Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story

by Jewel

  While I enjoyed the drama of giving her the tip money, it didn’t take me long to regret it. She was right: every coffee shop charged door money and expected to have musicians play for free. For the privilege of the “exposure.” Where was everyone’s pride? I couldn’t understand being onstage for hours and not being paid something. I wasn’t looking to get discovered, I didn’t think an A&R agent was going to give me a break onstage at a tiny coffee shop in a beach town. I just wanted to earn enough money to get an apartment and get off the street.

  One day I was walking to Turquoise Beach, a local surf spot with nice waves for longboarding. I would often hang at the beach and befriend a surfer and borrow a board for a few waves. I also showered in the public rest area there. This particular day I took a less frequented street and noticed a coffee shop quietly tucked away. It piqued my interest so I walked inside. No customers. Funky mural art on the walls. There was an older woman behind the counter who told me after we’d talked awhile that the business was struggling because there was no foot traffic in the area and that she would have to close the doors soon. I asked if anyone ever sang there. Not really, she said. Confidently, I told her I was a singer (even though I had never played a solo gig of my own material before) and said maybe we could help each other. If I brought folks in to see me sing, I could keep the door money and she could keep all the coffee and food sales. We shook hands on it and I left with my own gig. Now all I had to do was get people to actually show up. Considering I had no following, that was a tall order.

  I asked Steve Poltz, who had a large local following, how he did it. Singing in town for years, developing a reputation, he told me. I didn’t have that kind of time. Steve suggested that, for starters, I sing the same night every week, so folks would know where to find me consistently. It was hard to compete with Friday and Saturday nights in town, as everyone went to bars to drink and see bigger bands, so I made flyers inviting people to come see me sing at the Inner Change Coffeehouse every Thursday night. I wore a cute velvet jumpsuit I had gotten at a thrift store when I had a job and walked the boardwalk handing out my flyers, mostly to surfers who said they would come see me play. Sure enough, that first week three of them showed up. It was a start.

  I assumed I had to play five-hour sets, like we had when I was a kid. I had set about writing five hours of material in a panic. I still had no ear for teaching myself cover songs on guitar, plus writing my own was so much more fulfilling that I never really tried to learn. I wrote about everything I was learning about myself. About my fear. My longing. My need to be strong in a true way, and not in a pumped-up false one that was simply hiding a fragile ego. I wrote poems and put them to music. I wrote short stories and put them to music. No more secrets. I gave voice to my deepest fears, insecurities, and dreams. I stepped onstage that first night and with all the courage I could muster, opened my heart, and let it bleed out for all the world to see. Or three people. But still, it was scary. I wasn’t sure whether people would walk out or tell me I was weird. But the opposite happened. I felt seen for the first time, because I had let myself be seen. And unexpectedly, the folks in the audience felt seen and understood too. My own fears were not so unique. Talking about my shame and fear actually caused others to accept me. True safety was not in having armor. It was in vulnerability. I was also a ham and chatted up the folks who watched, creating a very personal connection.

  The surfer guys were blown away. They told their friends and more came the next Thursday. Before too long I had a regular and loyal crowd coming to see me. Nancy, the owner, kept her word and let me have all the door money. The word spread that Nancy gave a fair shake to musicians and so other songwriters came to play. Her place began to develop a reputation for having an audience that would listen more than it talked. Now that I was no longer doing cover songs, I hated audiences who talked while I sang. It was hard to bare your soul while someone was talking to their friend about a new sweater they bought. From my first show I asked people to use the potty before I started and to please wait until the end of a song to get up and order coffee or food. I asked Nancy to run the espresso machine only between songs. I would tell stories and the like between songs so she could catch up on orders. The fans I found in those early days were caring, thoughtful, respectful, loving, loyal, and supportive. I don’t think I ever told anyone I was homeless, but they all seemed to want to take care of me and help me out. They reinforced my courage to be honest and transparent, poetic, thoughtful, silly, and brave in my writing. I got to be me. All of me. It was liberating.

  After several months there was standing-room only around the edges of the small shop. People showed up early to get a seat and to avoid my calling them out for showing up in the middle of a song. Nancy installed small speakers on the back patio so people could hear me sing while they watched through a large window that looked in. When the back patio filled up, Nancy put speakers out in front and folks would stand out there on the dirt and watch me sing. The feeling, the excitement and admiration, was so tangible that I would get goose bumps as I told my stories and sang. I remember one night I was lost in a song and opened my eyes to see it was dark and pouring rain outside. There were people with their noses pressed against the glass, soaking wet, who had been standing there listening to me sing for hours. It was staggering.

  I was making enough money to buy food and gas and even to occasionally splurge on books and clean clothes for the stage. I bought vintage clothes from the thrift shop like marching band uniforms and 1950s bathing suits with cute sewn-in skirts that I wore with go-go boots. I wore antique prom dresses and old ballroom numbers with lots of chiffon. It was fun and absurd and it made me happy. It felt like dressing up, even if on a dime-store budget. I was saving up for the deposit on a new place as well. Meanwhile, I’d borrowed a thousand dollars from Musse to buy a VW bus to live in. I had never borrowed money in my life, but I knew I would never make it on the street with the other homeless kids I’d met. Most of them hung out in Ocean Beach. They formed their own kind of family unit, and they welcomed me in. It was an honor to get to know some of them and their stories. Like me, many of them came from hard-knock backgrounds. No kid leaves home at a young age because they think it’s going to be fun—they leave home because living on the street feels safer to them than their home life. Most people assume drugs lead kids to running away or becoming homeless, and this is not so, based on what I saw. Many of those I met had been in dysfunctional government programs like foster care with abusive caretakers, their biological parents long since missing from the picture. Others had home lives that were intolerable, so they struck out on their own, and, like me, they’d started off well until there was one glitch and the poverty cycle became too hard to crawl out of.

  Homeless kids have a natural mistrust of adults, as adults have typically taken advantage of them. They have a natural mistrust of the law, as laws and officials have rarely cared or advocated for them in meaningful ways. They are prime targets for streetwise criminals as well. Being homeless and underage is a particularly hard prospect because you are not old enough to get a legal job. You either have to forge documents to get a job or you just take to panhandling or selling dime bags for local dealers. Having no address and no skills equals no legitimacy.

  There was a family-group dynamic that was an appealing aspect of hanging out with these kids—they looked out for each other and had each other’s back—but my instinct told me it would not be a good scene for me to fall into. Avoiding drugs was the best thing I could do for myself, along with finding healthy ways to mitigate my fear. There was also this quality about the group that I sensed. I felt they were giving up their hope and succumbing to disappointment. On some level I knew that this was the most dangerous thing of all—to lose hope. To accept my circumstances. I was so lucky to have something these kids did not have—I could sing. I had a skill that also happened to double as a healthy coping mechanism. If I kept trying, I could make an honest living and hopefull
y save up for a deposit on a new place, if I could keep from getting sick and keep my expenses low.

  I bought the blue and white VW from a mechanic, a nice family man who also surfed. He caught on quickly that I was on my own and would be living in the car. I told him I was a singer and offered to give him free tickets to my shows in exchange for helping me repair the van if it broke down. He kindly agreed, and he and his wife came to see me regularly and became supporters of mine, bringing me food and books to read. Two more angels in my life.

  Each time I got a little money saved, I experienced a setback. My VW was broken into and my guitar was stolen. Another time Steve Poltz’s car was repossessed. It was towed and he had too many unpaid parking tickets. He couldn’t afford to pay them, and couldn’t get to his shows. I pulled out all the cash I’d saved and handed it to him.

  I worked hard to pay Musse back. I knew which bars had a happy hour and ate potato chips and peanuts for months until I had saved the money. In the meantime I was very happy in my little van. It was an amazing upgrade from living in my tiny green car and sleeping all scrunched up on the backseat, jammed between my guitar and my few possessions. I found a tacky brown Formica dresser, and my mechanic friend bolted it to the floor so it would not fall over when I drove. We removed the fold-down seat in the back, and he built a simple wooden frame. With a little scavenger hunting I found an old futon that did not look too diseased. His wife gave me a couple of blue Mexican horse blankets as curtains for a bit of privacy. For an Alaskan girl who had lived in a saddle barn and shared a room with her brothers, it was not shabby at all. Once I had a couple hundred dollars saved up, I bought a new guitar at Taylor and that’s still the guitar I play. I love it. I call it Bird. It’s a beautiful guitar and sounds amazing. It had a flaw on it, some indiscernible little crack that nobody could see, and they sold it to me at a discount.

  Soon the word about my shows began to spread and other musicians came to see me play regularly. A local program director named Mike Halloran from 91X, one of the biggest stations in the country, came in one night. Mike was and still is a genuine lover of music and musicians. He has always had his ear to the street in his community. I remember everyone whispering that night that he was a big radio guy. Mike was a big guy physically, too, and right in step with the grunge movement, complete with blue flannel shirt and goatee. Halfway through the show he began crying while I sang “1000 Miles Away.” I knew right then and there I liked him. There I was in some Ginger Rogers frock, goldfish orange with a sequined bodice, and after my usual five-hour show he invited me to the station to record a song, saying he would play it sometime. I recorded several songs, I think—new ones like “Angel Needs a Ride,” “Mamma’s Little Hero.” I thought Mike was nice, and was excited about what he said, but I wasn’t exactly going to hold my breath. As a kid bar singing, self-proclaimed entrepreneurs and wealthy men sometimes told my dad that I had a great voice and that they would help us make a record. Or local studios would have me record a song and swear they had connections, but things never seemed to pan out. Lots of good intentions, no ill will, but things just dissolving after the initial excitement faded. And that was okay. I was realistic. I heard what was played on the radio and I knew I sounded nothing like that. The records I liked had been out-of-date for decades. I wasn’t a size 2, I wasn’t cool, and I wasn’t that good. I was earnest and sincere, and those things made me feel honest. I was beginning to feel happy with where I was. Maybe I wouldn’t need another day job, maybe I could get out of my car by singing like my dad had done to support us. A blue-collar musician making a living. I was excited by the prospect. I loved writing songs about real things. It was making me happier.

  When I was younger, I’d thought of happiness as a capricious bird that, if you were lucky, landed on your shoulder and sang its bright tune with a will all its own. Happiness seemed arbitrary, and I hoped for it to find me as if I had no say in the matter. Well, perhaps in the way they say you make your own luck, you could make your own happiness. If it was a bird, perhaps I hadn’t built an attractive home for it. If my mind was chaotic, unorganized, negative, closed off, or resentful, there was no place for happiness to alight. I thought about what kind of house I had built, and what it was attracting. Were my windows open wide or firmly shuttered? Was I taking the time to build a foundation and invest in a structure that would hold strong? Or was it only halfway conceived, reactive?

  I began to watch people who appeared to be happy. They got outside. They exercised. They did things they found fulfilling in some way. They took care of themselves. I imitated them. Being homeless and relatively jobless afforded me a tremendous luxury if I did not waste the day on fear. I had time to experiment and try new things. I made myself exercise every day. I attempted to keep my van tidy. I imagined that my thoughts were food, and asked myself often whether I was feeding myself junk or higher-quality, nourishing thoughts and feelings.

  I also paid more attention to literal food and nutrition in an effort to heal my kidney problems and improve my health. At this point in my life, the subject of nutrition and health is one I could write an entire book about. I was blessed to have been raised on a ranch where the whole foods we raised and grew were so good for us.

  Buying healthy food on a budget was more than just a little challenging. It was impossible. I read about the foods that were good for kidneys and that plenty of clean water was key for flushing infections and proper function. On the homestead, we had a hose that went from a creek right up through a hole in our sink for our “running” water. It was ice cold and tasted sweet and delicious. Granted, the system was a bit flawed—in the winter we had to keep the water source from freezing over, and during the spring thaw worms and critters flooded the hose. I remember coming downstairs to find my prized possession, a pink frilly scarf, had been put to work as a filter, folded over the faucet and wrapped with rubber bands, keeping a large bulge of worms on the safe side of the equation. There was no room to be precious on the homestead, a lesson that served me well while homeless. I was shocked to discover that people in the Lower 48 hardly ever drank tap water and by how much stores charged for bottled water. I could hardly afford the two gallons I needed a day. I knew firsthand what it took to haul water by hand to clean vegetables or dishes, how we saved every precious drop we could, and I was appalled by how many people let their faucets run while they brushed their teeth and watered lawns in the desert. Seeing the water crisis we were facing in America, I wondered what it was like in foreign countries for communities that had no opportunity to buy water, and vowed that if I were ever in a position to help, I would. Fortunately, in 1997 I was able to form my charity, Project Clean Water, which has put clean water wells in more than fifteen countries so far. In addition to founding PCW and healing myself with herbs and food, one of my proudest moments as a parent has been feeding and teaching my son about nutrition and the amazing machine his body is, and how to properly give it what it needs to be whole and healthy. We lack education about food in America.

  My mom had influenced my interest in nutrition quite a lot. She had moved to California originally to live at the Optimum Health Institute for what I thought were her heart and cancer issues. It was a place folks went to cleanse and included a raw vegetarian diet, wheatgrass, and enemas. She taught a small class at one point in exchange for receiving treatment, and I went with her to cleanse as well. A good food for the kidneys was watermelon, so while homeless, I hatched a scheme to find free watermelon. Every Wednesday OHI served watermelon to its members while they gave their cleansing testimonials. I would pose as a participant and eat all the watermelon I could, for the minimal price of having to come up with a cleansing testimonial. I was convincing enough—my stories about a particular cleansing crisis or a breakthrough I’d experienced while imbibing too much wheatgrass and not enough food drew emphatic “amens” and “atta girls” from the group.

  One day at OHI, freshly stuffed with watermelon, a song ide
a came to me, and since there wasn’t anywhere to sit alone inside, I sat in the parking lot with my guitar working on it. A guy wearing funny sunglasses came by and stood listening. I didn’t really look up until I had worked out a phrase, and I instantly recognized him. Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. His band was absolutely the biggest at the time. It was unmistakably him. In a parking lot. At a cleansing institute. He sat down next to me and told me to play some more, so I did. He said I was good and asked if I had a deal. No, I replied, not even remotely. Flea asked if I knew any good waves, and I said I did. So we went surfing. He meditated and was sweet and kind. We didn’t talk about music anymore, only about life, and he told me to give him a call if I was ever in L.A. We would end up becoming lifelong friends. I never asked him for help in the music biz, and he never offered. I was on my own path and I figured whatever was to happen would be up to me. It was never my style to ask people for help, but when I got signed, he was one of the first people I called. Flea played bass on “You Were Meant for Me” and played with me on TV as part of my band in the early days, when I didn’t have one. Even though he was a rocker, he helped me believe in my folk music and to be true to myself.