Jewel: When I Was Poor, I Rejected $1M and Built a Plan for My Happiness

Key Takeaway

Create a personal decision hierarchy before the next opportunity arrives. Write your non-negotiable first priority (for Jewel, becoming a happy and whole person), your second priority, and the outcomes you want from your work. Then evaluate one current commitment against that order: does it support your health and values, or merely offer money, status, or speed? Use the hierarchy to make one small boundary-setting decision today.

Episode Overview

Jewel recounts her path from a traumatic childhood and homelessness to building a long-lasting music career on her own terms. She explains how mindfulness-style self-observation helped her interrupt panic and harmful behaviors, and how a deliberately slow, values-led business plan guided her through fame, money, and major career decisions.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Jewel: When I Was Poor, I Rejected $1M and Built a Plan for My Happiness from How I Built This. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Hi, this is Guy Roz and welcome back to The Great Creators. This is where I talk to some of the most famous actors, musicians, and artists of our time. Today's guest is Jewel, and you're about to hear her incredible life story. From singing in bars as a child, she went through biker bars, lumberjack houses, fishermen's camps, and some very violent places until she became homeless at 18. Sometimes, I couldn't leave the corner; I was outside, under a tree that seemed safe to me. I couldn't go out to buy food most days because I'd have a panic attack if I left that little tree, and shortly after, I became the most sought-after musician in the world.

They offered me a one million dollar signing bonus, and that wasn't a solution to my problems. Actually, it was a problem I had to solve. But all of this, and the 30 million albums sold, are only part of Jules' story. And this is one of the most honest, engaging, and tactical episodes we've ever done for the show. You 'll hear about the mental exercises Juel used to get out of homelessness, how she created a business plan—a real business plan for her career—and how a conversation with Bob Dylan may have saved her career.

This is one of our longest episodes, but it's very engaging. You're going to love it. So, without further ado, enjoy my conversation with Juel. Let's start with you, and I know you've written about this. You wrote a book about your life. It was released over 20 years ago, and his life has changed considerably since then. But I want to go back a bit and talk about the origins of its history. Because I know she started in Utah, but soon moved to Alaska, where you grew up mostly with your father, in a very remote part of Alaska.

Some people know about this because it was featured in a Discovery Channel documentary. Tell me about your memories of living there as a child. Yes. My family were settlers. They left Germany shortly before World War II. And my grandmother had been an aspiring opera singer and poet. And she raised her children, she and my grandfather, on a rural property where Alaska would give you a piece of land for free if you went there and promised not to die during an entire winter. So, all the children were born there as if we were in the 1800s.

It was a horse-drawn cart to the city. There were no supermarkets. My father went to Vietnam and managed to get into college with the GI Bill, and that's how we ended up in Utah when I was born. And as soon as he graduated from college, we returned to Alaska. My mother left when I was eight years old, and then I started living on the rural property with just my father. He lived in a saddle barn. I loved it. I truly loved the rural property. I truly loved the land.

I always felt very lucky to have had the relationship I had with the land. It's a relationship. I think that's what I missed the most and, surprisingly, when I look back , it gave me one of the best skills for managing my career. Strangely, your father, as you mentioned, was on the reservation. He was a Vietnam veteran. I think it became clear to you later in life that he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. We didn't have a term for it, probably at the beginning of that era.

What do you remember about being, say, 8 or 10 years old and seeing your father suffer? Yes. My father's childhood was so traumatic that when he went to Vietnam, it was the first time he felt his body relax. That's awful, you know. So he went and did what young boys do at that age. They marry their boyfriends and go back home. And then, when my mother left when I was eight years old, he took over raising me and my two brothers . And today we would call that a trauma trigger.

But that terminology simply didn't exist back then . My father started drinking to try to cope with the intense amount of emotional distress he was experiencing. That was pretty predictable. And then, suddenly, at age 8, you know, I went from a normal, very nice family to a father who drank, smoked, and was physically abusive, and we used to sing in bars. So it was a big cultural shift for me. The thing I remember most is that I was in pain and I had a seat in the front row at the bars where I was singing.

We would do 5-hour sessions observing people in pain. I am dyslexic. So I didn't know it at the time, but my brain sees patterns in a very different way. And one of the first patterns I saw was why doesn't anyone talk about pain? But I've seen people dealing with it using heroin, PCP, volatile relationships, drinking— people who never get over the pain. And then I remember making notes in my book, You Don't Outrun Pain. Hmm, seeing people, what I saw as a mountain, covering up the kind of original insult or pain that they concealed in all of these now what I would call behaviors, coping mechanisms, relationships with drugs, and then I saw them die.

And nobody won. Hmm, nobody gets over this pain. And then, I remember reading that the buffalo was the only animal that went into the middle of a storm. And I thought, that makes a lot of sense. Like , I need to be the buffalo. I have to take the quickest routes. And writing started to take me further. It led me toward the pain instead of avoiding it. And that small change began to alter the course of my life. You mentioned playing in bars with your father, and he said, I mean, this was before, I think, you started playing guitar.

You played the guitar and the two of you sang together. Yes, we played in bars all over Alaska. They were biker bars, lumberjack bars, places frequented by fishermen, some quite violent places. There were also some family-run restaurants and fairly normal things. My father was a singer and songwriter, so he sang original songs and also did a lot of covers . I had a rather funny musical childhood . I heard my father singing Heartbreak Hotel, but I never heard Elvis. I've never heard of the Beatles. I've never heard of the Rolling Stones.

I've never heard of Jim Croachi. But I've been singing all their songs since I was little. Primarily harmony. I only did backing vocals for my father. What I mean is that their music was playing at home. You know, we didn't have electricity for most of my life. So, I read a lot. And I was greatly influenced by literature. My first piece of writing wasn't music. It was poetry. They were works of fiction. They were rehearsals. Well, songwriting only came later, but what I was reading really influenced the kind of writer I would eventually become, very drawn to truly honest writers who didn't use their art as propaganda.

I was fascinated by Bicowski. I thought that was heroic. Not because I wanted to be an alcoholic, but because I wanted to be honest, because I genuinely admired some people. That's funny. I get emotional just talking about Bukowski's writing . He really showed me who he was. Difficult writing, things that are hard to read, especially as a teenager , I mean, a teenage girl. It 's challenging for teenagers too. But it's challenging. I do n't know. I mean, maybe I was only seeing all this in bars.

Some of my earliest, angriest memories are from when I was 10 years old and a man put a dime in my hand, crossed my fingers around it, and said, "Call me when you're 16. You'll be great to have sex with when you grow up." So that was the kind of thing I was familiar with. So I didn't find Bicowski particularly shocking. I also never felt that I was at risk of imitating someone's lifestyle because I admired their honesty. I admired his honesty. I wasn't particularly fond of his drink.

I used to read Annias Nin's diaries. You know, those are also things that are quite difficult to read when you're young. But that didn't make me sexual when I was young. This made me brave as a writer. How did you tell me how you did that? Because I know you live in a remote place. I know. And we'll talk about when you went to Michigan for high school, but first, how were you... exposed to this work? So, given that you had dyslexia, how did you read it physically?

How did you sit and absorb the words? Yes, I moved around a lot as a child . It wasn't just on the property. And then I lost a lot of consistency in my education. I had significant gaps in my knowledge. You know, a school wouldn't start a grammar curriculum until the second semester, but then I moved and the school had already started in the first semester. So I spent most of my life feeling very stupid, thinking that I was very stupid. Well, it was only when I had a teacher who liked philosophy and he was teaching philosophy to young children as an experiment.

And I was so intrigued by what he was saying. It was the first time I'd heard what might be a Stoic concept: that happiness doesn't depend on what you have or who you are. It depends on your thoughts. I was very interested in happiness. I was very unhappy. And then, when I heard that, I really got excited and it really motivated me to just figure out how to read. I wasn't going to tackle those ideas I was so curious about until I figured out how to read better.

I developed a system for myself through trial and error, in which I would take a piece of white paper, take a razor blade and cut a sentence the size of a sheet of paper, and then use it to hold it up on the page. My problem was that I could see white space on the page. I couldn't see the black. I would see the negative space and then see all these scribbles going down the columns, from which my brain tried to make a pattern or a language, but clearly it wasn't working.

So, when I limited the amount of information I had in my view, it worked. And then it was laborious because I had to rewrite it in my own words. And so, while reading Plato, reading whatever it was, Kant, reading anything, I basically had a notebook where the entire document, the entire work, was translated into my own words. But it's a very painful process, but I was truly fascinated by the concepts. I felt I would learn something that would change my life, and I was at that age where I was thinking about moving.

And I knew it was dangerous, and I knew, I don't know, I felt like they had some kind of secret or key to let me move and not become a statistic. So I took it very seriously and it paid off. My understanding turned out to be very good because of the meticulous way I did it. And then my teacher let me teach a class and I was able to teach children and that really started to build my confidence. You didn't grow up, I mean, you, you, you were singing in bars with your father, and clearly, obviously, you had a gift.

Hmm, and I'm sure people in Alaska saw that, but you did n't, I imagine. You didn't grow up when you were 12, 13, 14 years old thinking, "That's what I'm going to do with my life ." I mean, we interviewed a lot of people on the show who, you know, followed that path and knew that's what they were going to pursue. This wasn't yours, right? I mean, it was just something you did, right? He was...He was very much a working-class man. Hmm, singing, singing in bars isn't a glamorous job, you know.

I was always paid. Hmm, yeah, they're just covers of songs for drunk people who are drunk for 5 hours, you know, people who aren't listening to you. And people have seen me sing ever since I was little. I've been on stage since I was five years old, uh, with my family. They used to perform very early in the morning at hotels. But, you know, I kind of attributed it to the fact that it was a child singing on stage. It's something new. I didn't take it personally.

I was intrigued and fascinated by music. I was very fascinated by the puzzle of voice control. I sang all day, every day. I practiced all day, every day. But it wasn't because I thought I would be a singer. It was like doing a crossword puzzle, you know? His brain really liked it, and it was intriguing. Hmm, so it wasn't like just sitting around practicing. I did this all day, every day , while doing other things. Hmm, I think maybe it's also because I lived in such a remote place that kids like me don't become famous.

It simply wasn't even within the realm of the world that I thought was possible. And then, for some reason, I also had more serious things to think about, like paying rent at a young age and things like that. Yes. I think it was when you left your father's house, and I think you were 15 years old. Hmm, you... I mean, in terms of singing, right? I mean, you mentioned that you sang and practiced all the time. What were you singing? I mean, you listened to pop radio in Alaska ?

Were you listening to, like, we're in the '80s, so, like, were you listening to, like, '70s folk music ? Like, what did you guys do? What was the song that moved you? Hmm, very limited exposure to pop culture. Hmm, I remember going to a friend's house and watching MTV. Like, I remember seeing Huey Lewis for some reason. I remember Madonna, obviously, you know, I knew Cindy Looper. Hmm, none of that really moved me. Again, I just think that when you're raised reading, you're raised with that habit .

And you know, my tastes started to really show what I was trying to figure out in my life. Like, I loved Czechov. I loved that he wrote about ordinary people. We were hearing about ordinary people , the struggles of ordinary people. I didn't like, um, what's the name of the woman who wrote it, um, Jane Austen. I didn't like her writing. It simply had nothing to do with my life. And actually, I love Bronty, who made a great joke about Jane Austen's writing: Jane knows a lot about napkins and human niceties, but nothing about the human heart.

I mean, what a pain. Hmm, I had a penchant for writers, uh, Flannry O'Connor, um, many of the Russian revolutionary writers who were writing during the political upheaval, the poets who were writing during the political upheaval, that's what really attracted me. So , pop music didn't particularly influence me . I met some singers who made me sit down and study about them. I studied Ella Fitzgerald. I studied the writing of Cole Porter. Hmm, I studied Odetta. Hmm, I studied Josephine Baker, strangely enough. Hmm, I think it was when you left home, I think at 15 years old, that you had the opportunity to study at an art academy, a famous art academy in Michigan.

Hmm, and I think it was someone who runs a dance studio in Homer, Anchorage, right? Homer recommended that you go. Hmm, so that's when you really started receiving formal training. I would call this studying before school. I started to... I discovered Ella Fitzgerald maybe a year or two before that. I met Sarah Vaughn a year or two before that. Hmm, so I studied singing, I think, with the best singers because I learned to imitate their voices perfectly. Hmm, that teaches you a lot about self-control. Hmm, if you can pull off all those colors and tonal changes, Ella Fitzgerald, for example, is incredibly agile.

Hmm, your changes in tone are very brilliant. It's fast. His tone is lethal. It's like she's a sniper, you know, when she starts shooting and moving so fast with such perfect timing. Sarah von had tremendous vocal and respiratory control, and she knew exactly where to place her breath. It was the first time I learned how to place my breath up here instead of narrowing it here instead of down here. I learned these tricks from her just by listening and trying to figure out how to make those sounds.

And then I was invited, you know, for a partial scholarship at a prestigious art school where I was supposed to study opera. That was when I was a bar singer. It was so strange. Hmm, I learned an area for my hearing. I learned it sort of by ear from a tape. I don't read music. Hmm, I was accepted. My city helped me raise money. It helped me raise $10,000 to go. I appeared like a wild animal. Like, I hitchhiked from Detroit. I don't know how far that is.

It was probably a few hundred kilometers to my school, and I almost got expelled because I had a large hunting knife. Like , I had a skinning knife on my belt, which they really frown upon in the fancier establishments. You were like a fish out of water there. It was a real shock for me to go to that boarding school. Hmm, yes, I was the only one among the few scholarship recipients. I was definitely the only one alone. Like, I didn't have parents or people watching over me.

Well, I started having panic attacks at that age. I did n't know what was happening. I had my first panic attack at school. I couldn't afford books and food. I was shocked to see that for $ 15,000 I still had to pay for books and food. So, I had to get a job, you know? I got two jobs in high school to pay for my high school education. So, it was quite a trip. I want to return to this idea of Czechov, Bukowski, Anaïs Nin, and some of those Emily Brontës.

I'm trying to figure out how you connected with... I mean, you mentioned connecting with their stories of pain, and, you know, they write a lot of these stories about working people. Hmm, but here you are, kid, in Alaska. You know, I'm thinking back to my time, when I was 14 or 15 years old. These books seemed impenetrable to me because I didn't understand the world they lived in. I didn't have the historical context. Hmm, even Jane Austen, who, you know, we were forced to read in school, didn't move me because I didn't live in that world.

I don't understand. Hmm, so how did I mean it, how did that happen? And you know, it's unusual for any 15-year-old, but for a kid living in Alaska without the infrastructure around them to support that kind of work, how did that happen? How did you connect with that writing and understand it on two levels? The writers who attracted me possessed an enormous emotional raw power. Hmm, I liked writers who really got to the heart of the matter, and therefore the time period in which the story was set wasn't relevant.

I've had many difficulties in my life. Not even. Is it as if they were wearing jeans or tweed? No. It simply didn't matter. The emotional impact of what was being portrayed. I really identified with it because I was really struggling. I was struggling emotionally. Hmm, I was struggling to understand life and I really thought that I would find the answers myself . I truly believed that, you know, reading about civilizational discontent would benefit me. You know, freedom doesn't come without discipline. I benefited from this concept.

I was trying to figure out how to apply this to make my life better. Hmm, and they did it. They have improved my life. And when I moved, I knew it was very dangerous. Statistically, the movie doesn't end well when you leave an abusive home and go to live alone. Like, things get worse really fast. And so, it was through what I thought was magic, you know, when I learned to read Socrates and the idea of ​​dialectics—that through conversation, something new can be discovered, something that wasn't known before.

And when I realized that you can do that to yourself, when I realized that you can ask yourself a question and arrive at an answer, that's strange. You sit down with nothing and then you receive something. This is the philosopher's stone. This is a strange little magical process that you are participating in. And for someone who felt very powerless without role models, without guides, I really leaned on the ideas in those books and tried to be loyal to them. And then, again, like, leaving home at 15 , I thought: is happiness a skill that can be learned?

Is it a skill that can be taught? If I have a genetic inheritance, do I also have an emotional inheritance? Is this emotional inheritance a language? You know, this leads to abuse and addiction. I can see this in every generation of my family. Can I learn a new emotional language? I kind of felt empowered, like I could. And I think it's because I read about people who did ambitious things. They were thinking ambitious things. And they usually started at my age. It's not that I thought I was particularly smarter.

It seemed like it was the only ladder I had to get out of my situation. So, you know, we've had, um, in the past, we've just had conversations with Kelly Clarkson on this show or Melissa Ethridge, who consciously moved to Los Angeles to pursue that dream, you know? And thousands, tens of thousands of people do this every year and, you know, most of them don't succeed. You moved to San Diego after finishing high school. What was his plan? Was it to pursue the dream of becoming a professional singer, or was it something more ambiguous?

It was definitely not her intention to pursue a singing career. Nobody told me about college. Looking back, I probably could have gotten a full scholarship somewhere, but I guess my school thought my parents would do it. I don't know. So, it simply wasn't on the horizon. All I knew was that... And her mother was out of the picture. His mother was out of the picture. We kept in touch by letter, you know? I tried to stay in touch and have a relationship with my mother. It's a very complicated issue in my mind .

I had a very strong relationship with my mother. Was that very supportive and traditional? Not at all. But I went to San Diego to take care of her . She had heart problems and was in very poor health, so I moved there because she was there and because I needed help paying the rent. So, I simply went back to normal, you know, I was a receptionist at a restaurant. I was a receptionist at a coffee shop. I'm really struggling to pay the rent, really struggling, like...stealing toilet paper and stuff like that to survive.

And you were... I mean, this was around 1992, I think you were in San Diego. Hmm, and since you knew how to do that, you knew you could make money, some money singing in bars, restaurants and cafes, and I think you started doing that to generate some income to pay the rent. Hmm, not immediately. At first, I had never done solo shows. I started writing songs. Hmm, very private, it was never public. I used to sing in the streets for money. Hmm, I managed to get regular jobs to pay the rent, and then one of my bosses made me an offer.

Hmm, and when I didn't want to have sex with him, he didn't give me my salary. I knew I would be expelled. My mother and I, I was behind on my rent. My landlord had reached his limit. So I knew that the price I was paying for not sleeping with my boss was that my mother and I would probably be kicked out. But I've received offers in bars my whole life. Like, I wasn't going to start now, you know? It wasn't even an issue for me.

And so I was willing to pay the price. Hmm, my mother and I used to live in our cars. I thought I'd get another job, save on rent for the first and last months, and then we'd get back on our feet . I only had problems. Like, I had health problems. I had kidney problems. I was always skipping work. I was always getting fired from jobs. I was having difficulty finding other jobs. Hmm, my mother went back to Alaska. I stayed in San Diego in my car thinking, "I'm going to fix this.

This is going to change." Hmm, but it only got worse and worse . My health has worsened. I almost died in the parking lot of an emergency room... They wouldn't treat me because I didn't have insurance. I had sepsis. A doctor saw me being sent away, thankfully. And I was in the car covered in my own vomit, and he found me in my car and gave me antibiotics, and that saved me . life that night. Hmm, he saw me for free for a whole year while I was homeless.

It was around that time that I, I mean, was applying to work at 7-Eleven, but when you start looking for a homeless person, it's difficult. Like , the cycle of poverty, it was very difficult to get out of it. Hmm, my car was stolen. Hmm, so I was homeless there for a while and thought maybe I could get a job at a coffee shop. Like, maybe I could go back to doing what I did as a child. It wasn't supposed to be discovered. It was literally just to pay the rent for the first and last month, you know, to put a down payment on an apartment.

You know, you mentioned this idea of stoicism before that you learned when you were a teenager, that you might think you can choose to be, you know, happiness is a choice, right? You can essentially, and this is an oversimplification, but you know, I often wonder, I often wonder when I see people who are homeless , people without shelter. I live in the Bay Area, so when I'm in San Francisco, each of these people was born somewhere and lived at some point with one or maybe two parents , and something happened and they ended up where they were.

And perhaps in the first few days as homeless people they were mentally well, but over time the experience weighs on you. It's like a bad analogy, but it's like the Stanford prison experiment, you know, in the '70s, where they put all these students in a confined space and within 72 hours, pretty much all of them kind of lost their minds. And this only shows the fragility of the human mind. Like all of us who think we're normal, who think we're mentally healthy, we all have the capacity to break down very quickly.

And I wonder, I mean, you mentioned being homeless for a year. What was his mental state like? How did you...how did you...I mean, how did you function on a daily basis? It was very difficult. The two scariest moments of my life up to that point were moving house and becoming homeless. The best part is that I knew I should have been scared. And when you're really scared and have no safety net, you can be very strategic. So, every time, probably just from what I was reading, my only safety net was that I was doing something extremely dangerous.

And that meant there was no room for error. It all depended on what I was going to do each day. And that led me to develop strategies that were incredibly useful. And that ended up being the basis of my work and what I do now, which is truly amazing. But two incredible things happened at that moment in my life. You know, to give you an idea, I was having panic attacks constantly. I was constantly sick. I had agoraphobia, which is the fear of leaving the house, and when you don't have a home it's truly exasperating to the point where my life simply came to a standstill.

Sometimes I couldn't get out of the corner; I was trying to get out from under this tree that seemed safe to me. Hmm, I couldn't go out and buy food most days because I'd have a panic attack if I left that little tree. I was shoplifting, and that's where, you know, I had this lofty goal when I was 15 years old. Remember, I don't want to be a statistic. I did well. I mean, I went through high school, I did n't end up on a stripper pole, I wasn't addicted to drugs, but one day I was in a fitting room and I was tucking a dress into my pants and I looked in the mirror and thought: I'm a statistic.

I'm a homeless kid stealing, and if I get caught and go to jail, that's a moment in my life I 'll never forget. This is a lifestyle change for good. But I couldn't stop stealing. I was truly addicted. It was a real addiction. And that was so interesting to me because I didn't drink and I didn't use drugs. How did I become addicted? What was addiction? That made me very curious. Hmm, before that, in that moment in the mirror when I was stealing that dress, I remembered that phrase that happiness doesn't depend on who you are or what you have, it depends on what you think.

And I was like, " This is your moment, Kilture. This is your moment. Are you going to change this, one thought at a time?" I couldn't say what I was thinking. Now, I would call that dissociative . All I knew was that I couldn't witness my thoughts in real time. And that was a problem if you were going to change your life, one thought at a time. So, my solution was: what if your hands were servants to your thoughts? What if I could perceive my thoughts by observing my actions?

And so I dedicated myself to simply writing down everything my hands did for two weeks, thinking that maybe I would discover what I was thinking and then maybe I could figure out how to think differently. So, at the end of two weeks, I was literally writing: at 10:24 AM I opened the car door, you know, at 10:32 AM I opened the bathroom door, I don't know. At the end of two weeks, I'll sit down. I'm trying to search. I have no idea what I'm looking for.

But then I realize I had n't had a panic attack in two weeks. This was a wild side effect of that experiment that I couldn't figure out how to explain. And what I discovered was mindfulness. What I discovered was that I was so radically present that I did n't have time to recreate what I call my horror film that would leave my nervous system in suspense. I learned, and then needed to practice, how to stay present. I realized that my anxiety, my worry, was a misuse of my creativity.

What if I could channel my creativity into becoming genuinely curious instead of genuinely worried? Hmm, it was as if my concern was how to keep trying to protect my house from thieves going out to look for thieves. It's probably best to stay home. What I learned was how to stay home, so to speak. And then that made me feel powerful. As soon as I realized it could have an effect on my panic attacks, I knew I was on the right track. And then I started choosing one thing at a time, the next thing I chose was shoplifting.

Why was I addicted to it? How does addiction work? You know, realizing that I was addicted to my pharmacopoeia. I was able to trigger a hormonal response that was gratifying. And there were certain chemicals in my body that I liked to trigger at certain times and not at others. And I was able to turn that into an exercise. I turned this into a behavioral exercise. And then I practiced this behavioral exercise until I learned not to steal. And then I did it with my agoraphobia. And then I did that with my eating disorder.

And each of these things, one at a time. And you did this while living in a car? Yes. Yes. Yes, that was the moment I needed it. You know, again, it's like there are many other street children . Hmm, that wears you down. It's very tiring being homeless. All their time is reduced to securing water, food, shelter, and safety. And that's really exhausting. But you're reduced to being a Neanderthal, but instead of being in a forest, you 're in a city. But you're just surviving like an animal.

As if there was nothing else you could do. I wonder, I mean, throughout my life, and I'm sure in yours, I've met homeless young people in cities who could be the next big thing, right? As a young person of 18 or 19, you just walk past them and sometimes they're sitting on a corner just talking to themselves and other times they're just looking out. When you see this, even now, and let's obviously talk about how your life has unfolded, do you see yourself in some of these children?

Definitely. Hmm, I made a documentary about homeless people, and one of the biggest complaints against homeless children and adults is that they are addicted to drugs. Do you know how many people in the United States who have a house, husband, wife, children, and a job take Xanax daily because they can't cope with the stress of having an income and a family? Can you imagine the stress of not having any of that? Who wouldn't turn to drugs? Being homeless is a numbing and distressing trauma . Yes.

To survive every day with the amount of danger and the lack of... I remember people crossing the street without even needing to pass by me. Yes. It's so dehumanizing. I remember people looking at dogs and saying, "You're a good poop." And then they would look at me and walk past me, and I would think, "My God, dogs are better." Noted. I had to be very ruthless in my relentless search to find something that worked for me. When I realized that no one would come after me, would I come after myself?

Would I take that on? When I took on this mantle, when I assumed this responsibility, when nobody owed me anything, I owed it to myself. What the hell am I willing to do about it? I had to be cruel in that commitment to myself . I had to be ruthless. It was a life-or- death struggle. I had to treat it as such . Every day was serious. Leaving would be the hardest thing I've ever done. I did n't need to be discovered during that time. If I had become addicted, if I had gotten involved in something else, this would never have come out.

Like, that was a real sinking moment for me. And that's the only recommendation. I work with children now. And for all of them, it's necessary to bring them to that moment when they say: "Yes, there are many reasons why I shouldn't be happy, but am I going to let that stop me?" Yes, I'm 13 years old, but will I be able to figure out how to be happy, no matter how my parents are treating me? This is a difficult task. That 's a lot of personal responsibility.

It's a lot of personal responsibility, but it's the only way I've found to avoid being a victim. It's the only way I've found to put myself in a position of power. Even when you 're in a position that seems powerless, I learned to be powerful when I was homeless. And I knew that. Like, when a record label came to see me, I knew I was powerful. I knew I was poor . I knew I was homeless. But when you discover this kind of thing in your own body, it makes you dangerous in the best possible way.

And I knew you were writing music, writing songs at the time, and performing. I mean, there are many ways to ask that question, but the transition from where you were in life and the decisions you made to try to meet those challenges, well, that's very unusual. It is very difficult for people to develop this self-motivation. Most people can't. They simply... It's not that they are weak or powerless. They simply have something on that hill that is so steep that they just can't climb it. Somehow, for some reason, you managed to do it, and not just do it, but execute it .

And I wonder, when you think about that transition, because it's like going from one world to another in a short period of time, do you think that what allowed you to do that was, and forgive me for this word... But was it luck? Were you lucky to have that internal motivation? I think it's a combination of factors . So, if you are a growing tree, you are extracting nutrients from the soil. You're also lucky with that year's weather patterns. So how do you respond to stress, how do you stand firm or give up?

It's a combination of things. Hmm, I come from a pioneering family. I come from courageous people who did difficult things and taught me how to do things . They taught me how to work. They expected me to work. The job solved many problems. Yes. So, I was brave. I was brave from a very young age. I also had an inherent natural tendency to be independent. I was born with it. I believe I was born with a kind of independent streak, and that's why I was able to move, because I thought: do I mind being alone in a cabin?

I don't mind. I'd rather be alone in a cabin than be trapped in one. In another cabin. Yes. And that's what inspired me. You know, when I was homeless, there were other street kids, but they all gave up. They lost hope. Ah, I could see it. I couldn't stand being near that. It's like being near a virus. It's like being near a virus that you can't afford to catch. And was I willing to pay the price of being alone? Yes, I was. I was determined not to catch the virus.

I was willing to be alone. Now, this has become a psychological problem, because guess what's really difficult for me? Connection, right? This became something I had to deal with later. But you know what? We all have things to deal with. So , we all have it. I had to find that out later. Being discovered was an extension of learning to be truly considerate, learning to defend myself. There were many places in the city that, everywhere, everywhere in San Diego wanted me to pay because people were being discovered.

And I was like, "No, no, no, no, no. You don't understand. I don't want to be discovered. I want to be paid. I need to be paid. I can't sing in your café or restaurant for free." And I should mention, I think this is the early '90s, when everyone was looking for the next Nirvana. Like, Stone Temple Pilots were from San Diego, and there are a bunch of other bands we've probably never heard of that signed with Subpop and all these labels because everyone thought it was a goldmine of grunge, right?

So I can understand that some of these clubs were like, "You want to be discovered?" Come and play here. Pay us . " Yes. Yes. I remember that each venue wanted a minimum of 200 dollars." And I was like, I was literally like, "How is this happening to me?" And my friend was playing at a coffee shop. He was really popular. He was a singer-songwriter. Let me do his show with him. I knew I'd at least get some cover money, probably tips. He was a super cool guy.

So, I went there. He... No, his name was Gregory Paige. He's still performing. You can look up his music. Right. He packed the place. This place was packed. It was like a $5 cover charge. And I've lived my whole life in bars, you know. So, I told him I'd go..." Which one is the owner? I would be content. "It was a woman. So I went up to her and said, 'Hey, I'm here to settle down with Gregory.'" And she said, "What do you mean?" And I was like, "Well, I'm here for anything." Take my money.

Like, where's the money? "And she said, 'Oh, no.'" We kept the down payment. And I was like, " What do you mean?" I say, "All of this?" And she says, "Yes, all of that." And me, I 'm sarcastic. I was like, "Oh, cool. So, how much did you get for food and drinks? I'll take that. If you're going to keep the entrance fee, I'll take your food and drink money." She looked at me incredulously and said, "I'll take that too." I was furious. I was so upset because I felt like my friend was being robbed.

And then, when I finally understood, she said, "Oh no, you sing to earn tips." Ah, I just saw Red and I remember pointing my finger at her and thinking, "I curse you to failure ." You are stealing from the people who helped fill your venue. I thought, "You are destined to fail." And I thought, "Keep your tips." I'm an idiot. I needed the tips. Why didn't I accept the tips? We don't know. But that was very much in my nature. And I think that's important for success.

I think I didn't like it when people talked while I was singing. Even when I was singing in the street . It's my job to make you listen. The responsibility is mine. I have to sing long notes or hum or improvise and talk about what you 're wearing to make you stop. But if you're only saying that because you're being rude when I'm working hard, I'm not going to accept it. I simply won't accept it. And it's not because I was trying to sign a contract.

It wasn't. It's in my nature. And I think that's necessary. And I see many musicians willing... I see many human beings willing to let their lives take their course, willing to let people talk while they sing, or not pay attention, or not take you seriously. This wasn't good for me, and I really needed it. It simply wasn't a casual thing for me. Hmm, so I found a coffee shop with a closing sign and I said, "Hey, how much do you have? Like, can you keep your doors open for a month?

Can you pay your bills for a month? Will you give me a month? And if I bring your PE, if I bring enough people here in a month, I get the money for the entrance fee, everything, every dollar. You get the coffee, the food, and the drinks." And her name was Nancy. And we shook hands, and that was it. I started going to the boardwalk and handing out flyers and singing in the streets and saying, " Come see me every Thursday." And I chose every Thursday.

I would be there every Thursday, even though I was homeless. Like, I'd be there every Thursday. And I built an audience. It was only by doing that, showing up on the streets, handing them out. I mean, I've seen you perform before. Obviously, you have a beautiful voice and you were probably a little different from the average street performer. People would stop and listen to you. Yes. Because, again, you have to do them... It's a trick, you know? It may be authentic, but singing Tyrolean is strange.

It makes people stop. Or you would sing Tyrolean. Mmm. Or me...My father taught me how to improvise in bars. "So I would go," Mr. Joe in the red shirt would say, "and he would treat me like a piece of trash." I just make up a lyric about someone and make the person stop, like, "Is she talking about me?" Um, my first show was for two people. Like, I did a five-hour set because I thought you guys did five-hour sets because I'm an idiot. I did a five-hour set with the most emotional, vulnerable, and long songs as a social experiment because I wanted to, I didn't want to be alone.

And I realized I went back to a cool ninowski and I said I would always feel alone if I never told the truth. So I wrote songs that were so honest. These two poor surfers who probably just thought I was cute. They watched a five-hour show. We were all crying. It was the dumbest thing you can imagine. But I wasn't rejected. They were like, "Holy [ __ ], we feel like we ca n't believe we're two guys." "And we cried." And I never imagined we would have so much in common.

And that made me feel less alone. And then the following week, on Thursday, there were four of us . And the following week, seven people. And the following week, 20 people. Wow. And then, over the course of six months, it sold out, then there were two shows, and I would say, within six or seven months, the record labels showed up. So it was really... I mean, you were very methodical, I mean, building an audience, like someone building a business, essentially. I mean, you probably weren't thinking about it that way, but you weren't really just showing up and waiting for people to come.

You 've figured out how to make it happen. Strategy is very important. Yes. You know, agriculture teaches you that. For example, when you plant a seed in the ground, don't do it unless you're going to water it. That's very stupid. It's a waste of time. So, again, I think being raised on Earth and I think nature is physical. It's physics. This is real. Nature is real. And if you are not aligned with nature and natural law, you are wasting your time. And then I just looked at myself as a seed.

Like, what does watering this even mean? And I needed Nancy to win, right? I needed Nancy to give me some space. She also had to win. So I had to think of a way to make this ecosystem work. And I had to make it work for me emotionally, where I didn't feel like a liar, where I didn't feel inauthentic, where I was doing it based on myself and who I was as a person and what my values ​​were. And it's because I had the most unsexy life motto of all time, which I took from a tree whose hardwood grows slowly.

Like, I don't want to be the softwood that grows fast and falls over. I want to do something that lasts. And then, the second I started making music, things started to get serious. I wanted to have a strategy. So, when the record labels came to see me, it was that danger again, very dangerous for a boy like me, with my background, to suddenly live a new lifestyle. It's very dangerous. Very few people make that transition. And I saw everyone writing and reading biographies. People like me don't do well in the music industry.

Very few people succeed in the music industry. So, if I was going to get involved in something very dangerous, I had to have a good plan. And that meant being very strategic about really practical things. Yes. I mean, not only do they fail, but they very rarely have a long-lasting career and defy the gods , right? They mostly die. That's bad. They didn't want to die. You, um, there was a bidding war to sign you and you ended up signing with Atlantic. I think you were probably 21 years old.

I mean , help me understand how you feel when you go back and think about that time. I mean, going from having nothing to a bidding war to get you signed to a major record label. I mean, did you have time to reflect on how insane, simply crazy, that was? What a strange turn of events, or did it seem like a natural progression to you, given that you were playing in cafes and building an audience? I was 19 years old when I was discovered. It was surreal, I remember Nancy was like Juel Sony, I think Atlantic came first.

Jewel Atlantic Records called. They will be coming tonight for their 8 PM show. And I was like, interesting. And in a café with all this surfer culture, there are two suits. And you think, you two must be from the record label. 5- hour show. Don't let anyone use the bathroom until my break, you know, halfway through. If they could speak, I would call them. Hmm, and then it was Sony, then RCA, then Arista, and then all the record labels. Wow. And it was very strange. It was like a Cinderella moment.

It was bizarre. Hmm, scary. I went to the library and asked for a book about the music industry, and there was one on the shelves, and it was by Donald Passenheim, it was called Everything You Need to Know About the Music Business, and I thought, "this will work," and it taught me about contracts. He taught me about royalties, mechanics, the whole system, how the whole thing worked, and that was very useful. So now I had something like, "Do you know what I was looking for?" I was searching for "I want a career, but I just learned how to be happy." I do n't want a career just to be happy.

So, it's not at any cost . So, what is...what am I willing to pay? What price am I willing to pay? So how can I build a strategy to create an environment that will lead to the outcome I hope to achieve? And so money played a big role in that. They offered me a signing bonus of one million dollars. And that wasn't a solution to my problems. Actually, it was a problem I had to solve. Because, while I was reading the book, I realized that... well, I knew that nothing is free, right?

You don't grow up on a ranch and think, "Oh, someone's going to hand out a million dollars." dollars. What was the cost? "The book taught me about cost. And the cost was very high. I owed that money back through record sales. The way record sales work is that you earn a fraction. Yes. Not much. A fraction of a dollar on each record sold. So, to further a career, it would probably take a few million dollars on top of that. Let's say, at a minimum, to break my first record, it would cost maybe $3 million.

I could just do the math on how many records I would have to sell to break even. It was a very high number of records. Yes. Now I had to look at my environment. What was working in the music market? Grunge. What was I? Not grunge. Yes. And so, in the same way that I didn't think singing was about me, you know, as a kid, it was just about the novelty of my age, I felt I had a real reaction from the audience. You can't fake that.

I knew I could get that reaction from people. Did that mean the bidding war was about me? Actually, no. I think it turned into a competition between them. And then, Don't take This is on a personal level. Don't be arrogant. Take what you want from this moment. And what I wanted was to learn if happiness was a skill that could be developed. Second, I wanted a musical career . I wanted a 60-year career. Now, how do I solve this? So, I made a hierarchical decision, what I call my guiding decision.

Number one, I had to learn to be a happy and complete human being, not a human being full of holes, which meant I had to have a business plan for it. It meant I had to be responsible. It meant I had to be able to audit it. I had to have incremental measures to know if I was doing better or worse, and I would always put that above my career. And then, number two, my job was to be a musician. And then what did I want from being a musician?

I wanted to be an artist more than I wanted to be famous. Mhm. And then I was able to make all my decisions based on that hierarchy. And it started immediately. It started by refusing money. It started I was getting the biggest backend anyone had ever received in the music world. And for every million albums I sold, I went up a whole point. It was a really cool deal. Now, it meant nothing. And I had my needs covered. I had the rent covered. So now I wasn't just surviving.

I could move my mom and brother here. And then I had to make an authentic record, not a popular record. So I turned down all the successful producers, all the pop producers. I found Ben Keith who did Harvest and Harvest Moon with Neil Young. I made very simple folk music , mostly live in cafes because I didn't even know how to be with a band and I wasn't going to be something I wasn't. I couldn't figure out how to play to the rhythm of a band.

That was life. And that's how that album became live. And then I turned down The Real World, the first big reality TV show. My record label was like, Juel, you're going to go from being homeless to moving into this house and making your album in front of the cameras. You're going to be famous before Them Them even do. I wanted to be a character on The Real World. The first one. Yes. That was my first show. That was my first real offer. Wow. Yes. I hadn't even made my album yet.

And they basically said you were one of the people in the house who was a promising singer. I mean, that could have been a big deal. And you sign this contract where all the profits go to you if it works out. But the chances of that first record, Pieces of You, being successful weren't guaranteed. I mean, just because, just because of the way the industry works. I mean, how many people signed in the same year as you who also had really good albums, but never took off?

So, there was a lot of risk you were taking in making those choices. Yes. But they were aligned with my hierarchical decision-making. And if you're going to create a decision-making process, you better stick to it. You know what I mean? It's like, what else is it good for? And then, again, turn down the money. You look at this thing. Okay, fine . I made a Authentic record. Great . Would it help an authentic record to be on a successful reality show? Probably. Would it be too fast?

Probably. Does Hardwood grow slowly? Yes. If something grows too fast, especially when I don't have the internal architecture of the bow to handle that kind of rapid growth, would I do well? Would that serve my number one task of being happy? I'd want to live in a house where I'm filmed 24/7 with my panic attacks and stuff, right? No. So, I remained very loyal. A, it wouldn't make me happy. I knew I would suffer psychologically. B, it would be too fast. God forbid at work, which is a strange thing to say.

God forbid at work, go slow, be faithful to slow and steady growth. I refuse and fail for two years. For two years. In other words, I mean failure, but presumably you 're working on this record that would become pieces of you. I mean , you're... I have to imagine you're writing songs and you're experimenting with them. So, when you say failure, What exactly does that mean? Because I think it's the process of putting that record together. It was already finished. Um, it did n't take long to make the record.

So, I think until 1995. Yes. So, yeah, I forgot the years, but when it was released, I flopped for another two years. Um, or I made the album in '94. We waited a long time to release it. I did a lot of popular tours. Um, I did a thousand shows a year. I did five or six shows a day. I did two cities a day. I was trying to recreate what I did in San Diego, going to Philadelphia every Tuesday, DC every Wednesday , New York all the time.

I did circuits like that. And they didn't amount to anything. Like, I think I sold 2,000 albums in a year and a half and they were probably all in San Diego. It's unbelievable because, of course, anyone who knows you or is a fan of yours knows that the record went 12 times platinum, but in the first year nobody bought it. Yes. What I mean is Clearly, people loved it because it went 12 times platinum, and you were very smart in the contract you signed, but it ended up, but what happened?

I mean, why? How did it go from 2,000 albums sold in the first 9 months to 12x platinum? I didn't know what was happening. I knew it, you know, I knew I'd have to deal with it. And, you know, our industry isn't very good at seeing exceptions. No, there are some special people in this industry with very good ears, you know , and they really see what's coming next, but people normally don't , you know, radio isn't or anything like that. They're just not very quick to adopt me when Nirvana is the most important thing, you know, or adopt Adele when anything else is the most important thing.

Before ... Well, back then it was probably like Bush or, you know, like, I'm trying to think who was behind. 9s big rock. It was Catherine Wheel, it was Belly, it was Hole, it was Bush, it was Stone Temple Pilots, it was, you know, and then real pop music, you know, on the other side. Ah, but mostly, yeah, just grunge. Yeah. Just rock. Um, what happened was college radio, grassroots, relentless, nonstop, three hours of sleep a night, a thousand shows a year for several years. And then I stopped.

We tried to release Whole Saves Your Soul. We tried to release You're Meant for Me. Neither of them worked. Finally, after two years, probably in total. I started making a second album and I was a little confused. I was starting to lose faith in my little hierarchical decision-making. I thought, I don't know. Um, I could write grunge, you know, like, what do I need to do here? And then Bob Dylan wanted to tour with me. And then I put the record on hold. All my musicians, I thought: " Let's take two weeks off." I'll be back in two weeks.

"And his manager said, 'Mr. Dylan doesn't watch the opening act.'" He doesn't know the opening band. And I was like, "I understand." I'm here to do my shows. "And as we've already made clear, I don't like people talking when I sing . So I used to kick people out of the shows. And that's what I did at Dylan's shows. You know, I did everything I could. And then I'd say, 'Look, I'm here.'" I can hear you all talking. I am alone on stage. Like, I understand that you're not here to see me.

I respect that. But if you'd like to talk, could you go to the lobby? "And I expected it." And if someone did n't stop, listen, I would stop and kick them out. Like, if you're wearing a red shirt, you're invited out. And that's what I always did. And I didn't think much about it, but after about five nights, his manager came up to me and said, "Mr. Dylan has been attending your shows and wants to meet you." And then I went over there and he said, " I heard you're kicking people out of my shows." And I was like, "Ah." "I was like, 'Yes, sir, I am.'" He loved it.

He loved that I was the kind of kid who would say, "No, get out of here." And that intrigued him, and that's what made him listen to my music. It wasn't even my music. It was because I was kicking people out . But he ended up guiding me and truly protecting me. And I was really hesitant at that time. And he said, "Are you a folk singer? Are you a singer-songwriter?" Do you have a choice? Because you have a choice. Maybe not. And maybe you should do something else.

"And I was like, 'Yes, sir.'" I am a composer, sir. I am. "And he said, 'You may never be famous.'" " I was like, 'No, sir.'" I can never stop serving. Like, he gave me books to listen to, read, and read some more, and music to listen to. And I just remember thinking, "You know what? If Bob Dylan is the only one who likes my music, it's over. Like, it's all good. We're done. We're done." And he really encouraged me to keep going. And he said, "Don't get a band." Continue with the acoustic solo.

Continue with that album. That's who you are. You don't have a choice about who you are. Like, it might not work out , but are you or are you not that ? "And then Neil Young took me out afterwards and something like that. I was opening for him at the Garden Solo acoustic in front of the Crazy Horse, like an epic heavy metal band with the Marshall St. I don't know if everyone knows, he had, you know, amplifiers that went all the way to the ceiling, like 9 meters high.

And I was walking through this mutual space. He and I never talked much and he said, 'You seem nervous.' And I was like, 'I am.'" " I'm nervous." He said, "Why?" "And I was like, 'Because you're Neil Young with Crazy Horse and a Soul Acoustic set at Madison Square Garden.'" "They're going to kill me." And he stuck his trembling finger in my face. He said, " This is just another hash house on the road to success." "You go out there and show them no respect ." And I was like, "Yes, sir ." And I did something unusual that night.

I went out and started with the calmest song . I have a song called Angel Standing By. It's all in falsetto with no vibrato. It's quiet. It's a bit Arya-esque, almost a lullaby. And I went to where I was supposed to go, on his main stage . It took a long time for the spotlights to find me, which is good because it makes the whole audience go like, " What's happening?" Where is she going ? " Yes. Why can't the spotlights find her? And then I sang so softly that the whole room went quiet because they couldn't hear me.

And it worked. It worked incredibly well. And I felt like a superpowered human being after that. I mean, you mentioned, you know, being a 14-year-old kid reading these books from other parts of the world that really connected with you because they spoke to you so clearly. And I imagine that's probably what happened with Who Will Save Your Soul. That book spoke, that song, the lyrics of that song and the way it was sung spoke to people when they heard it. It felt like there was an emotional connection, maybe.

I mean, maybe you can't answer that question of why, but I think that's probably what happened. I think nothing is more interesting than the truth. You know that quote from Joseph Campbell? It's a privilege of a lifetime to be yourself. If you want to be loved, try to be radically honest. It's captivating. It's relatable because there isn't a living human being who doesn't feel fear, envy, and greed. And I knew that." That's what I heard in cafes, but I knew beforehand that when I wrote the poems I wrote as a child, I knew I wanted to be honest.

They were my heroes. That's what saved my life. Like, yeah, it was their honesty. And then, I knew who I wanted to be as a writer. And it was about discovering myself. And that's a process of discovery, but it 's also a commitment to your writing. We can all negotiate, right? I make money as artists, right? When we become professionals, we get paid. So what am I negotiating? We can choose. You know, a lot of my industry negotiates with the sale of beauty. Yes. It's based on selling your sexuality .

It's based on being one of the popular girls and making you feel like you're one too. Hmm. You can negotiate a lot of things, but it's better to know what you're negotiating. And in my case, I knew it was authenticity. I wasn't being nice. I wasn't trying to be nice. I wasn't calculating. I was strategic, but about what mattered to me. I wasn't strategic about how you saw me. I was really just trying. Being honest, and that was it . And so it was a kind of honesty that ended up being what built my career, which was very lucky because if someone like me ended up being rewarded for being fake, it would have made me feel bad.

And that happens to a lot of celebrities, how we feel fake. Like imposter syndrome is the syndrome of inauthenticity. You know, if you're really being authentic, you can't feel like an imposter. You know I mentioned this idea that you wanted a long-lasting career? You wanted to be the hardwood tree, not the softwood tree that grew fast and then fell. And you did it. I mean, here we are, you know, 20, 30, almost 30 years later, you know, since you signed. 30 years since you signed and almost 30 years since Pieces of You was released.

And you're still making music. You still perform for large audiences. You still have a fanbase and, in that time, I mean , you not only released a lot of albums but also took time to be a mother, just to focus on your son and do these Things. Hmm, what do you mean? And again, it's a question you might not be able to answer, but is it because of this idea that you stuck to this commitment? Like, you committed to having a plan when you were 19, and that's what you followed: this very clear set of goals, principles, and values.

And that's why you are where you are now. The simple answer is yes. But the longer answer is that my number one goal was to be happy, and my life kept hitting me. Yes. And I had to take a break from my career to deal with that so I wouldn't have a mental breakdown. The first two-year break I took at the height of my fame was right after Spirit. Then I released a successful album, Pieces of You, and then a successful album with Spirit. Yes. And I stopped.

Few people know this. It was too much. Just the fame and dealing with the pressure of being yourself, of trying to be this public person. Yes. I didn't like it. Yes. I never thought I would become as famous as I did. I got, you know, the cover of Time magazine, I couldn't cross the street, I had bodyguards, constant death threats , I couldn't go to the market. I hated it. It wasn't good for my writing. I'm a voyeur. I like watching people write. I don't like being watched.

It's terrible. And I had to give myself permission and I stopped for two years to see if I'd rather be a chef? If I'd rather be a photographer? If I save my money, I'll never have to do this again. What do I want? And I realized I just didn't really like fame . Sorry. Like, am I going to lie and live a life I hate because I worked hard to get here and because everyone expects me to, or am I just going to confess? I just confessed.

I hated it. Maybe I hated music. I wasn't sure. And then it took me two years to figure that out. It turns out I loved music. I just didn't like fame. And in two years, my fame dropped so much that by the end of those two years I could go shopping. And I thought, I've just discovered the trick to making this work for For me, it was about taking long breaks between albums and ending my momentum, ending my fame, disappearing from the public eye , learning, growing, reading, and doing something new and interesting for myself.

So, just like in school, I would simply do something I wasn't good at. I would do a genre I didn't know, without strategically thinking that this would be reinventing myself. I could simply be terrible at it, but it was interesting to me. And I made a lot of money, and I'll never have to make money again if I save. Yes. So, that's how I started pursuing my career. And then something happened with my mother. It was brutal. My mother was my manager for a while, and she was basically involved.

It was bad. I realized I had $3 million in debt and not $100 million in profit when I was 34 years old and about to make the riskiest album of my career, a pop album, which I knew, coming from the world of credible singer-songwriters of the '90s, you can't make pop albums. I knew it would be very, you know, contested, but I wanted to. And here I was realizing during the recording of that album that my mother wasn't who I thought she was. That all the money was gone.

It was awful. This was in 2006, 2007, when the three of you, 2004, 2003, while I was making the album. She had been your manager and, obviously, mismanaged your money. And I know this is probably a sensitive subject, but I think you two just don't have a relationship anymore. Yes. The last time I saw her, this is in my book, but the last time I saw her was in a lawyer's office, where she said, "I'm so grateful to be able to be your mother again now." And I knew I would never see her again, and I didn't .

Um, and it was the best thing I ever did. It was the most affirming and loving thing I ever did. Yes. And I had a lot of healing to do. And thank God, Intuition was a success. I mean, the odds , you know how hard it is to write in every genre? It's Very difficult. Yes. Writing a hit in every genre. Very difficult indeed. And then I set myself an even more impossible task. I wanted to write a pop song that wasn't about love. Yes. There are n't many of those.

You can't count them on one hand. And it worked. I wrote a song about intuition in... I mean, it was so improbable. It worked. I was about to go on a big tour and I called Irving A.'s office, my new manager. I called him and said I couldn't do it. He asked if I was okay. And I said I think I'm going to cancel one of the most lucrative tours of my career. I'll probably never be in a place that size again, by the way. You pay a price.

And that's what I really want to show people: it's hierarchical. Sometimes they're pitted against each other. I had to choose my happiness and I gave up the money. I gave up the prestige, the size of the venue, and all sorts of things. If I wanted to choose my career and fame, my God, I shouldn't have given that up. tour. But I wasn't going to be able to. I couldn't psychologically handle what I was trying to process without time. It took time, it took a long time for me to recover from that.

How do you ... I mean, considering the childhood you had, right? And obviously, there was a lot of trauma and a lot of pain, but you also, as you described yourself, had a lot of courage. You had to work. You had to work the land. You had to earn money to pay your bills. And that was probably a superpower that allowed you to get out of your situation when you were homeless. Hmm, but how did your experience as a mother, as a daughter, influence your experience as a mother?

Now, I think you have a 12-year-old son, the same age as my youngest son. Hmm, I have a 14-year-old and a 12-year-old. And I imagine how... And for most of that time you raised him as a single mother, because I know you separated from his father. Yes. Hmm, every day I say, "May the mother's healing be the child's healing." Hmm. Hmm, I love healing. It's interesting. It is. Creative. A lot of the things I wrote were behavioral exercises. They weren't songs. They were practical things. For me, there was a time when I was 13, I was in Alaska, and I was sitting on a cliff, very depressed.

I sat there for about eight hours and watched the tide go up and down. It went up and down so slowly, so imperceptibly, an inch at a time, that you don't notice it until, after eight hours, you think, "Wow, it went down and then came back up." And that changed my life because I felt very sad. I felt like my sadness would last forever. And when I saw the tide take all that time to go up and down, I realized that the culmination of the nature of physics is change.

And I am part of nature. I am part of physics. It would be impossible for my bad mood not to change. I don't know how long it will take. I don't know how slow it will be, but it would be outside of physics if it did n't change. And suddenly that changed my whole perception. I called it emotional impermanence. It was impermanent. How I felt was Impermanent. Could I survive that? Right? I had to be conscious. That's hard. It's hard to be conscious when you 're so miserable.

But when did I stop worrying about what would happen if something was wrong with me? What if I never felt better? What if it never changed? That was arrogance. It was an arrogant thing to assume that I, alone in all of nature and all of physics, existed outside the laws of physics. And then it would have to change. Maybe I could even help it change faster. Now that I wasn't worrying anymore about whether I was broken, what if I could take all that emotional energy and be curious and say: could I help it change faster ?

What if I slept? What if I slept more? What if I needed to sleep less? What if I woke up and worked? What if I woke up and exercised? And then you become a scientist involved in your own life? Yes. And the most rebellious part of my nature, because I am rebellious. I am competitive. Learning to channel that in a way that would make me win. It was a real secret of life. You know, I don't want to die. I want to be happy. That's what I want.

And so what am I willing to do about it? I refuse to die unhappy. I refuse to be more famous than happy. That's not success. And then you have to learn to channel it. We all have that stubbornness inside us . It's just learning to channel that stubbornness that works for you. How do you... I mean, I love this idea that writing for you is an exercise and kind of working through ideas, and it's also a mental exercise, you know ? And I think I'm picking a random song, "Stronger Woman," for example, "I'm going to...

uh, I'm going to love myself more than anyone else, " right? And then, you can see that you're... I mean, you can, once you know what you just said and then you look at those lyrics, you can understand that it makes sense. And now, I mean, as someone who has obviously spent so much time thoughtfully working on herself and, since the time you were a child learning Regarding stoicism, going through all those trials, and now here you are: a mother, you know, approaching your 50s and still making music and writing music, it's still the same.

Is it still about working hard? Is it still mental exercise when you put pen to paper? For me, yes. Um, you know, stronger women. I was trying to muster the courage to get a divorce. I mean, that's what I was trying to say: "You choose." This is going badly. " And now you see what you see in those lyrics. Yes. And then you start making a mess and you think: 'Maybe this song would work on the radio too.'" Perhaps. Mmm. But it's the same thing, you know, I started a business and it's like my music always solves a problem for me.

Yes. And it solved a problem for other people. Salvador Soul helped other people. That's really cool. But I did n't do it to help people. I did it to help myself. Hmm, it's a side effect of solving a complicated problem for yourself. My company is the same. It's all about mental health. And I was thinking, "What do I do with the pain?" "And now, how do I help other people in pain? Um, I have to say, you know, my career isn't what it could have been if I hadn't had to deal with this emotional [ __ ].

Yeah. If I hadn't had to give it up to deal with my mom, if I hadn't had to give it up after my divorce, my career would be doing something different. But it's okay. I really want to show people that we pay prices. And it brings me to tears because it's so beautiful to choose that price. Like, choosing my son is so powerful. And the funny thing is, I was so ashamed of it in the industry. Juel lost her touch. Juel can't handle it. The amount of articles that came out.

I mean, when I know it in my body, it's an act of power. Just like me giving it up for the sake of the spirit. Tons of articles written about how I can't handle it and all that. The same with taking the risk of the pop album . People thought I gave it up out of shame for my pop album. I gave it up because I couldn't handle what was happening with my mom. I'm proud of that album. And everything." Well, because I love my career and I can still continue working on it.

Building a business should be more interesting than making albums. I'm writing a lot of songs. I don't publish them. I don't know what I'll do about it. I don't know if I'll start publishing more songs. I don't know if I will ... I don't know. It's like when we talked about me in high school. It's like art has become very interesting. Right now, building this company is very interesting, and I have work to do in my career to maintain my goal of wanting a 60-year career.

I still have to accomplish that. I think I haven't . I know I'm writing very well now. Nobody's listening. Mhm. But it was difficult. I'm slowly answering your question about what it's like to write now. For me, writing now, I really had to fight for it in a different way. And that was when I released an album about two years ago called Freewheeling Woman. And it was the first album I wrote from scratch. First time in my life. I had thousands of songs, thousands of songs in my catalog.

So, if I wanted a country album, I would go through my catalog. I did n't write an album. If I wanted a pop album, I'd go through my catalog. Wow. That's what I wanted to be 40. How old was I? 46, 47. I wanted to be 47, a single, adult mother of one child. I wanted to be who I was because I didn't see many women writing from that place of ownership and power, without pretending to be younger and without trying to recreate what you were to me or to my hands, and that was hard.

It was very, very hard. I had a lot of psychological work to do. And so the songs I wrote were a real reflection of my psychology, of ownership, of empowerment, of discovering who I am . Now, not who I was before and trying to recreate it in music. You mentioned Inner World, which is your platform that allows people to overcome mental health challenges . Obviously connected to your own journey. And I know you work a lot with a foundation you started, and you've raised a lot of money for, um, you know, causes around children and obviously involved with mental health.

And it seems like, I mean, You mentioned this idea of ​​choices you make, you made, right, um, being a mother and focusing, which to me there's no, there's no, as a father, like, there's no doubt you would choose that over, you know, $10 million or , you know, bigger stadium tours . Like, there's just no doubt that the child is a more interesting and more rewarding choice, and a better choice. But also, it also seems to me that your story is also about a legacy, right?

It's not about Juel becoming a famous pop singer, folk singer, and having this career, but it's like you really wanted to make an impact in places that maybe you couldn't have made without that kind of celebrity that allows that, and it's how you're using that. I don't know. I see it much more like in high school. Sculpture became very interesting to me. Mhm. Solving suicidal ideation is very difficult. Yes. It's a complex problem and I thought singing was complex. It is. I still find it very, very interesting.

I'm still learning to sing. I like complicated problems. I've learned that even I'm rewarded, It's as if my life has rewarded me for learning to solve complicated problems for myself. Career is a complicated problem. I think when I was 22 or 23, I wanted to see if what worked for me would help other kids who weren't in therapy. How do you help people without therapy? That's difficult. How did I help myself without therapy? I never did. It was hard to figure out, and I like difficult problems.

And when you suffer like I suffered, many people suffer like I did. It 's not something so unique. But usually, we're the ones who try to help because we know the value. If someone helped me, I knew what it meant to me. If I could help someone else, I know what it meant to them. It has nothing to do with legacy. I just know I was put on this planet to help. I know that. I was born with that. I always felt that this could just be helping others.

My fans call themselves everyday angels because that's how I really try to live my life. It ended up on bigger and bigger stages, but it wasn't because I tried to be. It's because my life has been a natural extension of that. to follow my curiosity and fight for those things that I was passionate about and that were important to me. My foundation, you know, was trying to solve mental health problems 22 years ago, when mental health wasn't a word. When all the parents were like, "Wow, wow, wow." "Now we have one of the highest success rates in the world helping children with suicidal ideation, and we don't use therapy .

I'm not against therapy, by the way . I love therapy. It's just not available, and it's unacceptable that we're going to leave people behind. No, that's not why I could do something about it. It's not going to happen. I'm not going to leave anyone behind, and I do n't want to leave anyone behind. Not when there's a solution. And that started to get interesting to me, fascinating. How do you make it work? How do you make it work for a group of people and not for an individual?

How do you make it scalable? But that's all an extension of my creativity. It's the same song. It's still ' Who will save your soul?' Who will save your soul if you don't save yours? It's all the same thing I 'm thinking about. It's just thinking about it and about art in a different way. I see my foundation as artistic, and I see my business as artistic. I see it as a song. It's really... It's like writing an essay is very different from a fiction story.

It's a very different kind of thing from what I'm trying to write. That's amazing." Juel. Thank you so much . I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed talking to you. Hey, thanks for watching my conversation with singer-songwriter Juel. She recently released the 25th anniversary edition of her album Spirit with 24 bonus tracks. You can find all the program notes for this episode by visiting greatcreators.com/jwel. You can find all our episodes there, including conversations with people like Carrie Brownstein and Bork and Melissa Ethridge and Steven Colbear and Tom Hanks and many more.

You can find all of that at greatcreators.com. You can also listen to our podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. Just search for greatcreators and click follow. It's free. Thanks for listening. I'm Guy Roz and check out some more episodes of the show coming very soon.