Jewel comes home: Alaska’s biggest star closes out its biggest music festival Sunday

There’s probably no probably about it — Jewel Kilcher is the biggest music star to ever come out of Alaska, and this weekend she’ll play her home state’s biggest music festival.

Sunday night on the Ocean Stage at the Kenai Peninsula Fairgrounds, Jewel will headline the three days of ‘Fish, Love and Music’ known as Salmonfest, some 37 miles from her hometown of Homer.

We caught up with her last week to talk about the show and what she’s been up to in the years since her breakout 1996 album ‘Pieces of You’ and her countless reinventions as a musician, poet, artist, actress and most recently, entrepreneur.

What brings you to Salmonfest this year? What kind of show will it be?

I have never played Salmonfest before. My friend Zac Brown played it last year and he said he had fun.

When I go back to Alaska I consider it downtime, not work time. I don’t work, I try to spend time with family, just being outdoors and really enjoying my time. I haven’t honestly played Alaska as much as wanted to in Anchorage. I’ve played in Homer, the local theater, but I’m very excited to do an actual show. It will be solo, acoustic, just me and my guitar — no set list and I’ll be taking requests so I’m very excited about it.

How has Alaska changed, from your vantage point, since your youth?

I do make it back to Alaska. I took my (4-year-old) son back for the first time last year and we’re spending an entire month up there this year.

Homer hasn’t changed a lot. The head of the bay has more four-wheeler trails, but it’s still big, wild beautiful raw country.

How did growing up in Alaska help form you as an artist

I think I benefited as a human because I had so much stillness and quiet in my life. I was raised without a TV and that really taught me to be creative and look inside myself to understand who I was, uniquely, and that ended up making me a good writer. I want to share that with my son so he could see the value of working the land and knowing that nobody’s entitled, even to food or water. We all earn everything we get and Alaska takes that right to a basic level. Alaska makes that all so much so much more clear. I’m very glad to be headed home.

How have you changed as an artist since ‘Pieces of You’

I’ve always tried to really follow what my mentor Bob Dylan — he really took me under his wing, and Neil Young and Merle Haggard, too. They all really encouraged me to follow my own muse regardless of what was popular on the radio. I think that’s one reason I took as many risks… kept pushing myself as an artist, experimenting with different genres and being insistent that I’m allowed to write the music I listened to growing up.

That’s largely due to their influence, so I guess that’s the way I changed the most. Hopefully I’ve evolved and I hope I’ve done it with integrity to fight for what it is to be a singer-songwriter. It’s a privilege to talk, not only about my own life but what I’m seeing in society around me, and hopefully I raise good questions, while at the same time being authentic and honest.

How has the music scene changed since the 90s?

Maybe one of the biggest changes most recently is that I’ve had to become more entrepreneurial because the record industry is so disrupted. It’s not very possible to make money now without touring. And, now I have a child, so I’m working on building businesses basically based on what my music was based on — ‘I’m in pain — now what?’

That happened to work in the 90s because the culture was coming out of grunge where there was a lot of pain and people wanted a solution, and that’s what I wanted. I was in pain and I wanted a solution.

I think, similarly, we’re now in a place like that in culture. People are in a lot of pain, whichever side of the fence they’re on. We need solutions about how to calm anxiety, calm depression, so I started sharing.

You’ve written a book and started a movement called ‘Never Broken’. What should people know about that?

The reason I wrote the book was to share with people what I’ve been through and how I overcame it. Nobody gets out of life without pain, so what do we do with pain and how are we taught to handle pain? That is interesting to me.

A very famous scientist, Judson Brewer, who proved that mindfulness can grow gray matter, became the scientific backer for the website and he explains why exercises on the website work.

I share that on my website for free for anyone who wants to be the architect of their own life rather than the passenger of a life they merely inhabited, which is what my life’s journey has been about. A lot of my businesses are about informing a whole human university, a whole human curriculum for public schools.

What projects or albums do you have coming up?

I’m focusing, right now before my son gets into grade (school), because I have a bit of a flexible year, really getting these businesses set up so I’m not relying just on touring for income. I’m really working hard at that and I will get back to making music and having fun that way — that, and writing more books.

I’m definitely going to continue with music and books, and at the same time hope to be able to help the culture with some of what I’ve learned and help, not just through music, but through more practical learning tools.

What does Alaska mean to you?

Alaska made me who I am. It’s such a special, special place. I’m glad it’s hard to get to. I hope that doesn’t change. It’s one of the last wild, beautiful places in the world. I’m very privileged, I feel, to be raised with the family I was raised with and that my grandparents chose to make the hard journey and settle there because I’ve really, really benefited from it as a human, which has caused every other aspect of my life to be enriched by it as well.