Singer-Songwriter Jewel Speaks On Her Charity Work, Upcoming Music & More

From the remote tundra of her Alaskan youth to the triumph of international stardom, Jewel is an acclaimed singer, songwriter, poet, actress and painter. The Grammy Award-nominated multi-platinum recording artist recently hosted her very own livestream concert via her Instagram and Facebook to raise the necessary funds to benefit her Never Broken program powered by the Inspiring Children Foundation. She joined BUILD to discuss the concert and what's next for her.

Video Transcript

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MATT FORTE: Hello, world. What is up? Welcome to "BUILD at Home." I'm your host, Matt Forte. I'm coming to you from my home, as is our next guest, who I am beyond thrilled to talk with.

But first, before we get started, something incredibly important-- I don't know if you know, but kids in need have missed more than 302 million meals at school due to closure from coronavirus. With NoKidHungry.org, we're helping schools and community groups find new ways to feed these kids, which is great. But we need your support.

And look, I know there is no shortage of important and immediate causes right now. Just if you happen to be in a position to give a little bit back, then I'd urge you to take a look at NoKidHungry.org and maybe make that one of the places that you give to. Very cool, let's get the show going.

Our next guest is, ah man, an acclaimed singer-songwriter, poet, actress, best-selling author, painter, absolute icon, the Grammy award nominated, multi-platinum recording artist, who recently hosted her very own livestream concert via her Instagram and Facebook to raise some money for her Never Broken program, powered by the Inspiring Children Foundation. She's with us now to chat a bit about that and everything else she's been up to. Please welcome the one, the only, the great Jewel, everybody. Jewel, hello!

JEWEL: Hi, how are you? You did the intro just the way my mom wrote it. I really appreciate it. [LAUGHS]

MATT FORTE: Her-- yes, she just sent it over. I had like a second to read through it, and I thought, perfect, perfect. Jewel, thank you so much for taking the time to be there and here with us. Super excited to have you back on the show. How are you doing? How is life for Jewel right now? How are you holding up throughout all this?

JEWEL: I'm in the Rockies. I think being in nature makes these things easier because it's pretty isolated out here naturally, so getting out in nature, I can go hiking and all the things that I really love doing. I'm also somewhat antisocial by nature. So I'm used to being in and not seeing a lot of people.

The part that's troubling, of course, is everything that's happening in the world, what we're seeing with our Youth Foundation, what we're seeing with anxiety, depression rates. All that, of course, is very troubling.

MATT FORTE: For sure. For sure, well, I'm looking forward to speaking with you over the next couple of minutes and talking about some of that stuff. I just saw you were very recently, like an hour or so ago, you were performing live, again, on Billboard, I believe. And you had just hosted Live from San Quarantine for the Children Foundation. How did you guys do with that, by the way? How much money did you raise for--

JEWEL: We did good. We raised $550,000 in one night.

MATT FORTE: No way. That's incredible!

JEWEL: I know! That's what I thought. I was like, holy smokes.

[LAUGHTER]

MATT FORTE: Oh, my goodness. That is amazing. Congratulations.

JEWEL: Yeah.

MATT FORTE: Good for you.

JEWEL: Yeah, thanks. Our budget is $1.8 million, and I can't do any of our fundraising because we can't go do concerts, so 95% of the families in our foundation already lost their jobs.

MATT FORTE: Oh, my god.

JEWEL: So just trying to keep them in housing and keep them fed during this time and keeping them safe. So we have a ways to go, but that kept all our lights on and kept our kids in housing. So we're good.

MATT FORTE: For sure, wow, 550-- that's amazing.

JEWEL: Yeah.

MATT FORTE: That's a big dent to have been made in one night.

JEWEL: It is.

MATT FORTE: That's very cool, Yeah. You know, you're an artist that I've heard talk about this before, the importance of an emotional connection that you feel with your audience when you're playing live. What's it been like now, having done Live from San Quarantine and just doing the Billboard thing, you know, doing more and more of these live from home concerts, what's it been like performing for this massive audience on the other side of screens? How's that felt?

JEWEL: For me, the emotionality comes when I'm singing. You know, I just get sort of lost in another world. And I know that translates whether we're in front of each other or not. I always have been embarrassed by the applause. Like, if you see me live, I kind of would love to just disappear during the applause, and I wish I could just reappear.

So oddly, it works for me a little bit because there's just no applause. [LAUGHS] I can just go right on to the next thing.

MATT FORTE: That's wild. Has ever-- have you found that to be consistent over the years, no matter what? Like, as you've played larger and larger audiences and massive shows, headlined all over the world, you still, to this day, that's something that you are challenged by, is the applause?

JEWEL: Yeah, the applause isn't my thing. And when you sing-- where when I sing, I get so lost, you get just so out of your body, that all of a sudden it's a little embarrassing when you come back because, you know, it's just a little jarring, little-- yeah, it makes me a little shy.

MATT FORTE: I saw, on your-- I think was on your Instagram, that you and Kase made this awesome, cardboard guitar as a home project. Have you been having to facilitate like a lot of homeschool projects, and classes, and topics, and stuff like that?

JEWEL: Yeah, our school has done a really good job putting a lot of curriculum online. But it's a lot, like how moms are doing it. You know, I'm alone here in the house, so it's trying to do my job. A lot of moms are in this case, and all the cooking, all the cleaning, trying to do four and five hours worth of schoolwork, and on top of trying to get anything in my job done, it's crazy.

MATT FORTE: There's a lot, yeah.

JEWEL: I really loved at the time, teaching them. It's awesome. It's been an incredible time to just see how his brain works and see how he develops. And it's fun.

MATT FORTE: Is there a subject in particular that you, like, secretly struggle with but you don't want Kase to know. And you're just like, oh, no. I know how to do long division still, absolutely.

JEWEL: [LAUGHS] It's no secret, I never passed pre-algebra. It was never my strength. Like pre-algebra, my entire high school career, never passed it.

MATT FORTE: Wow.

JEWEL: Thank God I'm a singer.

MATT FORTE: Exactly, there you go. It worked out. I don't think you need a lot of that right now, but--

JEWEL: Nope.

MATT FORTE: --that's pretty amazing.

JEWEL: That's pretty bad.

MATT FORTE: And Kase is handling it well, like, adjusting? Because I think it's-- you know, it's hard for everybody to kind of figure out, like, what normal is now.

JEWEL: Yeah, you know, my son was always homeschooled, so we do the sort of hybrid thing because he travels with me so much. I do usually have a teacher that travels with us. And everybody's quarantined, so she isn't with us right now. But he's used to being homeschooled, just not by me particularly.

MATT FORTE: Cool, so it hasn't been too wild an adjustment. I was taking a look over at our JewelNeverBroken.com, and you guys have put together a really awesome list of, like, books, and films, and things like that to get people through the quarantine. What have you guys have been doing between science projects and math homework and stuff? What are you watching? What are you reading?

JEWEL: I'm writing a book right now, so all of my free time has been spent on that.

MATT FORTE: Really?

JEWEL: So it's either working with Kase, or, you know, I'm just doing a lot of fundraising right now and talking about mental health.

MATT FORTE: Yeah

JEWEL: I'm doing a lot of TV shows from my bedroom. I kind of couldn't be happier about it. I hate the whole pandemic thing, but the whole doing stuff from my bedroom thing is really making me happy. [LAUGHS]

MATT FORTE: You started something new for you, Jewel. This is good. This is how it works.

JEWEL: I know.

MATT FORTE: Yeah.

JEWEL: I will no longer come into TV shows. They must be from my bedroom. I'll be very eccentric.

MATT FORTE: Yeah, I saw that you had a book coming up, and I didn't realize that you were like actively working on it right now. Has your experience and has this whole global shift impacted at all, like, your creative trajectory and like what this book is and what you're writing about? Or have you had to, like, sort of separate from the outside world and stay focused on your original vision there?

JEWEL: You know, I kind of went into a hole maybe almost a year ago to start writing this book. It's about change and how do we create some metrics around change. We can grow, or we become different. But we rarely change.

And so it's about neuroplasticity, how do we create our reality through a series of emotional bonds and misunderstandings, and then how can you, on a fundamental level, actually really change. And so it's a great book for now. I kind of wish it was out now because a lot of us are stuck and trapped in coordinating with our brains.

And our brain is not a pleasant place to be a lot of the time, but we distract ourselves so much that we don't really notice. And so, right now, I think people are noticing that their brain isn't necessarily a fun place or a fun companion. And they're looking for solutions for that. I've needed solutions for that my whole life, so that's what Never Broken, the website's about. And this book sort of takes it to a new level.

MATT FORTE: Is that kind of how you-- because I always assume that you work with a supportive team because I can't imagine one person curating all of that content alone. But it sounds like it starts as a very personal journey for you because there's so much on there. There's amazing yoga, meditation, fitness, nutrition. There's all sorts of stuff up there. And I was just very curious about how you guys find it, and what the criteria is, and what that looks like for you, what that process is.

JEWEL: Yeah, so I wrote an autobiography five years ago called "Never Broken", and I talk about some exercises I used to retrain my brain, to rewire it. But I didn't mention what the exercises were. I didn't really think anybody would be interested.

But everybody was interested, so I created this website. I've been using these exercises for myself, just-- I was homeless. And I was stealing. And I was having panic attacks. I was agoraphobic. I was going to end up in jail or dead if I didn't change things.

And I remembered this quote by Buddha that said happiness doesn't depend on who you are or what you have. It depends on what you think. And I had so much anxiety, I couldn't figure out what I even thought.

And so I started doing this thing where I watched my hands because they're the servants of your thought. And if you want to know what you're thinking, watch what your hands are doing because it's your thought cooled down into action. So I started taking notes, and that was my big idea.

I managed to not steal the dress I was about to steal. And I started taking notes in my journal about my hands. I had no idea what else to do. I was 18.

And after two weeks, this really interesting side effect happened of my anxiety was virtually gone. The word mindfulness wasn't around. The word presence weren't-- I'm sure they were around. I just didn't know them.

But it was my first practice in mindfulness. If you're in an observant or curious state, you're being mindful, you're being present. Mindfulness is just a fancy word for consciously present. And when you're consciously present, your anxiety really will go down.

And so I started creating all these exercises to sort of hack my way into dilated states. I realized there is only two states of being. There's dilated and contracted. Every thought, feeling, or action, leads to one of those two states.

So anxiety, worry, fear, and greed, jealousy-- all contracted. Observation, curiosity, joy, gratitude, et cetera-- all violated. And it has an instant effect on your body. Your body is listening to your brain and vise versa.

So I realized, when I was about to have a panic attack and I could start to feel it come on, I needed to change my blood flow patterns. And the easiest way to do that was to force myself into a dilated state. And for me, I used gratitude.

So I would just get incredibly curious and incredibly grateful about my surroundings. And the first time I realized it worked, I was looking at the light filtering through this palm tree on the street corner I was living on. It was beautiful. And I just forced myself to be absorbing the smells, and the colors, and the warmth for my skin.

And sure enough, your entire system changes. Your biochemical rhythms change. The blood flow patterns in your brain change. And so these exercises actually got proved to work by a neuroscientist named Dr. Judson Brewer.

And so the Never Broken website is built of these really simple exercises. They're three minute exercises. But it explains a lot of the science behind them, and we curated that. And then my youth foundation, these are the tools they use. Our kids have anxiety, suicidal ideation, depression. And so this is the curriculum they use. This curriculum-- curriculum is a loose word. They're just these exercises.

But our kids are amazing. You know, these are for people that don't necessarily have access to therapists or, even if they do, and they're just not getting that level of daily change that they want. I mean, our kids curate the rest, so like our book lists, our movie lists, our song lists, our articles-- it's all stuff the Youth Foundation finds helpful, and they upload it.

MATT FORTE: Yeah, yeah, I was blown away by all of it because I was familiar, obviously, with the book and with a lot of stuff that you worked on. And I knew of the site. But when I was like really digging into it just to prepare for this, I was like, man, there is a ton of amazing stuff up here.

And you can tell, it's very much-- I use the word curated deliberately because it isn't just like an aggregate site that just pull things from all over the web. These are carefully chosen things, exercises, examples, stories, great lists. And so it's really fascinating to hear that whole--

JEWEL: That makes me happy.

MATT FORTE: --back story of how you get through all that stuff.

JEWEL: Awesome.

MATT FORTE: Yeah, no, it's an amazing resource. I wanted-- you mentioned how it was so long ago that this all kind of started, this journey kind of started for you. And I'm just reminded that this is the-- keep me honest here, is it the 25th anniversary of--

JEWEL: Is it.

MATT FORTE: --your debut album, right?

JEWEL: Yeah.

MATT FORTE: Oh, my God. That is wild. A quarter of a century, monumental amount of time, right? Something we often hear is, you know, how much have you changed? How much have you grown?

I feel like a lot of that's apparent. I'm curious, what's been consistent for you? When you think back to that time, maybe it's the way you start writing a song or maybe it's the way you practice. Is there something that hasn't changed for you, that's remained like true to you over these 25 years?

JEWEL: I think some of the things I'm most proud of are the things I was able to keep intact. You know, my life's been hard. All of our lives are hard. You know, our hearts are destined to be broken, and it's how we rebuild those pieces that makes us interesting.

But if you can grow over life without getting more bitter, if you can keep curiosity, if you can keep a joyousness and a youthful curiosity and joyfulness when you see simple things, that's really an accomplishment. It's not easy to do. So the fact that I've been able to retain those things and keep those things the same, I'm very proud of that. But it took a lot of work for me to be able to do that.

The songwriting process definitely changed. This is the first-- I have a new record that will come out soon. And it's the first record I've written from scratch. And it was very difficult. It was much harder record to write.

MATT FORTE: Wait, I'm sorry. When you say from scratch, if you could elaborate on that for me? What do you mean--

JEWEL: Yeah, I've always been prolific. When I was discovered 18, I think I had several songs already written. And then I kept being prolific.

So my entire career I have thousands of songs in my back catalog to pick from at any given time. And I write every style all the time. And so if I wanted to make a country record, I had several worth of country record songs in my back catalog. And I would just go pick them.

So making records has never been stressful to me. Having the courage to take risks or try new things or push boundaries, maybe, but this is the first record where I wanted to write every single song from zero-- exactly who I am now without pulling anything from my back catalog. And it was hard. It was really hard.

MATT FORTE: That's got to be a scary decision to make when you know that you have-- I've got a couple of hundred, guaranteed-- these are done. These are good songs. I believe in these. I've written these. But I'm not going to use any of them. I'm going to start at--

JEWEL: Yeah.

MATT FORTE: --zero. Do you remember what motivated you or drove you to that decision, of now is the time, I'm going to do absolutely blank slate?

JEWEL: I wanted it to represent who I was now--

MATT FORTE: Right now, yeah.

JEWEL: --not a little snapshots of who I was through time. And it was hard to do that. It was hard-- and I'm 45-- to be able to write differently. How I relate emotionally to my art is really different. Having a child in my schedule is really different.

You don't have all that free time to just, oh, the music's hitting me. I'm going to stay up until three in the morning with my candles and write a song. It doesn't happen. I'm exhausted.

And then, emotionally, it forced me into such a deep area of my heart that I didn't realize there were still things that needed to be taken away, these obstructions. So I had to fight hard and really dig deep to get to something that I felt like was fresh, and new, and authentic, and transparent.

MATT FORTE: Wow, are you still-- I know I kind of asked the same question earlier about your book. But are you still writing music now? Or is that still happening? Has your current situation impacted how you approach the songs you are writing right now? Without giving away too much, like what phase are you within the process?

JEWEL: Yeah, I'm mixing the record now, so the writing process--

MATT FORTE: OK, so it's done.

JEWEL: --is over.

MATT FORTE: Yeah, it's written.

JEWEL: But it's interesting seeing the songs that I wrote and what works right now. I was liking the song called "No More Tears", and I'm starting to sing one called "Grateful" just because it feels like it's touching what's happening right now and being able to address that. The book is in its editing stages, so I'm kind of on my final edits.

MATT FORTE: Yeah, you just mentioned "No More Tears", which, before we get out of here, I wanted to bring up. You wrote that for "Lost in America", the documentary that you EP'd on. And I bring that up because one of things I was really curious about is that was playing in theaters. It has been at festivals.

Have you guys thought at all about, with more and more films coming to VOD and stuff like that, getting a wider release and putting that out there for more people to see that during the quarantine? Have you talked about that at all, or?

JEWEL: Yeah, definitely. We're all pivoting. That movie "Lost in America" is about youth homelessness, and I executive produced another one about mindfulness. And so just finding the way to pivot, like everybody's suddenly scrambling. And OK, how else do we do this?

MATT FORTE: Yeah, how do we get people to see this thing that we made? Like, how do we get it out there? Yeah. Well, all of this is great, and I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me and talk about all this stuff.

But, ultimately, the only thing the matter is right now is that you and Kase are happy and healthy and doing all right. And it means a lot that you carved time out to hang out with us for a little bit today. Before we get of here, I'll remind everybody, I mentioned at the top, NoKidHungry.org. And Jewel, where can people go for your foundation so that we can get you to feel that heart all the way up and get across the finish line?

JEWEL: Awesome. It's InspiringChildren.net, InspiringChildren.net.

MATT FORTE: InspiringChildren.net, we'll have them put a fancy little lower third down there that says InspiringChildren.net. Jewel, anything else before we go?

JEWEL: No, I really appreciate it. I'm glad you're there, cruising along, doing your thing. Stay healthy.

MATT FORTE: Likewise, thank you so much. Thank you, everybody, that tuned in at home for watching. Wherever you are, make a crazy amount of noise and show your appreciation as well I for the great Jewel. Thank you, Jewel, so much.

JEWEL: [LAUGHS] Bye.

MATT FORTE: Bye.

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