Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story

By Jewel Kilcher

While I was working on Faron Young’s biography, sister Kayo and I visited steel player Ben Keith at his farm in 2000. He told us he’d just returned from California, where he’d produced his second album on Jewel. We’d heard of her, of course, but she was a pop singer, and I’ve never become familiar with her music. She published her autobiography, Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story, in 2015.

Born in 1974 in Alaska, Jewel Kilcher grew up with a very rough childhood, after her mother left the family and her father became physically abusive to his three children. Jewel left home at fifteen and eventually ended up in San Diego, often homeless but always working extremely hard. After she started performing in a coffee shop and gathered a large following, she eventually decided to make a record.

Listening to a Neil Young CD, she turned it over to see who had produced it. Ben Keith. “I met with Ben and knew within five minutes he was my guy,” she writes. “He talked about my lyrics and the story and then about musicians he thought would be a good fit for me.” They recorded at Neil Young’s ranch in Northern California. “Being able to record there was not a favor to me even remotely,” she writes, “but to Ben, for Neil loved him dearly.”

The book covers in detail Jewel’s ups and downs over the years, her emotional turmoil and growth, her marriage to famous PRCA rodeo cowboy, Ty Murray, and their son, and how she dug herself out of debt after her mother siphoned off all her money. She ends with this advice: “Be bold. Name what you want. Give it voice and then give it action. . .. Don’t let the days pass without doing something great. Be the architect of your dreams.”