Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Inside the
Speaker 1: Studio on iHeart Radio. My name's Jordan Runtag, But enough
Speaker 1: about me. Apologies for the COVID related silence last week,
Speaker 1: but we are back and we're so excited to share
Speaker 1: with you our latest conversation. My guest today is a singer,
Speaker 1: songwriter and mental health activist. She used music as a
Speaker 1: form of self therapy to transcend the difficult circumstances of
Speaker 1: her upbringing in Alaska. Ultimately, the same songs that brought
Speaker 1: solace to her touched millions. Her album Pieces of You
Speaker 1: has become one of the best selling debuts of all time,
Speaker 1: earning her praise from the likes of Bob Dylan and
Speaker 1: Neil Young. A fierce independent spirit, her work has spans
Speaker 1: genres and mediums. This creative wonder lust not to menure.
Speaker 1: Her lust for life is a parent in the title
Speaker 1: of her latest record, Free Wheeland Woman, her first collection
Speaker 1: of original material in seven years. It's a rich and
Speaker 1: diverse musical sampling that draws elements of pop and muscle.
Speaker 1: Shoals are in and there were familiar folks sound. Altogether,
Speaker 1: the album is a portrait of an artist who says
Speaker 1: prolific and singular as ever, brimming with optimism and passion.
Speaker 1: She's about to kick off her summer tour in early
Speaker 1: June when she can bring you this positivity in person.
Speaker 1: But hopefully you'll get a little of that positive energy
Speaker 1: come with your speakers right now, is you listen in.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy to welcome Juel. You're an incredibly prolific writer,
Speaker 1: and you have this staggering cash of of unheard songs.
Speaker 1: I think I've read upwards of a thousand. But for
Speaker 1: this album, you said you started from scratch and wrote
Speaker 1: songs specifically for this record. What led you to take
Speaker 1: that approach this time around? I'm a glutton for punishment.
Speaker 1: I'm not get it. It's like I have sitting there
Speaker 1: perfectly good songs, and now there was a specific reason
Speaker 1: I really wanted to this album to be who and
Speaker 1: what I am now. Um, you know, songs are like
Speaker 1: little time capsules. Um, it's kind of a complex little narrative,
Speaker 1: but I'll try and say it really simply. When when
Speaker 1: I was eighteen and I got discovered, my goal was
Speaker 1: to be It's ambitious. I know it's a little assible,
Speaker 1: but my goal is to be one of the best
Speaker 1: singer songwriters of all time. I wanted to push myself
Speaker 1: to be a great writer, and I knew that that
Speaker 1: was gonna be really hard for me as a woman.
Speaker 1: Um well, it's just a hard goal period. Um. But
Speaker 1: when I looked at the steelsa like, who do I
Speaker 1: look up to? Who has done this as a woman,
Speaker 1: It's kind of hard. You know, you have luminarums like
Speaker 1: Joni Mitchelin and Cheetie Jones and Carl Kane, and you know,
Speaker 1: the list goes on. We're not shy on talent and
Speaker 1: the female singer songwriter category, but as the women aged,
Speaker 1: they never, in my opinion, got to enjoy the same
Speaker 1: ticket sales and prestige that their male counterparts like Bob
Speaker 1: Dylan Emil Young. And that's troubling, right because I was
Speaker 1: a girl wanting to try and pull off something where
Speaker 1: I haven't seen a lot of women get a chance
Speaker 1: to pull it off. And there were women in the
Speaker 1: pop side, you know that had become icons, but that
Speaker 1: was Madonna and Share and that's just not who I am. Um.
Speaker 1: I wanted to do it as a singer songwriter, so
Speaker 1: it meant navigating and trying to build my career in
Speaker 1: a way that I hope would foster my writing. You know,
Speaker 1: where I kept writing, I kept doing things that were
Speaker 1: for me inventive, that pushed myself, whether they were or
Speaker 1: weren't in thinks with where a culture was to take
Speaker 1: risks musically. You know that has to be part of
Speaker 1: your plans. But you I still have to head to
Speaker 1: face this, like, well, what do women in the middle
Speaker 1: age do with that job? It's not cute, you know,
Speaker 1: like you see most women in their middle age still
Speaker 1: trying to dress like they're young and be super cute
Speaker 1: and hopefully have a really catchy and I just think,
Speaker 1: I don't know, abysmal to me in a way. If
Speaker 1: it's who you authentically are, that's awesome, but it just
Speaker 1: doesn't happen to be how I want to do it.
Speaker 1: So me doing this record this way from me with
Speaker 1: these things one saying, I wanted to push myself to
Speaker 1: write in a way I've never written before. I wanted
Speaker 1: to find a new gear and a new muscle that
Speaker 1: felt fresh, that felt uh like I wasn't just covering
Speaker 1: ground is covered before. That pushed me vocally in a
Speaker 1: way I've never been pushed before that, hopefully it was
Speaker 1: you know, well crafted, um, but it wasn't contrived and reactionary,
Speaker 1: and it gets really hard in your middle age. Like,
Speaker 1: I definitely see why why David Bowie and so many
Speaker 1: other artists did a lot of drugs at the stays
Speaker 1: in the care to get like a new sounds, because
Speaker 1: it's hard to get rid of the old versions of
Speaker 1: yourself and to get rid of the stuff like you know,
Speaker 1: as chorus could come thirty seconds into a song or
Speaker 1: a song to the three minutes, all that just makes
Speaker 1: garbage music. Um. And you have to figure out how
Speaker 1: to get old versions of yourself and bad information out
Speaker 1: of your head and come from a really new, authentic place.
Speaker 1: And that's work. It was a lot of work to
Speaker 1: write the songs on this album UM, to push myself.
Speaker 1: I think I wrote two hundred songs to get the
Speaker 1: like UM and it was nuts. It was a Nettie process.
Speaker 1: Drugs would have been new Years like the silber was hard, um,
Speaker 1: but I'm really proud of the result. So that was
Speaker 1: one aspect of wanting to do it. The other aspect
Speaker 1: is I wanted this frombody who I was at the
Speaker 1: fourty seven year old female I wanted it to. So
Speaker 1: now proud I am because I am. I'm proud. I
Speaker 1: wanted this album to be empowering. Um, the decisions that
Speaker 1: I've made, like you know, quitting after Spirits, you know,
Speaker 1: I quit for two years because I couldn't psychologically adjust
Speaker 1: to the level of same I got. There was nobody
Speaker 1: celebrating that at the time. You know, nobody was like, well,
Speaker 1: good for her, He's doing this for her mental health.
Speaker 1: Mental health wasn't a word, and everybody's like, she's already
Speaker 1: washed up, Like it was really cruel narrative of suppressive
Speaker 1: and for me to have the courage to do it
Speaker 1: in way until I tell my label and tell my
Speaker 1: managers like nope, I am gonna have a pycal break
Speaker 1: down if I don't figure out how to handle the
Speaker 1: level of same I've gotten. I make really full decisions
Speaker 1: in my whole career that we're not always understood. And
Speaker 1: so I'm just proud. You know, I wanted this record too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, serve as a sort of I don't know,
Speaker 1: a glimpse into what it's like to be a female
Speaker 1: singer songwriter. UM, what it's like to be middle aged
Speaker 1: and to say, I really believe I'm writing at the
Speaker 1: heights of my power. I really believe I was singing
Speaker 1: at the height of my power. Um and I feel
Speaker 1: like we think we see talent diminished with time, and
Speaker 1: you have to fight for that to not be the case.
Speaker 1: And that's, you know, a thought that I've been aggressive
Speaker 1: with with myself. So long answer, more experiences, more inside.
Speaker 1: I mean, it makes sense that you'd be at the
Speaker 1: peak of your powers. I'm stopping up on the two songs.
Speaker 1: That is incredible to me. What was the calling process
Speaker 1: like for for choosing the songs for this record? Where
Speaker 1: you did you pick the ones that you felt like
Speaker 1: reflected who you are in this moment the best, or
Speaker 1: just purely ones that were your favorite for reasons like
Speaker 1: you like the melody or something like that. I found
Speaker 1: out when writing very proficiently. But I think I was
Speaker 1: writing pretty safe. And I'll honestly, I think that I
Speaker 1: never wrote the same since everything went down with my mom.
Speaker 1: I think that there was some kind of like psychological governor,
Speaker 1: I guess you could say, And it was hard for
Speaker 1: me to access a really really deep, raw place with
Speaker 1: my writing, and I had to fast tackle that and
Speaker 1: I've never realized that I've written any references them. By
Speaker 1: the way, Picking Up the Pieces is actually probably a
Speaker 1: favorite album I've ever recorded. It's a lot of old songs. Um,
Speaker 1: My new stuff just wasn't as I don't know, chrisp
Speaker 1: or Raw or new. You know. It was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this kind of sounds like something I've already written, and
Speaker 1: I knew it. You know, nobody else might know it,
Speaker 1: but I could tell. I could hear it in the writing,
Speaker 1: and so I just didn't let myself settle until it
Speaker 1: broke through that and that was a real intense process. Also,
Speaker 1: you know, writing anything in the same genre is hard.
Speaker 1: You know, if you sit down, you may not write
Speaker 1: a good song, probably won't write. I look at it
Speaker 1: like mining for gold. You just some daysy get dirt,
Speaker 1: you know, and some dasy to diamonds. You don't have
Speaker 1: control over it, so you have to put hours in,
Speaker 1: you know, to find that magical diamond. Um, unless you're contrived. Right,
Speaker 1: If I was just trying to write a pop hit,
Speaker 1: that would kind of be different. Um, But when you're
Speaker 1: trying to find something just fresh or new, this is
Speaker 1: sort of it's a collaboration with the unknown you know,
Speaker 1: you can't control that process. Um, and then getting it
Speaker 1: in the same genre. So a good song that happens
Speaker 1: to kind as via a scene, because when I sit down,
Speaker 1: I can't control the style. It sometimes comes out countries
Speaker 1: and then come out full because sometimes comes out rock.
Speaker 1: I don't always. I just don't have control over that.
Speaker 1: And so getting things that felt like they were good
Speaker 1: and new and of a piece, you know, where they
Speaker 1: made sense together just really took time. And it's funny.
Speaker 1: It wasn't if I haven't listened to the album since
Speaker 1: I made it, which was two years ago. Um, but
Speaker 1: I heard it the other day and I was like,
Speaker 1: oh wow, it didn't dawn on me. This is the
Speaker 1: first album where I finally got all my styles on
Speaker 1: one record. I thought I was really making an album
Speaker 1: that felt like of a piece, and hopefully it does,
Speaker 1: but I didn't realize. Also, like there's straight up folk music,
Speaker 1: and then there's country stuff, and then there's real pop stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: And then introducing you know, and paying homage to an
Speaker 1: influence I've never had a chance to do before, which
Speaker 1: is full uh, and those the full style of writing
Speaker 1: like the Weathers as well as the great singers Oh,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, I love the diversity of arrangements
Speaker 1: on this It's so compelling to me. I mean, something
Speaker 1: like Grateful is something right out of muscle shoals, and
Speaker 1: you've got like the Memphis stax horns from Love Winds
Speaker 1: and it's and then you've got something stripped back and
Speaker 1: so delicate like almost. I mean, I love how just
Speaker 1: the styles and the arrangements are so diverse, And and
Speaker 1: you hear that in your head as you're writing these songs.
Speaker 1: You hear the kind of the the vague style that
Speaker 1: it would take as you're writing it. Yeah, you feel
Speaker 1: the mood for sure. Um, Like I knew when I
Speaker 1: was writing almost that you know, it's like having lace
Speaker 1: that would dissolve in water, Like that song is so
Speaker 1: delicate but so sharp at the same time that it's
Speaker 1: just can't handle production and just know that it's just
Speaker 1: going to be what it is. Guitar, no voice. Um.
Speaker 1: Whereas when I was writing Love Winds, like all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, I was like, what is this? This is
Speaker 1: like like and Tina Turner era, like, you know, you
Speaker 1: start feeling that flavor sort of as you're writing it.
Speaker 1: You mentioned listening to the album back for the first
Speaker 1: time in two years since you've made it. Do you
Speaker 1: ever learn anything from about yourself from listening to your songs?
Speaker 1: I mean I overuse this analogy, but almost like a
Speaker 1: like a good dream reading. Do you ever hear a
Speaker 1: song back that you wrote and actually get new perspective
Speaker 1: on on what's going on inside of you? Mm hmm,
Speaker 1: not particularly. Um, that's my poetry. For me, when I
Speaker 1: look back and read my poetry, poetry has been the
Speaker 1: thing I've written consistently, more consistently than any other thing
Speaker 1: in my life. I don't publish it ever, but I
Speaker 1: have boatloads of it swimming around. Um. And if I
Speaker 1: go back and read my poetry and like, wow, I
Speaker 1: saw the writing on the wall and I didn't even know.
Speaker 1: I thought, definitely has much more of like a tea
Speaker 1: leave thing of like holy smokes. But I don't know
Speaker 1: experienced my songwriting that way particularly. That's so interesting, I love.
Speaker 1: I mean, when speaking to people who are blessed with
Speaker 1: the ability to write music, I'm just so interested to
Speaker 1: hear what compels them to do it in the first place.
Speaker 1: And for you, it sounds like this came from a
Speaker 1: fulfilled a very specific purpose early on, which was kind
Speaker 1: of as an exercise in mindfulness. And I wanted to
Speaker 1: ask you more about that because that's so interesting to me.
Speaker 1: When I was eight, my parents got divorced. My mom
Speaker 1: left us, and my dad took over raising us, and
Speaker 1: he became he started drinking. He was trauma triggering, but
Speaker 1: you know, the words trauma trigger were not a well
Speaker 1: known thing at the time. He started drinking to try
Speaker 1: to mitigate that, and it went pretty predictably um and
Speaker 1: so he became abusive. Uh. We were singing them bars.
Speaker 1: So I was in a lot of pain, is the
Speaker 1: bottom line. And I was watching a lot of people
Speaker 1: in pain because I was singing them bars. And when
Speaker 1: you sing them bars, you know five hours sets, you're
Speaker 1: kind of seeing the regulars. You're not seeing the person
Speaker 1: comes in, you know, casually, or seeing people medicate. And
Speaker 1: I didn't know those words at the time, but I
Speaker 1: could tell people from pain. I recognized that because I
Speaker 1: was in it and I noticed this. I was always
Speaker 1: just an observant person. I was like watching people and
Speaker 1: I felt like, Wow, I have this front seat road
Speaker 1: to people being just like living their lives so out
Speaker 1: loud because they're integrated right or high, and they have
Speaker 1: no filter um. And so I watched people drinking to
Speaker 1: handle pain. I watched people doing drugs. I watched people
Speaker 1: having sex, not literally, but you know, these relationships that
Speaker 1: were wallable and would play out. And I realized, like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, nobody outruns pain, but we're not taught
Speaker 1: what to do with it. And I wanted to try
Speaker 1: and handle my pain as it happened, because they I
Speaker 1: see in pictures, and so I just saw these people
Speaker 1: had some kind of pain, and then they covered that
Speaker 1: pain up with a lot of bad choices, and it
Speaker 1: led to more pain, and then it was suddenly like
Speaker 1: this mountain that they never could face, and it would
Speaker 1: have been better if they could just found a skill
Speaker 1: or the courage to just face the original pain. You
Speaker 1: can't outrun pain, was my takeaway, and so I tried
Speaker 1: to like assess, like what did I have that helped
Speaker 1: me with pain? And writing help. I was journaling at
Speaker 1: a really young age. I was trying to write poetry
Speaker 1: to young age, and I felt better. I felt noticeably
Speaker 1: better when I wrote, and so I just sort of
Speaker 1: turned to that as my coping mechanism. I guess, UM
Speaker 1: never thinking it would be a job. You know, it
Speaker 1: was just a way of seeing patterns and of seeing
Speaker 1: things about myself that I didn't know I saw, of
Speaker 1: seeing things about my dad, for instance, I didn't know
Speaker 1: I saw, and it helped me. It kind of felt
Speaker 1: like a ladder up and out of my pain or
Speaker 1: myself for my situation and been little did I know
Speaker 1: how literal that would be. It would be a literal
Speaker 1: letter out. I mean, you've you've mentioned this. Really, I'm
Speaker 1: a huge admirer of your mental health advocacy work you do.
Speaker 1: You on for the Inspiring Children Foundation and the wellness
Speaker 1: practices that you have on Jewel Never Broken dot com.
Speaker 1: Everyone should check it out, especially after the last two
Speaker 1: years we've had. I've found so many of the practices
Speaker 1: that you've shared so helpful personally. And you've mentioned the
Speaker 1: notion of using anxiety as an ally and as an
Speaker 1: anxious person myself, I found this to be a very
Speaker 1: hopeful sentiment. Um And I think, as you mentioned, a
Speaker 1: lot of us are trying to eliminate anxiety or pain
Speaker 1: from our lives, which is kind of a fool's errand
Speaker 1: um And you used writing, I mean, what are some
Speaker 1: other ways that that you know you you suggest, um
Speaker 1: turning this anxiety into something productive for people? UM, I
Speaker 1: guess I just start by saying, you know, mindfulness For me,
Speaker 1: I would just give a definition. It means being consciously present.
Speaker 1: That's it. You know, this is a word we hear
Speaker 1: all the time, and it's kind of a word we
Speaker 1: don't really know what it means. So mindfulness is being
Speaker 1: consciously present. It doesn't mean that will your life will
Speaker 1: change instantly. It just means you'll be consciously present, which
Speaker 1: puts you in a position to change your life. I
Speaker 1: liken it to a car. If your body was a car,
Speaker 1: your brain isn't the driver. It's like a steering wheel,
Speaker 1: but it can go on autopilot, a neurological autopilot if
Speaker 1: you're not consciously present to drive the car. So being
Speaker 1: consciously present is like getting off of autopilot and getting introl.
Speaker 1: Being a neutral won't change your life, but it gets
Speaker 1: you in a position to get in a new gear.
Speaker 1: What actually will change your life is what I call mindfulness,
Speaker 1: and motion is something practicable. Now that you're consciously present,
Speaker 1: what are you going to do with that? Um? So
Speaker 1: I notice I'm angry. I stop I take a breath,
Speaker 1: I get consciously present. I'm now observing. Okay, I'm I'm angry.
Speaker 1: Now what do I want to do? That is that
Speaker 1: gap where you stop and insert a new tool instead
Speaker 1: of you know, just reacting off of an old tool, right,
Speaker 1: yelling you're stop in your breathe. Okay, Okay, I really
Speaker 1: want to yell, but I'm not going to actually going
Speaker 1: to go right or call my therapist or call of friends. Whatever.
Speaker 1: The new thing is that changes your life, that actually
Speaker 1: starts to starve old neural networks and help you build
Speaker 1: new ones. UM. And for some reason, I don't know why,
Speaker 1: but when I was homeless, I I started developing songs
Speaker 1: and I started developing these tools for myself just to
Speaker 1: get results, ready to make myself stop feeling, to help
Speaker 1: myself with panic attacks. And I would tackle it one
Speaker 1: pain point at a time. Right, I would tackle steeling
Speaker 1: and that's all I would focus on. Or I would
Speaker 1: tackle my panic attacks and that's what I would focus on.
Speaker 1: And so those skills are what I've been able to
Speaker 1: share and create curriculums out of UM without therapy. Not
Speaker 1: that I'm against therapy, it's just that that everybody has access.
Speaker 1: And so what about those people? You know, what about
Speaker 1: kids that don't have support systems or therapists or god forbid?
Speaker 1: What if your therapy just isn't getting you the change
Speaker 1: you want? Does that mean you're unlucky? You know? Can
Speaker 1: you still be happy? Um? And so that's what really
Speaker 1: been striving me. Yeah, these last several years. One of
Speaker 1: those concepts is anxiety as an ally. UM. For me,
Speaker 1: when I figured this out, it just really changed everything.
Speaker 1: Nothing can change in isolation, right, Imagine it just like
Speaker 1: chemical chemical or chemistry. Like can we have an atom?
Speaker 1: It will stay itself unless it's introduced to something new,
Speaker 1: like fire or something. Now it's chemical composition can begin
Speaker 1: to change. It happens in relationships. So we try to
Speaker 1: disassociate from an aspect of our own personality. We cannot
Speaker 1: expect it to change. We can only expect it to
Speaker 1: maybe to not notice it, to do something louder. Right,
Speaker 1: That's why we get high risk behaviors to drown out
Speaker 1: the pain of our anxiety. Let's say, but you actually
Speaker 1: have to invite it closer, because your anxiety is your
Speaker 1: body's way of saying, you just consumed something that doesn't
Speaker 1: agree with you. It's a thought of feeling for an
Speaker 1: action or an interaction. So I started to get excited
Speaker 1: every time I was anxious and go Okay, then I'd
Speaker 1: stopped and I go, what was I just thinking? Feeling
Speaker 1: or do? And it was hard right to identify the
Speaker 1: thought that gave me that anxiety, because sometimes we think
Speaker 1: things without noticing we think them, and our whole body triggers.
Speaker 1: You know. Um, But if you stay really faithful to that,
Speaker 1: and you get curious and invite your anxiety closer, and
Speaker 1: then more importantly, if you can abstain from it, you're
Speaker 1: going to make a huge change in your life. You know,
Speaker 1: if you can say, all right, I'm no longer going
Speaker 1: to allow myself to beat myself up because every time
Speaker 1: I say X to myself, I feel crappy. I'm going
Speaker 1: to insert a different thought and you have to be
Speaker 1: willful about it. But it really does change. I mean,
Speaker 1: just getting to the place of actually being excited to
Speaker 1: experience your anxiety because you know that your body trying
Speaker 1: to tell you something. I mean, that's that's gonna be
Speaker 1: a tough place to get to. I imagine too, because
Speaker 1: that that takes a certain amount of courage, because it's uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: Anxiety is thankful. Yeah, And so you know, dysfunction is painful.
Speaker 1: Feeling is painful, it's hard healing, it's hard work. But
Speaker 1: at least there's a better possible outcome, not a guarantee,
Speaker 1: but at least there is light at the end of
Speaker 1: that tunnel. Whereas I already know me running from my
Speaker 1: anxiety doesn't work, you know, so that's a known outcome,
Speaker 1: and so you do kind of have to be a
Speaker 1: little bit logical um, which is kind of funny in
Speaker 1: a mindfulness practice, but you kind of have to go, Okay,
Speaker 1: I've tried a thing that doesn't work and makes me six.
Speaker 1: Am I willing to try something new? Am I willing
Speaker 1: to look at it like an experiment and take notes
Speaker 1: and see if there's a difference. And that's where it
Speaker 1: kind of gets fun is you should see a difference.
Speaker 1: It's not like, oh I think I think I feel better.
Speaker 1: It's like, holy smokes, I was able to stop my
Speaker 1: panic attacks. You know, you start to see real changes
Speaker 1: and that begins to be rewarding. Like working out. You know,
Speaker 1: when you start working out, it sucks. So you start
Speaker 1: like developing an app, and you're like all right, I'm
Speaker 1: into it. The payoff. Yeah. Was there at any kind
Speaker 1: of a lightbulb moment or a moment for you where
Speaker 1: songwriting went from being sort of an exercise in mindfulness
Speaker 1: and something that was more for you to being something
Speaker 1: that gave you a career direction, was something that you
Speaker 1: kind of wanted to let other people into. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Let's see. I mean I was singing with my dad
Speaker 1: and bars, and that was like a blue collar job,
Speaker 1: five hour sets of cover songs. He wrote too. He
Speaker 1: would sing some of his UM. I never thought I
Speaker 1: would be like a professional musician. I ended up homeless
Speaker 1: because I wouldn't have sex with the boss and you
Speaker 1: wouldn't give me my paycheck. So I started living in
Speaker 1: my car thinking I would get a new job, but
Speaker 1: I didn't. Uh. I had that kidneys and my car
Speaker 1: got stolen and it was just like a ship show. UM,
Speaker 1: and I started writing songs. I was writing prior to this, UM,
Speaker 1: but I was trying to up stealing, and so I
Speaker 1: was trying to replace the behavior of stealing with a
Speaker 1: different behavior, which was writing. And I was a really
Speaker 1: prolific fief. I became a really prolific writer. Again, not
Speaker 1: thinking it would uh lead to a career. Um, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I was just trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: to quit stealing. And I loved writing. You know, it
Speaker 1: was really fun for me. I just I guess I
Speaker 1: thought careers in music were for other people. I don't know. Um,
Speaker 1: it wasn't until record label started coming to see me
Speaker 1: when I was homeless stilled it. I was like, holy smokes,
Speaker 1: like this could be a career. Like and I. That's
Speaker 1: something I talked to my kids in my foundation a lot,
Speaker 1: and a lot of my talks is every time you
Speaker 1: invest in your character, it seems bleak, right, like me
Speaker 1: turning my boss down, refusing to have sex with him.
Speaker 1: How to do back? Just consequence like I had to
Speaker 1: live in my car and then my car got strolling
Speaker 1: that I needed a point. That's a really bad outcome.
Speaker 1: But it was investing in my character, right. I refused
Speaker 1: to be leveraged, and I was willing to say fine,
Speaker 1: all being a really uncomfortant position so that I'm not leveraged.
Speaker 1: That that investment I made in my character paid off
Speaker 1: dividends on the characters stock market for something I don't
Speaker 1: know how it works, but it's magic and every time
Speaker 1: I've seen anybody do it, refused to compromise their full
Speaker 1: It paid dividends in unexpected ways. You know, if I
Speaker 1: had kept that job it was kept. It kept me
Speaker 1: very busy, right and barely scraping by, I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: had time to really write. I you know, it's crazy
Speaker 1: that it ended up leading me to music, because I
Speaker 1: don't think I would have ended up there. Maybe I
Speaker 1: would have, um, but it was an an unexpected side
Speaker 1: effect of investing in my humanity, in my character, um
Speaker 1: and just not believing that lie. You know, a million
Speaker 1: times in my career people been like, well, we're never
Speaker 1: gonna be famous if you don't x y Z. Well bullshit,
Speaker 1: you don't just keep insisting. And that's the thing about
Speaker 1: me too, I feel like doesn't really get recognized. You
Speaker 1: can walk, you can tell people to f off, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's it works out, It will work out. We
Speaker 1: just don't see a lot of examples in it in
Speaker 1: our society. I think maybe on some level people are
Speaker 1: more free than they give themselves credit for. You can
Speaker 1: only have a choice, yeah, and that's the really free
Speaker 1: thing is you know, I figured out how to be
Speaker 1: happy when I was homeless with nothing, you know, And
Speaker 1: when I stopped thinking somebody else bothe me, you know,
Speaker 1: when I stopped thinking somebody else would come save me,
Speaker 1: and I started going, maybe I owe myself. What am
Speaker 1: I capable of? My happiness is my own and if
Speaker 1: I'm unhappy, I have to be accountable to that. And
Speaker 1: there was a lot of, you know, things I could
Speaker 1: make excuses about. I was having a terrible life like
Speaker 1: that point. I really was lots of reasons, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, lots of excuses. But as long as
Speaker 1: you're making excuses, your life won't change because you're spending
Speaker 1: all your time on those excuses, no matter how valid
Speaker 1: they are. Um. And so for me, realizing I could
Speaker 1: be happy even when homeless was very powerful because it
Speaker 1: put me you can't negotiate with a person like that,
Speaker 1: you know. I was offered a million dollars signing bonus
Speaker 1: as a homeless kid, and I turned it down, which
Speaker 1: nobody could believe. Um, and I took the biggest back
Speaker 1: end anybody had ever been rewarded because I believed that well,
Speaker 1: that million dollars was alone. I'd have to sell a
Speaker 1: ton of records to earn back. Right, a million dollars
Speaker 1: for the label to recoup. The odds of me being
Speaker 1: dropped from a label were very high. I mean, I
Speaker 1: was making a folk album at the heights of grunge,
Speaker 1: and even though there was a sitting war, I think
Speaker 1: that was just labeled competing right and getting caught up
Speaker 1: in the competition. Um. And so having that type of
Speaker 1: approach for me was was really important and I was
Speaker 1: happy to walk And you know, that's always just that's
Speaker 1: a powerful place, you know, when you're unwilling to compromise
Speaker 1: when you're saying I value my happiness and my you know,
Speaker 1: my internal freedom more than I value saying or money.
Speaker 1: They're going to make better choices. You can't be compromised.
Speaker 1: And I think it's really served me in my career.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, I mean, and that's a that's a tough
Speaker 1: lesson to not only to learn but also integrate. I mean,
Speaker 1: here's the here's a question with no easy answer. Do
Speaker 1: you think that that happiness is teachable? Absolutely? That was
Speaker 1: my big missions. Like when I moved out at fifteen,
Speaker 1: you know, I knew statistically kids like me end up
Speaker 1: repeating the cycle, and that just like I had a physical,
Speaker 1: genetic inheritance that might give me a predisposition for diabetes.
Speaker 1: I had an emotional inheritance and it was every bit
Speaker 1: as real and would affect me every bit as much.
Speaker 1: It's not more than my genetic inheritance. But nobody was
Speaker 1: talking about it. But I said, I see in pictures.
Speaker 1: So I saw like this river, and it was like
Speaker 1: I was standing in this river and my dad and
Speaker 1: his dad and his dad, and that emotional current, that
Speaker 1: emotional language that I was raised speaking, would lead to
Speaker 1: a known outcome of abuse of addiction in some various way,
Speaker 1: shape or form. And that was depressing. You know, it's
Speaker 1: depressing to be fifteen and go, oh my god, like
Speaker 1: the odds of me speaking a new emotional language about
Speaker 1: to me getting out of this emotional river and into
Speaker 1: a new one, or very spect against me. And there's
Speaker 1: no school for it. You know, there's needs to put
Speaker 1: to school for Spanish. But where was I going to
Speaker 1: go to learn a new emotional weights reflating to the world?
Speaker 1: Very daunting. So my goal was to see if happiness
Speaker 1: was a learnable skill, was it as teachable skill? And
Speaker 1: that's what set me off on my journey, and that's
Speaker 1: why I was writing songs like cloth your Soul or
Speaker 1: hands um. A lot of the stuff I wrote was
Speaker 1: was me trying to work through this kind of thing
Speaker 1: and the answer is yes. The slogan on my Jewel
Speaker 1: Never Broken website is learn to make a habit out
Speaker 1: of happiness. Happiness is the side effect of choices. You
Speaker 1: can't just be happy like its impossible. It's a side
Speaker 1: effect of a choice. And your choices are a side
Speaker 1: effect of your motivation. Your motivations are usually the side
Speaker 1: effect of unconscious prompts, and so if you can start
Speaker 1: making the unconscious prompts more conscious, which are used by
Speaker 1: being consciously present, you start to really change your life.
Speaker 1: And it takes those behavioral components um, which again for
Speaker 1: some reason I had a knack for creating, and those
Speaker 1: are on that free website you are Never Broken. There
Speaker 1: was something you said on the podcast Second Life recently
Speaker 1: which absolutely floored me. You were discussing sort of the
Speaker 1: battle between nature versus nurture when shaping a person in
Speaker 1: their personality, and you said that you worried that your
Speaker 1: nurture was so intense for you that you wouldn't get
Speaker 1: to know your own nature. And I just thought that
Speaker 1: was such a beautiful way to articulate a concern that
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people have, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: will I get to know my own soul and not
Speaker 1: allow my personality to become a series of reactions to
Speaker 1: what I've experienced in the past. I just thought that
Speaker 1: was a beautiful way to put that, and I just
Speaker 1: wanted to ask you a little more about that and
Speaker 1: your journey to sort of knowing yourself and your own nature.
Speaker 1: I just I thought that was such a really succinct
Speaker 1: and beautiful way to articulate this, I think real tribal
Speaker 1: concern that a lot of people have. Thank. Um, it's
Speaker 1: so amazing to me that I just spent my whole
Speaker 1: life murding out on these movie kind of vague, nuanced,
Speaker 1: strange philosophical threads, and that it's turned into a job.
Speaker 1: Isn't just like blowing my mind? You know? Um? So
Speaker 1: the trip for me to hear you say that, Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting nature versus nurture, nurture of conditioning nature is
Speaker 1: hopefully our authenticity maybe. Uh And if my nurture was
Speaker 1: so bad, was I screwed? You know what? It keep
Speaker 1: me from knowing my authentic self? Because trauma alters us.
Speaker 1: It does alter us, right, it changes us? And so
Speaker 1: how do you handle that? You know? I had really
Speaker 1: really bad traumatic experiences over and over well up into
Speaker 1: my thirties and forties. Um, the kind that are just
Speaker 1: life senders, you know, like what happened my mom is
Speaker 1: just a mind sender. How do you recover? Um? Again?
Speaker 1: Because I see in pictures like I saw an orange,
Speaker 1: which sounds really silly, but an orange has appeal and
Speaker 1: if all you relate to his appeal, you'd have no idea.
Speaker 1: There's this the amazing thing inside of it. And that's
Speaker 1: how I look at nature versus nurture. You know, our
Speaker 1: nurture is affecting our feel I look at our personality
Speaker 1: as a series of decisions that you make and choices
Speaker 1: you make to respond to your environment. You know, if
Speaker 1: you had a really traumatic environment, your personality would form
Speaker 1: as a suspicious person, as a hyper vigilant person. You know,
Speaker 1: we can start to apply adjectives to somebody based on
Speaker 1: their nurturing, and that forms your personality. But your personality
Speaker 1: is fluid, it's not sick. Um. We can lift that skin,
Speaker 1: you know, that psychological skin of our conditioning, of our nurture,
Speaker 1: how we formed our personality over time, and we can
Speaker 1: start to develop a relationship to what's inside of it.
Speaker 1: And that again is where mindfulness is really magical. You know,
Speaker 1: mindfulness should be used to build the muscle, but being
Speaker 1: consciously present and then once you're consciously present, going down
Speaker 1: and in our whole culture wants us to go up
Speaker 1: and out. You know, we're distracted all the time. We're
Speaker 1: relating to our personality all the time, we think because
Speaker 1: the way of a feeling, it's gospel m it's just
Speaker 1: an extension of our personality in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: Isn't always a physic you know, it can just be
Speaker 1: a conditioned with emotional response to when your nurture make
Speaker 1: It's a little tricky. Where it gets easier is if
Speaker 1: you just go down and in um, you meditate, you
Speaker 1: learn to go down and end. When you're anxious, you
Speaker 1: learn to go down and end. You go learn to
Speaker 1: get to a still point in you where you go,
Speaker 1: how do I feel about that underneath my conditioning, and
Speaker 1: you start to develop a relationship with a much more
Speaker 1: authentic part of you. For me, it's actually why I
Speaker 1: called the website never Broken. For me, realizing, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: you know what is my anxiety and my trauma and
Speaker 1: all my reactions and hyper vigilance doesn't mean something wrong?
Speaker 1: But what does it mean something's right with me? You
Speaker 1: know what if every time I'm having neurotic reaction, it
Speaker 1: means I shouldn't be having that thought or feeling. Can
Speaker 1: I participate in something that doesn't give me anxiety? Because
Speaker 1: my own nature shouldn't give me anxiety? And again that's
Speaker 1: where our anxiety is Like the most powerful ally, if
Speaker 1: I had a thought that made me anxious, I was
Speaker 1: willing to say, what if that thought isn't authentically who
Speaker 1: I am? What if that's a thought I've learned or
Speaker 1: been conditioned to have? What other thought could I have?
Speaker 1: What thought takes my anxiety down? For instance, like the
Speaker 1: thought I don't know what I'm doing you said, just
Speaker 1: unravel me. I don't know why, it would just freak
Speaker 1: me out. And the truth wasn't you know, the opposite
Speaker 1: affirmation of I know what I'm doing. That was a lie.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what I was doing. I was in
Speaker 1: too many difficult situations. The truth less, I'll figure it out,
Speaker 1: I don't stop, and I can take that to the
Speaker 1: bank and having that thought calmed my nervous system down.
Speaker 1: So that meant that thought was much more in alignment
Speaker 1: was my authentic nature than it was an alignment too,
Speaker 1: you know, my trauma. And so it takes a lot
Speaker 1: of you know, conscious presence. It takes a lot of uh,
Speaker 1: being patient with yourself every time you notice yourself have
Speaker 1: that thought, replacing it with another thought. But it really works, um,
Speaker 1: it really will change your life. What is your relationship
Speaker 1: like with with music on a daily basis? Is it
Speaker 1: something that you incorporate like some people meditate every day
Speaker 1: and some people jog every day. Is it's something that's
Speaker 1: that's a daily part of your life. Not really, Um,
Speaker 1: I sing every day just while I'm walking or doing things.
Speaker 1: I'm always kind of practicing and in the background, but
Speaker 1: I don't sit down with my guitar every day. I
Speaker 1: think becoming a mom definitely impacted how I relate to that.
Speaker 1: I do write every day. Uh, Poetry for me has
Speaker 1: been the most consistent thing, and I I don't think
Speaker 1: a day goes by very often when I don't write.
Speaker 1: I wanted to end by asking about the title free
Speaker 1: wheel and Woman, and I love the word free wheel,
Speaker 1: and it just to me it has all the independence
Speaker 1: of freedom, but with an added dose of just vivaciousness
Speaker 1: and boldness and enthusiasm. I just think it's such a
Speaker 1: great word. I wanted to ask you, what does the
Speaker 1: title free Wheel and Woman mean to you today? I
Speaker 1: think most of us, with time, become more afraid of love.
Speaker 1: We become less potent. Maybe I think a lot of
Speaker 1: us wonder if our magic has gone? Are the best
Speaker 1: days behind us? I think we feel ground down and
Speaker 1: we read from life and I have really fought for
Speaker 1: my happiness. I have fought for joy. It wasn't you know,
Speaker 1: something that came easy to be with my life, And
Speaker 1: so I wanted this album to be a celebration of that,
Speaker 1: you know, to be able to say, I'm a forty
Speaker 1: seven year old man in the music business, and I'm
Speaker 1: happier than I've ever been, and I'm writing better than
Speaker 1: I've ever written, and I'm singing better than I've ever written,
Speaker 1: and I feel like my magic is back. And yes,
Speaker 1: there was a time when I was worried it was gone,
Speaker 1: that life was just beating me down, and I fought
Speaker 1: for that um and I'm proud I'm really proud of it.
Speaker 1: And I wanted this record to be a celebration of
Speaker 1: a lot of the odds. Yet I feel like I'd
Speaker 1: beat that, um as a one of them, a couple three,
Speaker 1: as a singer songwriter in the industry, and just as
Speaker 1: a human. You know that has to wade true life
Speaker 1: like everyone else, UM, who we are and who we
Speaker 1: become with time is has to be intentional. Um. So
Speaker 1: I just wanted it to be as solidation of it
Speaker 1: and to like I'm I'm proud to be a woman
Speaker 1: that's made in my own living in my own way
Speaker 1: in the world with words. I mean, how impossible was that?
Speaker 1: I never thought that would be the case, But I've
Speaker 1: made a living them words bring up. So You've enriched
Speaker 1: so many people's lives, including my own and so many
Speaker 1: of my loved ones, with your music and everything you've
Speaker 1: taught and everything you've said today. It's been such a
Speaker 1: joy speaking with you. Thank you so much for sharing,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for your time today, and most importantly,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for music. It's been a real honor.
Speaker 1: Thanks really enjoyed it. We hope you enjoyed this episode
Speaker 1: of Inside the Studio, a production of i heart Radio.
Speaker 1: For more episodes of Inside the Studio or other fantastic shows,
Speaker 1: check out the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite podcast.