‘Jewel’s gone country,’ you say?
Tell that to AC rodeo editor Kendra Santos. She’s been there
since the beginning of Jewel and Ty Murray’s decade-long relationship.
When it comes to country living—cowboy living—
she’ll tell you that Jewel is a native, not a newcomer, who can
even teach one of the world’s greatest cowboys a few tricks.
by Kendra Santos
I should probably disclose up front how I know Jewel. She dates my dear friend and nine-time World Champion Cowboy Ty Murray. In case you’re new to cowboy culture, Ty’s the only cowboy ever to win seven Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association World All- Around Championships. He’s also a two-time PRCA World Champion Bull Rider. Ty and I met 20-some years back, as he was on the brink of launching his storied ProRodeo Hall of Fame career. Stock contracting legend Harry “The Duke” Vold tipped me off that this was a kid I needed to watch, as Vold just knew he was “going to be something special.” I was fresh out of college and kick-starting my career in cowboy journalism. We were both a little shy in the beginning, but we bonded. He already had two sisters, and I had two brothers by birth. But that bond built on trust has never weakened, and it’s something I’ll treasure till the day I die.
The stories have been told so many times about Jewel’s Alaskan outback upbringing, and about hardships she knew in California when having to live out of her car. What is less known is her close kinship with the cowboy world.
Jewel and Ty met at the 1999 National Western Stock Show and Rodeo in
Denver. She’d just played Aspen, Colo., and had a night off. Being the daughter of Atz Kilcher, an Alaskan all-around cowboy, Jewel Kilcher was someone
who was raised on the back of a horse, someone who grew up competing in regional rodeos. So she was naturally
curious about “the big rodeos down in the States [she’d] always heard of.” By happenstance, through a mutual friend of her record label, it was Ty who got her tickets to the sold-out event. She thanked him for going out of his way for her, and got his autograph for her dad.
They visited on the phone a few times in the following nine months, while she toured Asia, Australia, and Europe and he tore up this country’s cowboy trail.
I’ve never heard anyone with half of Jewel’s vocal range and
musical courage. She’s got that sultry, sexy whisper, and she can belt it out with
raspy, raucous abandon. My jaw hit the dirt when I heard her yodel for the first
time. Jewel’s closet is equally diverse. I’ve seen glamour girl Jewel when she
gets gussied up for shows and special appearances. Wow. The girl is gorgeous.
I also can’t help but stop and stare at some of her death-defying stiletto heels.
I’m in awe of them, and am not beneath hiking up her pant leg to have a better
look. I just know I’d blow out an ankle if I attempted three steps in them. But she’s just as comfortable, and just as
pretty, in jeans, a T-shirt, and bare feet—no makeup, no blow dryer.
You can imagine my angst before our
first meeting. I knew she was quite beautiful
(I have eyes) and had a magical voice
(I have ears), and that was all great. But would she make this guy I love like a
brother truly happy? Surely, he wouldn’t
pick a pampered prima donna princess
with a ’tude. Not Ty. But hey, they say
love is blind at times. And to be fair, it
would have been pretty darn easy to be
blinded by the blonde bombshell before
him. What a wonderful relief to get to
know her, and to find that she is normal
and nice. That she absolutely, positively
loves Ty as she does—and that the feeling
is mutual—makes me so happy. And
more than a decade after that first meeting
at the rodeo in Denver, they still look
at each other with new eyes.
"Love and romance are a song you have to keep writing"
“We’re both very supportive
of each other’s passions and
dreams,” she says. “And we both consider
it our job and our duty to earn each
other’s respect every day. Love and
romance are a song you have to keep
writing. They aren’t something you can
take for granted and let die. In your
career, if you quit being good at your job
you’re going to get fired. Love’s no different.
It’s like a garden. If you quit
watering it, it quits growing and producing
beautiful things for you.”
Each has a very full life. Like Ty says,
“It’s admirable for a woman to have her
own irons in the fire.” The life they share
at his Stephenville, Texas, ranch is a
bountiful bonus both hold very dear. He
built a small cedar cabin there in 2000—
the year after he walked away from an
unparalleled competitive rodeo career
and not long before hanging up his bull
rope for the last time in the spring of
2002—that sits simply and silently on the
Bosque River. There is no electricity and
no running water. The countertops and
shelves are made of old barn wood. It’s no
place for a pampered princess, but Jewel
is at complete comfort in that cabin.
It’s no wonder, really. Her grandfather,
Yule Kilcher, a key figure in the drafting of
the Alaskan Constitution, homesteaded
the remote Alaskan ranch where she was
raised. The living conditions were not of
this century. The family’s “running water”
was a hose that ran from a stream to just
above the house, an arrangement that let
gravity do the pumping. A scarf tied
around the end of the hose served as a
screen to keep worms, rocks, and dirt out
of their drinking water. Heat was an old
barrel that became a coal stove in its second
life, and the restroom was the outhouse
around back. Ty’s been there, and,
as he explained it to me, “Where Jewel
grew up is like going back in time 150
years.” So, you see, roughing it isn’t exactly
a stretch for this particular multi-platinum
singer-songwriter sensation, who has sold
more than 27 million albums worldwide.
Ty had no way of knowing just how
deep Jewel’s ranching roots ran back
when their story started. So when he
and a few of his cowboy buddies
planned a pack trip in the early going of
his and Jewel’s relationship, they
reserved an old plug of a horse for her.
She learned as a kid that there’s typically
a direct link between how much people
brag about how well they ride and
just how silly they look in the saddle. So
she just smiled, stuck her foot in the stirrup,
and climbed aboard. When she rode
the steepest mountains alongside the
men—fearless—and didn’t stop before
sipping straight from the stream, the
normally gruff cowboys welcomed her
into their inner circle with open arms.
“Jewel is really tough,” Ty
says with absolute admiration. “She’s
also smart and funny. We’re really different
in a lot of ways. She’s very, very,
very artistic. And I’m not.”
She took his hand and led him on a
guided tour into her world one cold New
Year’s Eve at the tiny Texas cabin. That’s
the night they co-wrote “Till We Run
out of Road,” which is featured on her
This Way album. Both have vivid and
fond memories of that evening.
“Jewel can write songs in her sleep,
and she coached me through it,” Ty
says. “She started plunking around on
her guitar, and it just happened. That
song is about me coming to terms with
retirement, but we wrote it in a way
that could relate to anybody’s passion.”
To this day, I smile with tears streaking
down my cheeks when I hear that
song. It takes me back to some really
great old days that I remember well. The part that says “You miss your boy and
your wife” is about Ty’s traveling partner
and mentor Cody Lambert getting
homesick for his son, Riley, and his wife,
Leanne. When it talks about “Lew” and
how he “misses it bad” and suggests you
“give it hell till the end / ’Cause once you
quit you can’t get it back again,” they’re
talking about ProRodeo Hall of Famer
Lewis Feild, who was basically riding out
of the cowboy spotlight as rookie phenom
Ty was riding into it.
“We wrote that song during an interesting
time in Ty’s life,” Jewel recalls.
“He was looking at retirement, but
wasn’t talking about it. He was very
preoccupied. Talking about it and writing
that song sort of helped some
answers come clear.”
One of the things they have in common
is a very personal inner drive that
stays on track—full steam ahead—even
when no one’s looking. Neither set out
to break from their humble past with the
goal of fame and fortune anywhere on
their list. His list was short. He wanted
to be the world’s best cowboy, and to
ride his way to the record for most world
all-around crowns ever. He’s still living
that dream, striving daily to be a better
horseman and a better cowboy (if that’s
possible)—a versatile repertoire that
includes skills ranging from roping and
doctoring sick calves to starting colts.
“John Wayne was an actor
in movies who stood for what America
stands for,” Jewel says. “Ty is that person.
He’s very black and white, and his
word is his bond. He’s a stand-up guy in
a world of flakes. He’s a man of honor.
It’s a very rare and old-fashioned thing,
and it’s an attractive quality. Ty was
taught right and wrong, and how to be a
man, from a group of cowboys, including
his dad. They have a code, and they
have to live up to that code.”
What drives Jewel is no different. She
didn’t strike out to hit it rich. She simply
wanted to be great at what she loves
most, and that’s music.
“Music comes as naturally to her
whole family as being a cowboy comes to
mine,” says Ty, who also describes Jewel
as “a gourmet cook who makes everything
from scratch.” (He only cooks
when they’re camping.) “My whole family
rides and ropes, and both sides of my
family have been cowboys for as long as I
know about. Jewel’s whole family plays
the guitar, the piano, and the harmonica.
They all sit around the campfire, pass the
guitar, and sing songs they’ve written.”
A young Ty Murray near the beginning of his rodeo career
When in jeans, Jewel sometimes
sports one of Ty’s gold buckles. You may
have noticed it on her belt in the video
for “Standing Still,” a song from her This
Way album. Ty appears and vanishes
throughout the video until they close it
out with a hug and a kiss. He loves her
smile, complete with shiny white teeth
never bound by braces. Some young
Japanese fans have actually had their
smiles realigned to look like Jewel’s.
Although some criticize her crooked
teeth, Ty thinks they’re sexy. I think her
come-as-you-are attitude is cool.
“I grew up with my teeth the way they
are,” she told me. “I’m used to how I
am. It doesn’t mean anything to me one
way or another. I feel lucky and blessed.
I’ve been given some real gifts, and it
feels greedy to want more.”
Greedy isn’t a word that would ever
make my long list in describing Jewel. The
girl who lived in her car during the trying
times that led to her professional start
founded Project Clean Water with her
brother in 1997. The basis behind this particular
cause was personal to Jewel
because, as she says, “When I was homeless
I had bad kidneys and couldn’t afford
clean water.” They’ve since funded some
35 wells in 15 countries, including Africa,
India, Mexico, and Tibet. They take it village
by village, and organize teams of engineers
and scientists to “solve the people’s
water problems at the village level.”
On the heels of her hot debut country
single, “Stronger Woman,” Jewel
released her first country album,
Perfectly Clear, in June. She kicked off a
tour with Brad Paisley June 11 in
Albuquerque, N.M., the town where Ty
annually hosts his popular Professional
Bull Riders’ Ty Murray Invitational.
Jewel and Paisley’s tour winds down in
October in Texas, which will make for a
short commute back home to the ranch.
“I’d like to have a long career,” she
says. “Not many women pull that off.
When you look at legacy singer-songwriters,
there aren’t many. Country’s a
perfect home for me. I don’t think my
music has changed very much. I didn’t
wake up one day and become somebody
else. I’m a storyteller and I’m a songwriter.
I look at it like building a house,
and this is a house I’m willing to build
and grow old in.”
Kendra Santos co-wrote with Ty Murray
his biography Roughstock: The Mud, the
Blood, and the Beer
