Name: Jewel Turned Down $1 Million Record Deal When She Was Homeless
Uploaded: 2021-10-25T17:50:15.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Jewel Turned Down $1 Million Record Deal When She Was Homeless' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-10-25. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Jewel Turned Down $1 Million Record Deal When She Was Homeless' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-10-25. Transcript available.

The Joe Rogan experience.
But again, that goes back to like, you have an excuse all the time to do the
wrong thing.
You have an excuse all the time to go back to the familiar.
You have an excuse all the time why to say the whole world is against you and
be right.
But so what? Now what? Now what are you going to do about it?
How happy do you want to be? Your life will rise to the level you settle for
and just to keep pushing.
What did you do? How did you get out of it?
Like, how did you, what was the first job that you got?
When I was homeless?
Yeah.
I started, because I grew up singing. I was like, maybe I could get a gig
somewhere and start singing.
Because I made money singing, you know, like for my whole life since I was
little, like a hundred bucks, two hundred bucks, but whatever.
So I'd go around to coffee shops in the area, but San Diego started to be a hotbed
for signing activity, you know, grunge.
There was like kind of a grunge scene in San Diego.
And so I'd go in there and they charged you to sing there.
I was like, this is not ideal. Like they wanted me to pay them $200.
I was like, yeah, I was like, this is the exact.
For one gig?
Yeah.
And it was the idea that you would sell tickets?
They thought it was, no, they thought it was like a signing. You would get
signed.
Oh God.
You know what I mean? Because it became like so many record labels, I guess,
were coming down at the time.
I remember this one lady, like my friend let me sit in on his gig.
So I go sing with him. I'm starting to write my own songs.
Oh, I forgot to tell you how I started writing songs back at school, but I'll
tell you later.
I'll remember that.
So I started writing songs and singing my own stuff.
I get on my friend's gig.
He's packed the place out.
I don't clearly, but he has it crowded.
There's like a door charge.
So I go to settle out while he's taking his gear down.
And this woman coffee shop owner was like, you guys don't get the door money.
And I was like, what are you talking about?
Like he brought all these people in.
She's like, no.
She goes, you get the tip jar.
And I was like, oh.
I was like, you know what then?
Why don't we get all your coffee and food money?
You could just give us that instead.
And she was like, you don't get the food and beverage money.
You get the tip jar.
And I was so upset.
I needed the money so badly.
Like I didn't have food.
You know, like I was really wanting some money from that gig.
And I remember I put my little finger in her face.
And I was like, I am cursing you.
Whoa.
You are.
I know.
It sounded so heavy.
I was like, you are stealing from the people that are giving you a living.
You're stealing from this guy.
And I was like, you will go out of business.
I was like, nobody can stay in business doing this to humans.
I was so upset at her.
And I.
Did he have an understanding with her?
Or was he just getting robbed?
I guess he didn't care.
He just didn't care.
I was so blown away.
I was like, he just wanted to be easygoing and didn't want to make her mad and
wanted to get another gig there.
And I was just so upset.
And so I found this place.
I liked this little, when I was living in my car, there was a little tree that
was flowering tree.
And I like to park next to it.
So like that was my home.
And I noticed there was this coffee shop right there that was going out of
business.
And it was really off the beaten path.
And so I went in there and I talked to the lady who owned it.
Her name was Nancy.
And I was like, do you think you could stay open for two more months?
And she's like, why?
I'm like, if I bring people in, can I keep the door money?
You can keep all the coffee and food.
And like, we'll try and make it together.
And she said, yes.
And so I started going down on like the beachfront in San Diego and I'd sing
like street sing.
And I'd tell people I'm singing at the Interchange coffee shop on Thursday
night at six o'clock.
And two people came.
Like it was two surfers that thought I was hot, I think.
And I did a five-hour show because bar singing, you do five-hour shows.
And I just thought I had to do a five-hour show.
So I started writing a ton of material.
Plus I was using writing not to steal.
And I was a prolific thief.
So I had to become a prolific writer.
And so I did this five-hour show to these two guys.
I'm bleeding my heart out because I was so lonely.
And I realized I never tell the truth.
Like nobody knows the truth.
I'm scared to death.
I'm not a great person.
I'm stealing.
And I'm lonely.
And I was like, maybe if I tell the truth, I won't feel so lonely.
So I made a promise that I would write really honest songs.
So these poor two surfers were subjected to five hours of like bleeding out my
like vocal cords.
It was amazing.
I made $10.
And the next night, and I would go sing all throughout town.
The street corner.
I'd say, hey, Thursday night.
They knew where to see me.
And it just grew.
It went from two people to four people to eight people to 40 to 80 to capacity
to people standing outside watching me sing through the window.
And I got discovered.
Wow.
Yeah.
It was nuts.
Wow.
Yeah.
That's a great story.
Wow.
What was that like?
What was it?
What was the feeling like when it was at capacity?
And you recognize that these people were, that something was changing in your
life.
These people were coming out to see you perform.
The coolest thing and why I'm smiling is because I was changing.
It moves me to tears right now.
Like even before the people came, I felt a momentum shifting.
You know, I just felt I was getting better.
I was getting healthier.
I was getting happier.
My panic attacks, like I found out how not to have them.
Like it just made me feel good.
And then when these people came, I just bore my soul and I just didn't pull a
punch.
And they liked me.
And I know that sounds superficial, but it wasn't because it was so authentically
me.
I wasn't pretending to be better or more talented.
It was so raw.
And people would cry and I would cry.
And it was just such a real connection.
Like for the first time in my life, I had a real meaningful human connection.
And it wasn't scary.
It felt good.
And they would give me books to read and they would give me food.
And I didn't think it would lead to a record deal.
It just felt like being fed for the first time in your life, you know, not
hiding and not being fake and just being really authentic.
So it felt really good.
And then when more people came, it just took on a momentum that was like, holy
shit.
How much time has passed from the two people to people standing outside?
You know, I don't know, but six months maybe ish, something like that.
That's a lot of change in six months.
Yeah, maybe a little more, eight months, but couldn't have been more than that
because I don't think I was homeless more than a year.
What was that change?
How did it feel?
Crazy.
It was wild.
It was cool.
And, you know, from like being on stage, but like I wouldn't make a set list
and I would just feel the audience.
And like I talked and I did a lot of, I tell a lot of stories and like kind of
like stand up.
I would just tell like just stories and jokes and just shoot shit with people
in the audience.
And they were just these really live electric, like kind of wild shows and make
them dead quiet.
And I would just take little breaks so people could use the bathroom.
And when people started standing outside and they couldn't hear, but they were
just watching me through the window and the look on their face, like to this
day, it like gives me chills.
Like they looked at me with like a certain look and it was like, holy shit,
like this is different.
And they would stand out in the rain, like we put little speakers out there so
they could hear.
And people would stand in the rain and just listen to me singing through the
window with little speakers.
And it was just like, it was very humbling, like very, very humbling.
Wow.
Yeah.
So then what happens?
How do you get discovered?
There was a radio DJ, a programmer, excuse me.
He ran 91X, which is a really big radio station in the country.
They might have been number two in the country at the time, heavy alternative
station.
Somebody told him about this girl singing in a coffee shop and that he should
come.
And he came in.
I could recognize new faces when they come in because it was, this wasn't a big
place, by the way.
I mean, this might have been 70 people that could fit inside.
That's a tiny coffee shop.
So you had developed a crowd, like you were accustomed to seeing familiar faces.
Yeah.
It was a loyal, diehard, diehard fan base, like tiny, don't get me wrong.
But I knew them, you know what I mean?
It was like a little family in a way.
And so this guy came in, he had a goatee, his final shirt on, he looked kind of
hard and he was sitting in the back.
And I remember singing the song A Thousand Miles Away and he was just weeping
like quietly, but just tears were streaming down his face.
And he came up to me afterwards.
He's like, hey, I'm at the radio station.
And like, why don't you come in?
Like sing a song one night or something.
And I was like, okay.
So I go in there, still living in, oh, I got another car.
So I had a car to live in.
I'd saved up enough door money to buy a car, cheap car, like a couple hundred
dollar car.
So I get down to the radio station and I sing a song for him and we talk a
little bit.
And I guess he went ahead, him and this guy named Lou Niles put it on the radio
and it got requested by fans.
So it's back when you could still request songs and they'd listen to it and it
got somehow into the top 20, you know, of this station, which is a big deal.
Like top 20 on that station was like, you know, labels pay a lot of money to
promote their artists to try and get them into the top 20.
And this was like an acoustic guitar demo in the middle of like all this grunge
music.
And so record labels were like, how that what is this song that's showing up on
this playlist?
And they would call him and he's like, it's this chick down at this coffee shop.
And so all of a sudden there would be like these limousines pulling up and they
would give sweet little Nancy, you know, that was just she was having a banging
business now, which felt so good.
And they would be like, she'd be like, Jules, Sony Records is here tonight.
And I'd be like, all right.
I was so passe about the whole thing.
It was very funny.
And then they'd take me out to tacos and talk to me about record deals.
And then there was a bidding war.
It was every label came down, every label.
They'd flown from New York.
They'd bring in bigger executives.
Then they'd fly in.
They'd come again.
They'd, you know, all these limousines showing up.
And I would start to got flown around to talk to different record labels.
And I thought I should.
How long does this process take?
I don't know.
I am.
I'm kind of bad with time that way.
I don't know, a couple months, something like that.
And you don't have a manager.
You don't have anybody speaking for you.
No, but I went to the library and I found this book called.
How to manage yourself for dummies.
It was Don Passenheim, I think, called Everything You Need to Know About the
Music Business.
Oh, boy.
And that sounded good.
So I read it and I just learned about mechanicals and royalties and backends
and advances.
Oh, so you did your homework.
I did my homework.
And there ended up being a huge bidding war over me.
All the labels just started, like, competing.
By this time, I kind of found, like, a de facto manager.
I maybe got a lawyer here at some point, you know, and this might now have
taken more time.
But I realized, because of reading that book, that an advance is a loan.
You don't get to keep the money.
You pay it back through record sales.
And so I did the math to see how many records I'd have to sell to pay back a
million dollars.
And it was a lot of records.
And so it was like having a bounty on my head as an artist.
I almost didn't sign my record deal because I had just figured out how to be
happy.
Genuinely.
I was really starting to figure it out.
And I knew it, like, inside myself.
I was doing so much better.
And, God forbid, you take somebody with my emotional background and they ever
get famous.
I'm the recipe for every movie you've seen about every musician.
Right.
And, again, I didn't want to be a statistic.
And I fought so hard for my happiness up to this point that I was like, I don't
think I could trust myself to have a record deal and figure out how to do that
career without self-imploding.
And so I almost didn't sign it.
I remember being on the beach one day and I was like, I wanted to do it, but I
was terrified of doing it.
So I made myself a promise that my number one job would still be to figure out
how to be happy.
And my number two job would be to be a musician.
And then, under the musician category, I wanted to be an artist more than I
wanted to be famous.
And so knowing those was like having my North Star and I felt like I could
navigate and make decisions based on those things.
And so I went ahead and signed the record deal.
I turned down the advance.
I turned down a million dollar bonus.
Holy shit.
As a homeless kid.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
That is so crazy.
And I took the biggest.
How did you do that?
I would have taken that money for sure.
100%.
I would have been like, I'll figure it out in the future.
Taking this money.
I'm getting a fucking fat apartment overlooking the water.
That's not what I did.
As a homeless kid, you passed on a million bucks.
I did.
Wow.
But I took the biggest back end anybody had ever been awarded.
And so if I sold records, I was going to make a shit ton.
So because, like, under the artist category, I wanted to be an artist more than
I wanted to be famous, it meant I had to put myself in an environment and in a
position to win as a singer-songwriter and as a folk singer, no less, at the
height of grunge.
The odds of that working I knew were really slim, and I felt like the bidding
war over me was just much more of like a dick contest between all the labels.
I didn't think it necessarily had to do with my talent.
I thought I was talented, but I thought the odds were still really, really
against me.
And I had to put myself in a position to be able to weather the fact that my
first album may not be successful.
But if you have a million dollar signing bonus, you have to have your first
record be successful or else it'll get dropped because you cost so much to the
label.
And so I was just doing it to put myself in a position to make my art first and
to not leverage my art unduly.
You know, it's like saying you have to grow a pear, but you don't even have a
tree yet.
Like, I had to grow a tree.
Like, the pear was a long way away.
And so I just tried to look at it kind of agriculturally or in a natural system
of like, I have to grow, I have to plant a seed, I have to, like, grow a tree,
you know.
Watch the entire episode for free only on Spotify.

Jewel Turned Down $1 Million Record Deal When She Was Homeless

The Joe Rogan experience.
But again, that goes back to like, you have an excuse all the time to do the
wrong thing.
You have an excuse all the time to go back to the familiar.
You have an excuse all the time why to say the whole world is against you and
be right.
But so what? Now what? Now what are you going to do about it?
How happy do you want to be? Your life will rise to the level you settle for
and just to keep pushing.
What did you do? How did you get out of it?
Like, how did you, what was the first job that you got?
When I was homeless?
Yeah.
I started, because I grew up singing. I was like, maybe I could get a gig
somewhere and start singing.
Because I made money singing, you know, like for my whole life since I was
little, like a hundred bucks, two hundred bucks, but whatever.
So I'd go around to coffee shops in the area, but San Diego started to be a hotbed
for signing activity, you know, grunge.
There was like kind of a grunge scene in San Diego.
And so I'd go in there and they charged you to sing there.
I was like, this is not ideal. Like they wanted me to pay them $200.
I was like, yeah, I was like, this is the exact.
For one gig?
Yeah.
And it was the idea that you would sell tickets?
They thought it was, no, they thought it was like a signing. You would get
signed.
Oh God.
You know what I mean? Because it became like so many record labels, I guess,
were coming down at the time.
I remember this one lady, like my friend let me sit in on his gig.
So I go sing with him. I'm starting to write my own songs.
Oh, I forgot to tell you how I started writing songs back at school, but I'll
tell you later.
I'll remember that.
So I started writing songs and singing my own stuff.
I get on my friend's gig.
He's packed the place out.
I don't clearly, but he has it crowded.
There's like a door charge.
So I go to settle out while he's taking his gear down.
And this woman coffee shop owner was like, you guys don't get the door money.
And I was like, what are you talking about?
Like he brought all these people in.
She's like, no.
She goes, you get the tip jar.
And I was like, oh.
I was like, you know what then?
Why don't we get all your coffee and food money?
You could just give us that instead.
And she was like, you don't get the food and beverage money.
You get the tip jar.
And I was so upset.
I needed the money so badly.
Like I didn't have food.
You know, like I was really wanting some money from that gig.
And I remember I put my little finger in her face.
And I was like, I am cursing you.
Whoa.
You are.
I know.
It sounded so heavy.
I was like, you are stealing from the people that are giving you a living.
You're stealing from this guy.
And I was like, you will go out of business.
I was like, nobody can stay in business doing this to humans.
I was so upset at her.
And I.
Did he have an understanding with her?
Or was he just getting robbed?
I guess he didn't care.
He just didn't care.
I was so blown away.
I was like, he just wanted to be easygoing and didn't want to make her mad and
wanted to get another gig there.
And I was just so upset.
And so I found this place.
I liked this little, when I was living in my car, there was a little tree that
was flowering tree.
And I like to park next to it.
So like that was my home.
And I noticed there was this coffee shop right there that was going out of
business.
And it was really off the beaten path.
And so I went in there and I talked to the lady who owned it.
Her name was Nancy.
And I was like, do you think you could stay open for two more months?
And she's like, why?
I'm like, if I bring people in, can I keep the door money?
You can keep all the coffee and food.
And like, we'll try and make it together.
And she said, yes.
And so I started going down on like the beachfront in San Diego and I'd sing
like street sing.
And I'd tell people I'm singing at the Interchange coffee shop on Thursday
night at six o'clock.
And two people came.
Like it was two surfers that thought I was hot, I think.
And I did a five-hour show because bar singing, you do five-hour shows.
And I just thought I had to do a five-hour show.
So I started writing a ton of material.
Plus I was using writing not to steal.
And I was a prolific thief.
So I had to become a prolific writer.
And so I did this five-hour show to these two guys.
I'm bleeding my heart out because I was so lonely.
And I realized I never tell the truth.
Like nobody knows the truth.
I'm scared to death.
I'm not a great person.
I'm stealing.
And I'm lonely.
And I was like, maybe if I tell the truth, I won't feel so lonely.
So I made a promise that I would write really honest songs.
So these poor two surfers were subjected to five hours of like bleeding out my
like vocal cords.
It was amazing.
I made $10.
And the next night, and I would go sing all throughout town.
The street corner.
I'd say, hey, Thursday night.
They knew where to see me.
And it just grew.
It went from two people to four people to eight people to 40 to 80 to capacity
to people standing outside watching me sing through the window.
And I got discovered.
Wow.
Yeah.
It was nuts.
Wow.
Yeah.
That's a great story.
Wow.
What was that like?
What was it?
What was the feeling like when it was at capacity?
And you recognize that these people were, that something was changing in your
life.
These people were coming out to see you perform.
The coolest thing and why I'm smiling is because I was changing.
It moves me to tears right now.
Like even before the people came, I felt a momentum shifting.
You know, I just felt I was getting better.
I was getting healthier.
I was getting happier.
My panic attacks, like I found out how not to have them.
Like it just made me feel good.
And then when these people came, I just bore my soul and I just didn't pull a
punch.
And they liked me.
And I know that sounds superficial, but it wasn't because it was so authentically
me.
I wasn't pretending to be better or more talented.
It was so raw.
And people would cry and I would cry.
And it was just such a real connection.
Like for the first time in my life, I had a real meaningful human connection.
And it wasn't scary.
It felt good.
And they would give me books to read and they would give me food.
And I didn't think it would lead to a record deal.
It just felt like being fed for the first time in your life, you know, not
hiding and not being fake and just being really authentic.
So it felt really good.
And then when more people came, it just took on a momentum that was like, holy
shit.
How much time has passed from the two people to people standing outside?
You know, I don't know, but six months maybe ish, something like that.
That's a lot of change in six months.
Yeah, maybe a little more, eight months, but couldn't have been more than that
because I don't think I was homeless more than a year.
What was that change?
How did it feel?
Crazy.
It was wild.
It was cool.
And, you know, from like being on stage, but like I wouldn't make a set list
and I would just feel the audience.
And like I talked and I did a lot of, I tell a lot of stories and like kind of
like stand up.
I would just tell like just stories and jokes and just shoot shit with people
in the audience.
And they were just these really live electric, like kind of wild shows and make
them dead quiet.
And I would just take little breaks so people could use the bathroom.
And when people started standing outside and they couldn't hear, but they were
just watching me through the window and the look on their face, like to this
day, it like gives me chills.
Like they looked at me with like a certain look and it was like, holy shit,
like this is different.
And they would stand out in the rain, like we put little speakers out there so
they could hear.
And people would stand in the rain and just listen to me singing through the
window with little speakers.
And it was just like, it was very humbling, like very, very humbling.
Wow.
Yeah.
So then what happens?
How do you get discovered?
There was a radio DJ, a programmer, excuse me.
He ran 91X, which is a really big radio station in the country.
They might have been number two in the country at the time, heavy alternative
station.
Somebody told him about this girl singing in a coffee shop and that he should
come.
And he came in.
I could recognize new faces when they come in because it was, this wasn't a big
place, by the way.
I mean, this might have been 70 people that could fit inside.
That's a tiny coffee shop.
So you had developed a crowd, like you were accustomed to seeing familiar faces.
Yeah.
It was a loyal, diehard, diehard fan base, like tiny, don't get me wrong.
But I knew them, you know what I mean?
It was like a little family in a way.
And so this guy came in, he had a goatee, his final shirt on, he looked kind of
hard and he was sitting in the back.
And I remember singing the song A Thousand Miles Away and he was just weeping
like quietly, but just tears were streaming down his face.
And he came up to me afterwards.
He's like, hey, I'm at the radio station.
And like, why don't you come in?
Like sing a song one night or something.
And I was like, okay.
So I go in there, still living in, oh, I got another car.
So I had a car to live in.
I'd saved up enough door money to buy a car, cheap car, like a couple hundred
dollar car.
So I get down to the radio station and I sing a song for him and we talk a
little bit.
And I guess he went ahead, him and this guy named Lou Niles put it on the radio
and it got requested by fans.
So it's back when you could still request songs and they'd listen to it and it
got somehow into the top 20, you know, of this station, which is a big deal.
Like top 20 on that station was like, you know, labels pay a lot of money to
promote their artists to try and get them into the top 20.
And this was like an acoustic guitar demo in the middle of like all this grunge
music.
And so record labels were like, how that what is this song that's showing up on
this playlist?
And they would call him and he's like, it's this chick down at this coffee shop.
And so all of a sudden there would be like these limousines pulling up and they
would give sweet little Nancy, you know, that was just she was having a banging
business now, which felt so good.
And they would be like, she'd be like, Jules, Sony Records is here tonight.
And I'd be like, all right.
I was so passe about the whole thing.
It was very funny.
And then they'd take me out to tacos and talk to me about record deals.
And then there was a bidding war.
It was every label came down, every label.
They'd flown from New York.
They'd bring in bigger executives.
Then they'd fly in.
They'd come again.
They'd, you know, all these limousines showing up.
And I would start to got flown around to talk to different record labels.
And I thought I should.
How long does this process take?
I don't know.
I am.
I'm kind of bad with time that way.
I don't know, a couple months, something like that.
And you don't have a manager.
You don't have anybody speaking for you.
No, but I went to the library and I found this book called.
How to manage yourself for dummies.
It was Don Passenheim, I think, called Everything You Need to Know About the
Music Business.
Oh, boy.
And that sounded good.
So I read it and I just learned about mechanicals and royalties and backends
and advances.
Oh, so you did your homework.
I did my homework.
And there ended up being a huge bidding war over me.
All the labels just started, like, competing.
By this time, I kind of found, like, a de facto manager.
I maybe got a lawyer here at some point, you know, and this might now have
taken more time.
But I realized, because of reading that book, that an advance is a loan.
You don't get to keep the money.
You pay it back through record sales.
And so I did the math to see how many records I'd have to sell to pay back a
million dollars.
And it was a lot of records.
And so it was like having a bounty on my head as an artist.
I almost didn't sign my record deal b