saying or money.
They're going to make better choices. You can't be compromised.
And I think it's really served me in my career.
(26:13):
Oh absolutely, I mean, and that's a that's a tough
lesson to not only to learn but also integrate. I mean,
here's the here's a question with no easy answer. Do
you think that that happiness is teachable? Absolutely? That was
my big missions. Like when I moved out at fifteen,
you know, I knew statistically kids like me end up
(26:35):
repeating the cycle, and that just like I had a physical,
genetic inheritance that might give me a predisposition for diabetes.
I had an emotional inheritance and it was every bit
as real and would affect me every bit as much.
It's not more than my genetic inheritance. But nobody was
talking about it. But I said, I see in pictures.
(26:56):
So I saw like this river, and it was like
I was standing in this river and my dad and
his dad and his dad, and that emotional current, that
emotional language that I was raised speaking, would lead to
a known outcome of abuse of addiction in some various way,
shape or form. And that was depressing. You know, it's
(27:20):
depressing to be fifteen and go, oh my god, like
the odds of me speaking a new emotional language about
to me getting out of this emotional river and into
a new one, or very spect against me. And there's
no school for it. You know, there's needs to put
to school for Spanish. But where was I going to
go to learn a new emotional weights reflating to the world?
Very daunting. So my goal was to see if happiness
(27:43):
was a learnable skill, was it as teachable skill? And
that's what set me off on my journey, and that's
why I was writing songs like cloth your Soul or
hands um. A lot of the stuff I wrote was
was me trying to work through this kind of thing
and the answer is yes. The slogan on my Jewel
Never Broken website is learn to make a habit out
(28:05):
of happiness. Happiness is the side effect of choices. You
can't just be happy like its impossible. It's a side
effect of a choice. And your choices are a side
effect of your motivation. Your motivations are usually the side
effect of unconscious prompts, and so if you can start
making the unconscious prompts more conscious, which are used by
(28:27):
being consciously present, you start to really change your life.
And it takes those behavioral components um, which again for
some reason I had a knack for creating, and those
are on that free website you are Never Broken. There
(28:54):
was something you said on the podcast Second Life recently
which absolutely floored me. You were discussing sort of the
battle between nature versus nurture when shaping a person in
their personality, and you said that you worried that your
nurture was so intense for you that you wouldn't get
to know your own nature. And I just thought that
was such a beautiful way to articulate a concern that
I think a lot of people have, which is, you know,
(29:15):
will I get to know my own soul and not
allow my personality to become a series of reactions to
what I've experienced in the past. I just thought that
was a beautiful way to put that, and I just
wanted to ask you a little more about that and
your journey to sort of knowing yourself and your own nature.
I just I thought that was such a really succinct
and beautiful way to articulate this, I think real tribal
(29:36):
concern that a lot of people have. Thank. Um, it's
so amazing to me that I just spent my whole
life murding out on these movie kind of vague, nuanced,
strange philosophical threads, and that it's turned into a job.
Isn't just like blowing my mind? You know? Um? So
(29:57):
the trip for me to hear you say that, Um, yeah,
it's interesting nature versus nurture, nurture of conditioning nature is
hopefully our authenticity maybe. Uh And if my nurture was
so bad, was I screwed? You know what? It keep
me from knowing my authentic self? Because trauma alters us.
(30:18):
It does alter us, right, it changes us? And so
how do you handle that? You know? I had really
really bad traumatic experiences over and over well up into
my thirties and forties. Um, the kind that are just
life senders, you know, like what happened my mom is
just a mind sender. How do you recover? Um? Again?
(30:42):
Because I see in pictures like I saw an orange,
which sounds really silly, but an orange has appeal and
if all you relate to his appeal, you'd have no idea.
There's this the amazing thing inside of it. And that's
how I look at nature versus nurture. You know, our
nurture is affecting our feel I look at our personality
(31:04):
as a series of decisions that you make and choices
you make to respond to your environment. You know, if
you had a really traumatic environment, your personality would form
as a suspicious person, as a hyper vigilant person. You know,
we can start to apply adjectives to somebody based on
their nurturing, and that forms your personality. But your personality
(31:29):
is fluid, it's not sick. Um. We can lift that skin,
you know, that psychological skin of our conditioning, of our nurture,
how we formed our personality over time, and we can
start to develop a relationship to what's inside of it.
(31:49):
And that again is where mindfulness is really magical. You know,
mindfulness should be used to build the muscle, but being
consciously present and then once you're consciously present, going down
and in our whole culture wants us to go up
and out. You know, we're distracted all the time. We're
relating to our personality all the time, we think because
(32:11):
the way of a feeling, it's gospel m it's just
an extension of our personality in a lot of ways.
Isn't always a physic you know, it can just be
a conditioned with emotional response to when your nurture make
It's a little tricky. Where it gets easier is if
you just go down and in um, you meditate, you
(32:31):
learn to go down and end. When you're anxious, you
learn to go down and end. You go learn to
get to a still point in you where you go,
how do I feel about that underneath my conditioning, and
you start to develop a relationship with a much more
authentic part of you. For me, it's actually why I
called the website never Broken. For me, realizing, wait a minute,
(32:52):
you know what is my anxiety and my trauma and
all my reactions and hyper vigilance doesn't mean something wrong?
But what does it mean something's right with me? You
know what if every time I'm having neurotic reaction, it
means I shouldn't be having that thought or feeling. Can
I participate in something that doesn't give me anxiety? Because
my own nature shouldn't give me anxiety? And again that's
(33:13):
where our anxiety is Like the most powerful ally, if
I had a thought that made me anxious, I was
willing to say, what if that thought isn't authentically who
I am? What if that's a thought I've learned or
been conditioned to have? What other thought could I have?
What thought takes my anxiety down? For instance, like the
(33:34):
thought I don't know what I'm doing you said, just
unravel me. I don't know why, it would just freak
me out. And the truth wasn't you know, the opposite
affirmation of I know what I'm doing. That was a lie.
I didn't know what I was doing. I was in
too many difficult situations. The truth less, I'll figure it out,
I don't stop, and I can take that to the
bank and having that thought calmed my nervous system down.
(33:57):
So that meant that thought was much more in alignment
was my authentic nature than it was an alignment too,
you know, my trauma. And so it takes a lot
of you know, conscious presence. It takes a lot of uh,
being patient with yourself every time you notice yourself have
that thought, replacing it with another thought. But it really works, um,
(34:17):
it really will change your life. What is your relationship
like with with music on a daily basis? Is it
something that you incorporate like some people meditate every day
and some people jog every day. Is it's something that's
that's a daily part of your life. Not really, Um,
I sing every day just while I'm walking or doing things.
(34:39):
I'm always kind of practicing and in the background, but
I don't sit down with my guitar every day. I
think becoming a mom definitely impacted how I relate to that.
I do write every day. Uh, Poetry for me has
been the most consistent thing, and I I don't think
a day goes by very often when I don't write.
(35:01):
I wanted to end by asking about the title free
wheel and Woman, and I love the word free wheel,
and it just to me it has all the independence
of freedom, but with an added dose of just vivaciousness
and boldness and enthusiasm. I just think it's such a
great word. I wanted to ask you, what does the
title free Wheel and Woman mean to you today? I
think most of us, with time, become more afraid of love.
(35:27):
We become less potent. Maybe I think a lot of
us wonder if our magic has gone? Are the best
days behind us? I think we feel ground down and
we read from life and I have really fought for
my happiness. I have fought for joy. It wasn't you know,
(35:51):
something that came easy to be with my life, And
so I wanted this album to be a celebration of that,
you know, to be able to say, I'm a forty
seven year old man in the music business, and I'm
happier than I've ever been, and I'm writing better than
I've ever written, and I'm singing better than I've ever written,
and I feel like my magic is back. And yes,
there was a time when I was worried it was gone,
(36:12):
that life was just beating me down, and I fought
for that um and I'm proud I'm really proud of it.
And I wanted this record to be a celebration of
a lot of the odds. Yet I feel like I'd
beat that, um as a one of them, a couple three,
as a singer songwriter in the industry, and just as
a human. You know that has to wade true life
(36:32):
like everyone else, UM, who we are and who we
become with time is has to be intentional. Um. So
I just wanted it to be as solidation of it
and to like I'm I'm proud to be a woman
that's made in my own living in my own way
in the world with words. I mean, how impossible was that?
(36:53):
I never thought that would be the case, But I've
made a living them words bring up. So You've enriched
so many people's lives, including my own and so many
of my loved ones, with your music and everything you've
taught and everything you've said today. It's been such a
joy speaking with you. Thank you so much for sharing,
Thank you so much for your time today, and most importantly,
thank you so much for music. It's been a real honor.
(37:16):
Thanks really enjoyed it. We hope you enjoyed this episode
of Inside the Studio, a production of i heart Radio.
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