Addicted To Noise associate editor Beth Winegarner reports: Last year was a wee bit strange for the 22-year-old Jewel, who began the year playing clubs -- including a few in the Bay Area -- lucky if 20 people turned up to hear songs from her then-two-year-old record, Pieces of You. Actually, it took about two and a half years before the re-release of "Who Will Save Your Soul?" saw any kind of respectable airplay on radio stations or MTV; before that Jewel had appeared once or twice on late-night VH-1 but it seemed no one was ready for her music.
So it seemed ironic Tuesday night (April 1) that Jewel performed to a sold-out crowd at Berkeley's 4,000-seat Community Theater, less than a year after being laughed out of smaller venues. The singer gave abundant thanks to Tuesday's audience, and was rewarded with not one, not two, but three standing ovations.
After hilarious alterna-folk openers the Rugburns finished their set, Jewel took the stage -- dark except for a wing of twinkling faux candles for which this, her Tiny Lights Tour, is named -- and voiced an a capella verse of "Near You Always" before taking to her guitar. Listeners who haven't heard Jewel perform live before might be surprised at the volume of work she's amassed during her years as a San Diego cafe performer; though she included several songs from Pieces of Your in her set, they were balanced by older works and some incredible new material -- some so new she made up the words as she went along....."Enter from the East," for instance, revealed a deeper, sultrier alto melody than anything Jewel's done before, giving necessary weight to lines like, "My heart has four empty rooms/Three wait for lightning/And one waits for you" -- and yet her voice fluttered effortlessly into the upper registers during the chorus. She was joined by a cellist, whose sweetly somber performance blessed the song -- and others throughout the night.
During the guitar intro to "Don't," a cheerful fan shouted out, "I love you, Jewel!" causing her to flub her part and respond, "I know, but I hate it when you do that. I always get so embarrassed. Thank you, though." She recovered nicely; in fact, Jewel showed herself to be quite a self-assured performer, weaving tales in between her songs.
At one point in the set Jewel invited the Rugburns -- vocalist and guitarist Steve Poltz, bassist John Castro and drummer Jeff Aafedt -- to join her. She told the story of how she and Poltz (who share songwriting credits on a couple of Jewel's tunes) had taken a vacation together and, wanting to go whale-watching, were invited by several law enforcement officials out onto their boat. Halfway through the expedition, they discovered the reason for the fuzz's boat trip was a marijuana bust. Jewel and Poltz, stricken, were handed a pair of machine guns with which to help nab the dealers. When the afternoon was finished, the cops offered them as much pot as they could carry away.
"Our vacation was completely ruined," Jewel commented, "but the point is, we got this song out of it," and the band launched into "You Were Meant for Me." The Rugburns remained on-stage to back Jewel for several songs including "Adrian," "Who Will Save Your Soul?" and a few new numbers.
Jewel occasionally allowed her sense of humor to shine through, as with "Cold Song," the cutest song ever written about sharing the influenza virus (it even closes with an impossible Dr. Seuss-esque tongue twister); she claims she wrote it in her sleep. Later, she played a number called "Race Car Driver," a satirical piece on men who think with their, er, cars: "I'm just a small man with a real big car," she warbled with ample irony.
In other moments, Jewel stretched her considerable vocal talents to their limits, as with the yodeling chorus in her rocked-out version of "Chime Bells," at the end of which most of the audience was howling for her to yodel faster. Another a cappella number -- this one sung in the style of those wartime girl groups -- described the unfortunate effects an overly sultry night might have on a lover's otherwise aroused condition.
Jewel often returned to her more heartfelt songs, closing the two-hour set with a melancholy version of "Amen" as a starry sky was projected onto the screens behind her. "Where are my angels, where's my golden wand?" she sang in earnest. "Where is my hope now that my heroes are gone?" Although Jewel often sings of the bleakness she sees in the world around her, there's no doubt that her listeners has found a heroine in her.
This article was originally published in Addicted to Noise.