CheekyChicago

Jewel is currently promoting her sophomore country album Sweet and Wild. The Star Light Café Tour finds the three-time Grammy nominee performing acoustically, giving fans an intimate concert experience.

After attending the Interlochen Arts Academy, why made you decide not to continue your music studies at a conservatory or university, where you could further train in voice, guitar, or songwriting?

I don’t know why. My parents were not supporting me by paying for college. I put myself through school. I had a partial scholarship the first year I attended Interlochen and got a full scholarship for my second year. Nobody at the school talked to me about college. There were other kids graduating with me who were going to Juilliard, but that was not an option for me. I love opera, but classical vocal performance is too rigid and constrictive. For my senior classical voice recital, I performed a George Gershwin song with an alternative ending that I preferred. My choice to veer away from the original ending was frowned upon.

How does your original concept of a song evolve into the final product?

I play and sound a lot better live than in the studio. I have a home studio, which is where I wrote and recorded 60 solo and acoustic songs for my new album Sweet and Wild. I arranged and picked the tempo for all 60 songs, recorded them to a click track, and brought them to Nashville where my co-producer and I narrowed down the list to 11 songs. The old way was to cut each track live with a band in the studio. When producing and recording the 11 songs that made it onto Sweet and Wild, I never replayed or had to re-sing the songs I had cut at home. This way, the live band in the studio had to adjust to my solo and acoustic arrangement of each song, helping stay true to the original concept of the song. I am releasing two versions of Sweet and Wild. The deluxe version is a double disc that has the original solo and acoustic recordings of all 11 songs cut in my home studio.

What were the first songs you learned to play on the guitar?

I learned how to play the guitar while at Interlochen because I wanted to travel through Mexico and earn some cash by performing on street corners. Students were not allowed to stay on campus for spring break. Before I left for spring break one year, I learned four basic chords on the guitar: A minor, C, D, and G (in that order). My dad taught me to improvise when I was younger, coming up with lyrics on the spot while singing in bars and observing what was going on around me. While in Mexico, I would play those four chords on a constant loop, only changing the lyrics each time to make the tune vary. The A minor/C/D/G loop eventually became my first single “Who Will Save Your Soul.”

Interview courtesy of the DeadHub.com