It’s one of those the-world-just-ain’t-freakin’-fair questions: How does the mainstream continue to avoid Jewell’s inestimable talents? With a voice that soars and croons where few chance to sail, keen, detailed songwriting, several wildly acclaimed albums, a neighborly, almost self-effacing stage demeanor and a crack, retro/country-billy band that swings you from Twin Peaks to Butcher Holler, Eilen Jewell never fails her audience. Yet she ain’t cracking the big stages on any regular basis.
Fortunately, when she takes the stage, these small matters dissolve in the wide prairie breeze always at her back. Opening with the lyrical “Needles and Thread” from her latest, impossibly good release Sundown Over Ghost Town, Jewell, with drummer/husband Jason Beek, twang-ologist Jerry Miller on guitar and in-pocket new bassist Shawn Supra, feted the SRO Helsinki crowd to a supremely spirited run through her vivid, expanding body of work.
Among the highlights were the cinematic “Rio Grande,” “Santa Fe,” Eric Andersen’s “Dusty Box Car Wall,” the swinging country/bop “High Shelf Booze,” “Bang Bang Bang” (wherein our heroine meets Cupid at a gun show and he explains he doesn’t aim so much as he fires randomly), the ribald “If You Catch Me Stealin'” and the emotionally charged “Where They Never Say Your Name,” “I Remember You” and “Rain Rolls In.”
-Mike Jurkovic
Unfortunately the actual person is such an arse_ole that it damages her career.
Well, this is the real Sybil Natawa and I have expressed this opinion before however I did not enter it anywhere on the internet and not here, a website I have never heard of before. (I thank the friend who alerted me to this.) I am a Buddhist and making a comment like this on the internet is a very negative thing to do. It was much too easy for someone to write it as me using my long established email address.
A Buddhist, like a Christian hopes for all beings to improve over time. None of us are perfect and redemption takes time. My best wishes to Jewell.