For the self-proclaimed "most boring rock star in history," Jewel has been pretty busy the last few years. There's her latest album, "This Way," a title-track video, her continued acting efforts and a project especially important to the singer/songwriter, the online community Soul City Café.
"I do feel a greater need for (Soul City Café) now," she said of the online forum for artists in many different entertainment genres, from music to writing to film and video, to gather and nourish one another's creative abilities. "I think there is a more noticeable absence of underground culture and less venues for it. There really aren't any indie labels anymore, which used to be a fairly common phenomenon when I was starting out. And there's a greater desire from fan bases . . . to be able to access music that isn't generic."
"The way that people want to get to music is different. I don't think people want to buy records anymore and sit in front of their CD player and peruse over it and listen to it beginning to end. People wanna go onto the Internet and enter the smorgasbord and choose this and that and this and that, kind of like a buffet. And that's something I don't think record labels are necessarily wanting to admit."
This is especially evident on college campuses, with vast networks such as UB's own Resnetster enabling students to find information quickly and easily.
"Soul City is a place that also supplies that. It's a place where people can go on, look at many different types of artists, take a song from here, take a song from there, and support new talent. It covers a lot of goals for me which I definitely don't think would have been as fully realized three or four years ago."
Three or four years ago, of course, Jewel had yet to take the much-publicized hiatus from the industry that kept her away from recording studios between her albums "Spirit" and "This Way."
"I lost the sort of fire for (recording), and I'm not the kind of person who can continue going through the motions when I'm not feeling it genuinely. I didn't know what I wanted to say to the world. I didn't have anything I wanted to say at the time, and until I did I wasn't going to make a record."
That record was "This Way," an album in which Jewel explores a rock sound that's unlike any of her previous albums.
Soul City Café makes her no money and has come from a personal part of Jewel's experiences with music and the industry.
"I was a person that lived in a car and sang in a coffee shop," she says. "Some person thought, 'I bet she really has potential.' I didn't see it myself, to tell you the truth. But I was given a chance on many, many levels, and in many ways, and it makes a lot of sense to me to be able to do that for other people."
As she saw the industry becoming more corporate, Jewel said she "finally decided I needed to do something about it myself."
Proving her intentions to make good on these goals, Jewel's "This Way" video used the talents of Marcos Efron, an unknown director picked from 120 entrants in a talent contest on Soul City Café. Did she find there was a great difference in working with someone whose industry experience was not the same as other directors she had worked with?
"In truth, not a lot. He knew what he was doing, he was educated in what to do, and he was a very calm, open person that was also confident. We surrounded him - I know enough about hair, makeup, and styling, lighting, directors of photography, producers. He was really, really well surrounded. So I don't think the shoot lacked for anything, I think the video came out how I would have hoped it would. I think he did a great job and really rose to it."
When asked if the final product was worth going through the search for a new director, Jewel adamantly reinforced the most important point behind hiring Efron: "The guy got the job because he was qualified for it."
As one of the most downloaded artists out there (and therefore one losing a large percentage of her possible income), Jewel's stance on digital music is surprising. In the past she has encouraged her fans to bootleg, because "it's built my fan base more than it detracts from my sales."
"To date, my record has been downloaded - that they can count - 4.5 million times. That's 4.5 million records I wasn't able to sell for my label. And I sold two million records," she says. "Because of that, you have people trying to look at what's a known thing in the industry, they're looking for known things that work. And one of the things that always works is if you can addict people to something, you can pretty much guarantee repeat buying."
"I think they're really missing a sort of more long-term solution to the problem. Which is one of the reasons I started Soul City."
"Educating fans to that is one thing, but fans aren't going to change a convenient way to get music," she said.
Nor does the high cost of records encourage fans to do the legal, "right" thing. "Artists make records that cost two million dollars, and you have to have a high ticket price to make the money back."
According to Jewel, record labels need to reevaluate the costs associated with making records and realize that their profit margins may decline as a result.
"I also think there needs to be some way of being able to monetize downloading, whether it's some sort of 'click here,' you know, I do think it needs to be monetized. I don't think it should be just for free, but I think that that's the industry's and the nation's job to figure out how to monetize it. I don't think you should expect kids just to say, 'Please don't.'"
"'Cause I don't think it'll work."
