Jewel - Live from San Quarantine - Home Concert, Telluride, CO, 3-21-2020

I like some of Jewel's (a.k.a. Jewel Kilcher's) music. She is a controversial figure for various reasons, and I'll admit that I find her songs hit or miss. But although I cherry pick through her albums, when she hits, it's excellent stuff. She's mostly been silent during the coronavirus pandemic lockdown, only playing a song or two here and there for special events. However, there is one very big exception, which is this concert.

It was a fundraiser for a charity she helped get off the ground, the Inspiring Children Foundation. The concert benefit was very successful, and raised over half a million dollars for that group. Like pretty much all the home concerts I've posted here, it's just her and an acoustic guitar.

However, in my opinion, there was something about it I didn't like. Jewel can be extremely talkative between songs. Sometimes when that happens, I cut some parts out. My guide is to consider which bits would one be likely to want to hear multiple times, and which bits not. For this concert, she often went on and on, for ten or more minutes at a time. She often sounded more like a self-help guru than anything else. Actually, I think her advice is generally good, but it bogged the music part way down. Furthermore, there were aspects about it being a fundraiser that I cut. For instance, she often took time to praise by name all the people who donated large amounts.

As a result of all the cuts I made, a two and a half hour long concert was whittled down to one and a half hours! It's safe to say that I've never cut that much talking from any other concert. But I think it was justified here. Mind you, I still kept in quite a lot, including basic info about the foundation and some of her self-help advice. If you add up the lengths of the songs, that totals 58 minutes. Whereas if you add up the lengths of all the remaining spoken parts, that's 28 minutes. That 2 to 1 ratio of music to talking is very high compared to all the other home concerts I've posted here. An entire additional hour of talking on top of that was just too much. That's my opinion, anyway. If you want to hear and/or watch the entire thing, just search for it on YouTube.

As far as the talking that I've kept in, I think it's pretty interesting. It can't be denied that Jewel has lived a very unusual and fascinating life. It sounds like material for a movie, especially how she went from being homeless to becoming famous in just a year. 

Regarding the music, she does most of her famous songs, and at least one brand new song. I believe all the songs are written or co-written by her, with the exception of the classic country song "Help Me Make It through the Night."

In terms of sound quality, it's very good, but not excellent. This was recorded in her bedroom, and recording conditions weren't ideal. In particular, she sat on a squeaky chair, and as the concert went on the squeaking got louder. She even commented and complained about it at one point. But that's only a minor irritant. Also, she didn't sing into a microphone, which would have been ideal. But her voice projects so loudly that that wasn't too much of a problem.

There was one specific snag that was more annoying, however. Prior to singing her hit song "Who Will Save Your Soul," she told a long (but entertaining) story about how Bob Dylan helped her career. Unfortunately, the Internet feed for her concert got cut off for several minutes. Some unknown amount of the Dylan story was lost, plus most of "Who Will Save Your Soul." Luckily, I think the Dylan story was over, or almost over, so I'm guessing very little was lost there. I found a good place to end it by only removing a word or two at the very end. But "Who Will Save Your Soul" pretty much was gone. So I found another version of her doing that song, also from her home, on April 11, 2020, and I pasted that in.

The reason I call this "Live from San Quarantine" is because that's what Jewel called it. She mentioned early in the concert that it's a play on the title of Johnny Cash's famous live album, "At San Quentin."

01 talk (Jewel)
02 Hands (Jewel)
03 talk (Jewel)
04 No More Tears (Jewel)
05 talk (Jewel)
06 Standing Still (Jewel)
07 talk (Jewel)
08 Grateful (Jewel)
09 talk (Jewel)
10 Intuition (Jewel)
11 talk (Jewel)
12 Dance, Sing, Laugh, Love (Jewel)
13 talk (Jewel)
14 Help Me Make It through the Night (Jewel)
15 talk (Jewel)
16 Foolish Games Intro (Jewel)
17 Foolish Games (Jewel)
18 talk (Jewel)
19 Life Uncommon (Jewel)
20 talk (Jewel)
21 I'm Sensitive (Jewel)
22 talk (Jewel)
23 My Father’s Daughter (Jewel)
24 talk (Jewel)
25 1000 Miles Away (Jewel)
26 talk (Jewel)
27 Mercy (Jewel)
28 talk (Jewel)
29 When You Loved Me (Jewel)
30 talk (Jewel)
31 Who Will Save Your Soul (Jewel)
32 talk (Jewel)
33 Chime Bells (Jewel)
34 talk (Jewel)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15847066/Jewl_2020_LivefromSnQuarantineHomeConcert__3-21-2020_atse.zip.html

The cover art is a screenshot from the exact concert in question.