Active Voice Gives Songs Range, Depth, Emotion

“Pieces of You” reveals a singer with the range and reach to incorporate pieces of what seems like half of the female singer-songwriter canon, yet who pulls them together into a style of her own.

At various moments, Jewel can sound like a solemn, deep-voiced Tracy Chapman, a lightly scatting Rickie Lee Jones, a girlishly airy Juliana Hatfield, a high-wiring Joni Mitchell, a meditative Karen Peris of Innocence Mission, a winsomely folksy Iris DeMent or an ardent, husky-voiced Cheryl Wheeler.

“I get bored easily, so when I sing, I have to change characters,” Jewel said. “If you sing in the same voice, people tend not to hear the words because it becomes monotonous. To me, [singing] is about shape and tension and color.”

Among her gifts is the ability to sing as if she is sobbing, without sounding fake, cloying or manipulative. “If I can’t pull it off, I don’t sing the song that night,” she says of her saddest numbers. “But it’s very easy for me to jump into it and really feel it, to where I cry.

“I used to not be able to speak, to articulate my heart. I’ve gotten better at speaking from my heart honestly. I don’t feel naked; if you have spots to hide from yourself, by protecting them, you show where those spots are. I feel safer [being openly emotional] because very little can touch you when you have that open of a heart.”

She points to such uncommon-for-her-generation influences as Ella Fitzerald, Nina Simone, Etta James, Odetta and Jennifer Warnes, courtesy mainly of her mom. Jewel says she is not widely educated in the pop pantheon and hadn’t listened closely to Joni Mitchell until after her own record came out.

“My friends will sit me down and give me a class: ‘Music 101 for Jewel,’ ” she said lightly. “They played me the Replacements, and it changed my life.”

She cites San Diego buddy Steve Poltz, front man of the Rugburns, as an especially important ally who co-wrote two songs on her album and introduced her to such fertile sources as Leo Kottke and Townes Van Zant.