Jewel

female vocalists

Jewel Kilcher (born May 23, 1974 in Payson, Utah, United States) is a singer, songwriter, actress, and poet, generally known just by her first name, Jewel. She has received four Grammy Award nominations. Jewel is the daughter of Nedra Carroll, an artist and personal manager, and Atz Kilcher, an elementary school music teacher, folk singer and social worker. Her mother of Irish descent and her father is of Swiss-German origin. She is the cousin of actress Q'Orianka Kilcher. She spent most of her young life in Homer, Alaska, United States, living with her father. The home she grew up in did not have indoor plumbing; it had a simple outhouse instead. She and her father sometimes earned a living by singing in bars and taverns. It was from these experiences she learned to yodel, a quality demonstrated in many of her songs. Her father was a Mormon, but they stopped attending the church shortly before she turned eight. Yule Kilcher, her grandfather, was a state senator involved in drafting Alaska's constitution for its admission into a state from a territory in 1959. During high school, Jewel was known to spell her name Jule or Juel, but she attributes this to simply playing with her name. Jewel learned to play the guitar while at the Interlochen Arts Academy in Interlochen, Michigan, United States where she majored in operatic voice. She started writing songs at the age of seventeen. For a time, she was poverty-stricken and lived in her van while traveling about the country doi...