Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, we are so excited this week to be
Speaker 1: re releasing one of our favorite episodes of How Did
Speaker 1: We Get Weird?
Speaker 2: This is the episode we did with Jewel, who we are.
Speaker 1: Such a huge fan of, and we talk about her
Speaker 1: career journey from living in a remote homestead in Alaska
Speaker 1: to becoming a household name. She breaks down the lyrics
Speaker 1: for us of who Will Save Your Soul, and we
Speaker 1: just get to talk to her about a bunch of
Speaker 1: really cool stuff and really fun stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you've probably heard a lot of interviews with Jewel
Speaker 3: over the years about her music career and her incredible journey,
Speaker 3: but you probably haven't heard an interviewer ask her thoughts
Speaker 3: on the resurgence of the Dutch apple pop tart.
Speaker 1: So if you've ever wanted to know what it's like
Speaker 1: to humiliate yourself in front of Jewel of this is
Speaker 1: the episode for you.
Speaker 3: I did it so you don't have to, so please
Speaker 3: enjoy this episode.
Speaker 2: So, Jonah, I'm so excited because do you know what
Speaker 2: today is?
Speaker 3: Your birthday?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: Yes, happy birthday, Vanessa.
Speaker 2: Thank you so.
Speaker 1: Much, Jonah, and I couldn't be more excited about today's episode.
Speaker 1: This is one of my all time favorite singer songwriters
Speaker 1: that we got to have on the podcast today, and
Speaker 1: I'm just very grateful to be celebrating my birthday and
Speaker 1: having this podcast and getting to talk to you every week.
Speaker 3: Jonah, Well, thank you. That's really nice to say. It's
Speaker 3: been really fun for me to do this podcast with
Speaker 3: you and to reminisce about all this stuff. And I
Speaker 3: am also so excited about this guest, So yeah, we
Speaker 3: should get into it.
Speaker 2: Let's get into it. Hi. I'm Vanessa Bayer and this
Speaker 2: is my brother Jonah.
Speaker 3: We're two siblings who love to talk about our childhood
Speaker 3: and nostalgia and how shaped us into the people we
Speaker 3: are today.
Speaker 1: Who are very excited for today's episode. If I do
Speaker 1: say so myself.
Speaker 3: Welcome to How Did We Get Weird?
Speaker 1: So, Jonah, I was thinking about when we were kids
Speaker 1: and we used to hang out in this kind of
Speaker 1: hippy area of Cleveland called Coventry and it it kind
Speaker 1: of made us feel like we were pretty I guess,
Speaker 1: awesome teens.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean I used to go there. It was
Speaker 3: about a half hour away, and I feel like I would
Speaker 3: have mom and dad drop me off and it was
Speaker 3: just like where all the punks kind of hung out
Speaker 3: and like at that time, a lot of kids smoked
Speaker 3: cigarettes and just sat around and knowing it, you know,
Speaker 3: and it was just like a gathering place for like
Speaker 3: that community. And I think it used to be kind
Speaker 3: of more of a hippie community and like the seventies.
Speaker 1: In the seventies, Yeah, And I used to go to
Speaker 1: my still favorite restaurant called Tommy's in Coventry with my friends.
Speaker 1: And then once I was on SNL, I got to
Speaker 1: go to Tommy's and they asked me to sign a menu,
Speaker 1: which was really incredible. And then my friend Jenny Binstock
Speaker 1: went there a few years later. She complained because I
Speaker 1: guess they had some other menus up on the wall,
Speaker 1: including Adrian Grenier from Entourage, but they didn't have my
Speaker 1: menu up, and she was like, guys, and I think
Speaker 1: it was just an oversight.
Speaker 2: They've always been really nice to me. They put it
Speaker 2: up later, And now.
Speaker 1: You pointed out to me that I happened to be
Speaker 1: in the kind of a sore spot for you, given
Speaker 1: that you're not in our high school's Hall of Fame,
Speaker 1: and I am. I happen to be in the Tommy's
Speaker 1: Hall of Fame.
Speaker 3: Yep. So a lot of bands, a lot of musicians.
Speaker 3: It was down the street from the Grog Shop, which
Speaker 3: is a really big venue in Cleveland. So they got
Speaker 3: a lot of people, a lot of local celebrities, a
Speaker 3: lot of musicians. Yeah, so you are on the site.
Speaker 2: I'm on the site now.
Speaker 1: Our guest today, we'll get into this later, is on
Speaker 1: the interlock in the Hall of Fame. We're very excited
Speaker 1: for our guest today. She's a singer, songwriter, and actress
Speaker 1: and author. She's received multiple Grammy Award nominations. She's sold
Speaker 1: over thirty million albums worldwide. She won the sixth season
Speaker 1: of The Masked Singer where such huge fans. We're so
Speaker 1: excited to welcome Jewel. Hi guys, Hi, welcome.
Speaker 3: So Jul, I have this question for you that I've
Speaker 3: been wondering about for like twenty five years, related to Coventry.
Speaker 3: I remember this was like pre Internet, people saying Jewels
Speaker 3: playing at this coffee shop arabecaon Coventry, And I remember
Speaker 3: you sort of being on your rise, like too popular
Speaker 3: to be playing a coffee shop, but also like not
Speaker 3: as established, like it was just kind of starting out.
Speaker 3: This is in the nineties, did this actually happen. I
Speaker 3: cannot find any record of the internet. I'm worried I'm
Speaker 3: making it up.
Speaker 2: We also understand if you can't remember.
Speaker 3: Yes, it was like a very long time ago.
Speaker 4: I was, I was there. What I did in the
Speaker 4: early days was when I got discovered. I was in
Speaker 4: a coffee shop and I made a folk album at
Speaker 4: the height of grunge, which is, you know, not an
Speaker 4: incredibly optimistic outlook to think that will go well. My
Speaker 4: motto was so sexy, Are you guys ready for my life? Motto?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 4: If you can handle the hotness. Its hard. Grow slowly.
Speaker 4: It's very not sexy. It's just the idea that, like,
Speaker 4: if you want to be around a long time, you
Speaker 4: have to grow slowly. And so I wanted to recreate
Speaker 4: what I had in the coffee shop where I was discovered,
Speaker 4: which was just this really hardcore, amazing, emotionally connected audience.
Speaker 4: And it was because I played there every Thursday. And
Speaker 4: so I went ahead and started to do that all
Speaker 4: over the country. And so I broke the country up
Speaker 4: into regions and I would do loops Wow. So I
Speaker 4: would do Ohio in a circuit, you know, I would
Speaker 4: do Cleveland and then Cincinnati and then whatever kind of
Speaker 4: go into some other states. But I did it as
Speaker 4: a loop. So I was probably at that place in
Speaker 4: Coventry like every Friday night, you know, for like maybe
Speaker 4: a two month period while I was trying to break
Speaker 4: my career. Because radio wouldn't touch me, and nobody would.
Speaker 4: I was just considered like a big joke. So it
Speaker 4: was kind of my big plan was just kind of
Speaker 4: this grassroots effort.
Speaker 3: What was it like when you were kind of transitioning,
Speaker 3: like getting too big for coffee shops, having to play
Speaker 3: larger venues. What was that to kind of transition like
Speaker 3: for you?
Speaker 4: It was all really slow, in a bit of a
Speaker 4: blur again, like nobody was quick to put me on
Speaker 4: the radio, So it was I think I did five
Speaker 4: or six shows a day, so like in the morning,
Speaker 4: I'd sing at a high school wow, and then I
Speaker 4: would do probably two record stores, singing in parking lots.
Speaker 4: I'd probably do one to two radio shows in parking lots.
Speaker 4: Then I would open for somebody. During that phase. It
Speaker 4: was Peter Murphy from Beowhouse. I paid him five hundred
Speaker 4: dollars to let me saying on his stage. Golf fans
Speaker 4: that just looked at me like, what the fuck is
Speaker 4: this girl's looking up? And then I would do a
Speaker 4: midnight coffee shop show, so it was insane. I did
Speaker 4: over a thousand shows a year easily, and then it
Speaker 4: started to work. I think The Switch was my first
Speaker 4: album failed. I started to make a second album. Then
Speaker 4: Bob Dylan wanted to tour with me, and he liked
Speaker 4: what I did, and he was like, don't quit, don't
Speaker 4: give up, keep going, stick with this record. And you
Speaker 4: know when you get marching orders from Bob Dylan, you
Speaker 4: say yes, sir. And then Neil Young took me under
Speaker 4: his wing and he said the same thing. He's like,
Speaker 4: you may never be successful, like you may never be
Speaker 4: on radio. He's like, but you tour and you build
Speaker 4: up your audience the old fashioned way and you're either
Speaker 4: a singer songwriter or you're not, So what are you?
Speaker 4: And I was like, yes, sir, I understand, sir. By
Speaker 4: the time, I think it was when Conan put me
Speaker 4: on air that it started to really change. But I
Speaker 4: remember like that in between phase being funny because I
Speaker 4: was like in a shitty hotel with like staying you know,
Speaker 4: you don't want to touch anything. And I was doing
Speaker 4: a radio interview on the phone and he was like,
Speaker 4: what's it like to be famous? And I remember looking
Speaker 4: around the hotel room being like, my famous I did.
Speaker 4: It's shit, this is it.
Speaker 2: That's incredible. So yeah, so you were touring around.
Speaker 1: It's so funny because for me, as like a fan
Speaker 1: of yours, I remember when who Will Save Your Soul
Speaker 1: came out and it was such a huge thing. And
Speaker 1: I remember I was at overnight camp and my parents
Speaker 1: sent me like the cassette single which had that song
Speaker 1: near You Always Like on the back. I memorized both songs.
Speaker 1: It's just so interesting to.
Speaker 2: Hear about like your progression to that time, because for me,
Speaker 2: I was just.
Speaker 3: She's so good.
Speaker 1: She probably just you know, walked out and started singing
Speaker 1: people like great. But you know, now, knowing having my
Speaker 1: own career not being and having gone through that, I
Speaker 1: understand that that's it's a lot of work and that's
Speaker 1: not how it goes.
Speaker 4: But yeah, for me, you know, like I moved out
Speaker 4: at fifteen, I was homeless by eighteen. I ended up
Speaker 4: homeless because I wouldn't have sex with a boss and
Speaker 4: he wouldn't give me my paycheck, so I couldn't pay
Speaker 4: my rent and my landlord kicked me out. I was
Speaker 4: living in my car and my car got stolen. Oh,
Speaker 4: I was having bad kidneys, almost died in emergency room
Speaker 4: parking lots. They wouldn't see me sit. I'm insurance.
Speaker 1: Whoa.
Speaker 4: It was a really vicious poverty cycle. I think the
Speaker 4: media painted that time in my life like she was
Speaker 4: living in her car to chase her dream, that plucky girl.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what I was going to say, is like,
Speaker 1: that's the story that I knew about you. Was like
Speaker 1: she lived in her car and then she made it
Speaker 1: big and you're like, oh okay.
Speaker 4: And it was funny just to look back and be
Speaker 4: like I would tell the press I lived in my
Speaker 4: car because my boss wanted up sex with me and
Speaker 4: I wouldn't, And they were like lived in car to
Speaker 4: pursue dream, and I'd be like, so interesting, Like did
Speaker 4: they hear what I said? Now, there's like a way
Speaker 4: for people to hear that information. But then people didn't
Speaker 4: even they couldn't even process it. It was really a fascinating thing. Yeah,
Speaker 4: but when I got discovered it was a complete accident.
Speaker 4: I was singing every Thursday night in a coffee shop,
Speaker 4: trying to build up this audience so that I could
Speaker 4: save first and last month's rent. That was my whole
Speaker 4: life's goal. And then label started coming down and there
Speaker 4: was a huge bidding more over me and was offered
Speaker 4: a million dollar signing bonus as a homeless kid, and
Speaker 4: I went to the library and got a book called
Speaker 4: Everything You Need to Know about the Music Business and
Speaker 4: explained just the business, and I learned that the million
Speaker 4: dollars was a loan. Basically you would pay it back
Speaker 4: through record sales. And the way the recoupment worked was
Speaker 4: there was only certain pennies on the dollar that would
Speaker 4: go toward recouping that million. So for you to recoup
Speaker 4: a million was very, very difficult. You had to sell
Speaker 4: multiples of albums to be able to do that. And
Speaker 4: I had been deeply unhappy right I moved out at
Speaker 4: fifteen because my dad was abusive. I was having panic attacks,
Speaker 4: I was gooraphobic. While I was homeless, started developing exercises
Speaker 4: for myself that made a difference, and my shoplifting that
Speaker 4: made a difference in my panic attacks. I was getting
Speaker 4: happy even though I was homeless, even though I had nothing.
Speaker 4: The inner liberty that I was starting to have, the
Speaker 4: freedom from the prison, the kind of anxiety that I
Speaker 4: was in was lifting, and that was the most valuable
Speaker 4: thing I had, and I knew it, and I knew
Speaker 4: nothing was worth going back, and so I just was
Speaker 4: always kind of practical. And I looked at like, hey, Jule,
Speaker 4: do you think that getting famous would help this whole
Speaker 4: situation you got going or do you think it'd.
Speaker 3: Make it worse?
Speaker 4: And I was like, yeah, probably worse. It'd probably make
Speaker 4: my situation worse. You know. I'm the kid that when
Speaker 4: you add fame, you become every movie you've seen about
Speaker 4: every celebrity, it should in quite badly for people like me,
Speaker 4: and statistically it did. And so if I was going
Speaker 4: to have a different outcome, I had to have a
Speaker 4: plan of why do I think I wouldn't be a
Speaker 4: statistic Like what is so different about me? What am
Speaker 4: I going to do differently to have a different outcome?
Speaker 4: And so I made myself a promise. I almost didn't
Speaker 4: sign the deal. In general. I was like, I could
Speaker 4: just sing locally make a living. We're good, you know,
Speaker 4: But if I was going to take on the extra
Speaker 4: stress of like Holy shit, a record career is like stressful,
Speaker 4: a lot of pressure. My number one job, I called
Speaker 4: them my north star decision. My number one job was
Speaker 4: to learn how to be a happy, whole human and
Speaker 4: not a human full of holes, is what I wrote down.
Speaker 4: And my number two job was to learn to be
Speaker 4: a musician. And under that, my number one job was
Speaker 4: to be an artist more than fame. I cared about
Speaker 4: art more than fame, and so now I had two
Speaker 4: guiding principles to navigate every single decision by. And I
Speaker 4: just vowed that I would be loyal to those things.
Speaker 4: And I'm really proud to say I'm forty eight and
Speaker 4: I've been loyal to those things. And it's been a
Speaker 4: crazy ride and a total shit show, don't get me wrong,
Speaker 4: But I have never betrayed that goal. And that's why
Speaker 4: I turned down the million dollars, because that would have
Speaker 4: put a tremendous amount of pressure on an album I
Speaker 4: didn't even have yet, it wasn't recorded, and I cared
Speaker 4: about authenticity more than fame, and so I made a
Speaker 4: folk album that was live in the coffee shop because
Speaker 4: I wasn't anything else. I didn't know how to play
Speaker 4: with the band, I could have had a fancy producer,
Speaker 4: but that wouldn't have been authentic to who I really was, right,
Speaker 4: and so I made a really simple album at the
Speaker 4: height of grunge. And then yeah, it failed spectacularly. But
Speaker 4: then once it's started turning around, Like after two years,
Speaker 4: this thing turned around and I went from selling two
Speaker 4: thousand albums in a year to selling a million albums
Speaker 4: every thirty days for over a year. It was insane,
Speaker 4: like once it picked up, it was like bananas. But
Speaker 4: again that promise, like it got so big, and then
Speaker 4: I follow it up with hands and then I quit,
Speaker 4: which nobody really knows, but I quit after spirit.
Speaker 2: I didn't realize that I wasn't happy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it didn't make me happy. I didn't like it. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I loved a musician, but holy smokes, the type of
Speaker 4: famous I was was. You know, you can't go anywhere,
Speaker 4: you can't cross the seat, you can't go in a bathroom,
Speaker 4: you can't grocery shop. I didn't like it. It didn't
Speaker 4: work well for my number one goal, which was being happy. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and so I quit for two years just to give
Speaker 4: myself permission to be Like, would I rather be a photographer?
Speaker 4: Would I rather go to school. I don't know what
Speaker 4: would make me happy. And I realized I love music.
Speaker 4: I just didn't like fame. Yeah, but I realized in
Speaker 4: the two years I took off, my fame really plummeted
Speaker 4: and it was awesome. That's so great. Made everybody around
Speaker 4: me crazy. They're like, your goal is to be You
Speaker 4: nearly killed yourself for this and now you're w And
Speaker 4: I was like, Yep, that's my plan. I'm going to
Speaker 4: be less famous and make any music I want at
Speaker 4: any fucking time, in any genre because I owe myself
Speaker 4: happiness and that's what.
Speaker 2: Makes me happy.
Speaker 4: But there weren't words like mental health breaks or we've
Speaker 4: seen people have psychological breakdowns. I think Maria Carrey had
Speaker 4: one around then maybe, or something like I'm unwilling. I
Speaker 4: am unwilling to have a mental breakdown for this dumb
Speaker 4: record cycle that you guys think I need to be in.
Speaker 4: But I was shamed for it, for sure, you know,
Speaker 4: by the industry, by the press. But you have to
Speaker 4: make those decisions based on those north Star goals and
Speaker 4: know that over an arc or trust, really have faith
Speaker 4: that over an arc that is authenticity and it will
Speaker 4: pay off.
Speaker 1: That's so great that you had those goals for yourself,
Speaker 1: and it feels like you were so ahead of your
Speaker 1: time because now I feel like we understand so much
Speaker 1: more about like the mental health of it. And good
Speaker 1: for you that you knew what you needed and you know,
Speaker 1: obviously you had to face a lot of adversity growing
Speaker 1: up and the fact that you came out of it
Speaker 1: with like you know, you knew when that million dollar
Speaker 1: offer came on the table, you were like, I'm going
Speaker 1: to like look into this.
Speaker 2: I'm not just going to like go for the money.
Speaker 4: That's incredible because it can't be at any cost, right,
Speaker 4: it just can't be. There is a cost, you know,
Speaker 4: it's not worth That's why I said no to the
Speaker 4: boss and I paid a huge price. But it's not
Speaker 4: life at any cost. It's not paying my rent at
Speaker 4: any cost. Yeah, I have to say, like I have
Speaker 4: a youth foundation. And something I always tell them is
Speaker 4: when you invest in your character, it's like the most
Speaker 4: insane stock market. Right. I lost a lot, Like living
Speaker 4: in my car and becoming homeless was a terrible price
Speaker 4: to pay. Yeah, but I invested in my character. I
Speaker 4: invested in my humanity and it ended up turning into
Speaker 4: a career. I guarantee you if I'd stayed at that job,
Speaker 4: I never would have taken writing that seriously. And I
Speaker 4: wouldn't had a lot of free time to do it
Speaker 4: because I would have I worked, you know, to the
Speaker 4: bone to just pay rent and eat food. Yeah, so
Speaker 4: it ended up being a gift. It sure didn't feel
Speaker 4: like one. And it could have tanked me if I
Speaker 4: got really negative and started doing drugs and kept shoplifting
Speaker 4: like it could have ruined my life. And I could
Speaker 4: have pointed to like that bastard ruined my life. But
Speaker 4: it didn't because I was able to turn it around
Speaker 4: and keep my chin up and keep saying, how do
Speaker 4: I get happy? How do I get happier? What am
Speaker 4: I willing to do to get happier?
Speaker 3: Amazing? I mean, I'm curious. You know, we talk about
Speaker 3: a lot of nostalgic topics on the podcast, and I
Speaker 3: think performing at coffee shops was such kind of a
Speaker 3: big thing in the nineties and another two thousands, which
Speaker 3: I don't think is a thing anymore. I don't know
Speaker 3: if it's because it's so corporate now with all the
Speaker 3: chains and stuff. I mean, how do you kind of
Speaker 3: look back at that era and that kind of culture
Speaker 3: of coffee house and art and performance.
Speaker 4: It was a neat minute where it really was real,
Speaker 4: and there was mom and pop coffee shops, and you
Speaker 4: have to realize it was just before Starbucks. It wasn't
Speaker 4: a thing yet. I don't think Starbucks is evil. It's
Speaker 4: just life changes, right, and coffee shops each had their
Speaker 4: own vibe, you know, their own little deal. A few
Speaker 4: of them cared about artists, a few of them really
Speaker 4: wanted life music. A few of them even made a
Speaker 4: culture of it. And that's where you went to see people.
Speaker 4: The woman that had the coffee shop, I got discovered
Speaker 4: and I started at a coffee shop. I was a barista.
Speaker 4: I had a guy got up and sang, and he
Speaker 4: let me send in with him. And that's the first
Speaker 4: time I think I ever played my own stuff out.
Speaker 4: And then he was trying to make a nude calendar
Speaker 4: and I said no. But a sixteen year old girl
Speaker 4: who was a runaway. He just knew he had her.
Speaker 4: He just knew she was scared and she was saying no,
Speaker 4: but she was a little bit tentative, and so I
Speaker 4: stuck up four and I was like fuck off. The
Speaker 4: answer is no, leave her alone. He fired me on
Speaker 4: the spot.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: I was like, what like that backburn? So I went
Speaker 4: and sat down and this guy's at the table I'm
Speaker 4: just sitting in shocking, goes what's the matter. I'm like,
Speaker 4: I just got fired. He's like, do you need a job?
Speaker 4: I was like I do. That's the fucker that asked
Speaker 4: me to sleep with him. Later, by the way, Oh.
Speaker 2: God, it would you get real real?
Speaker 4: And then I was trying to sing in coffee shops
Speaker 4: and by this time San Diego was a hotbed for
Speaker 4: grunge signings, like record labels were coming to see grung
Speaker 4: jacks and so everyone thought they were a discovery venue
Speaker 4: and they were charging artists to play there. And I
Speaker 4: was like, yeah, can I not just get like anywhere
Speaker 4: that would pay me to sing? And my friend Gregory
Speaker 4: had a big following, and he was like, do you
Speaker 4: want to come and sit in on my gig? And
Speaker 4: I'm like, yes, yes, do we get paid? Yeah? I
Speaker 4: need some money living in my car and he goes, yeah,
Speaker 4: it'll all work out. So I go there we sing.
Speaker 4: It's packed, not because of me, My friend Gregory packed
Speaker 4: this place and there was a door charge, five dollars
Speaker 4: door charge. I go up. He's like, I'll get my
Speaker 4: I'll go settle out. I grew up bar singing, so
Speaker 4: I knew how to settle out the whole nine yards.
Speaker 4: And I go up to this woman. I don't remember
Speaker 4: her name. I would call her out if I did.
Speaker 4: And I said, hey, like, how do we split the
Speaker 4: door money? I'm new here. And she goes, oh, we don't,
Speaker 4: and I go come again. I was like, my friend
Speaker 4: Gregory like filled this place up, Like what's his cut
Speaker 4: of the door and she goes, there is none. And
Speaker 4: I was like, oh, so we must be keeping all
Speaker 4: the coffee sales and all the food sales. That's great.
Speaker 4: How much did we make tonight? She looked at me like,
Speaker 4: you don't get the food and coffee sales. And I
Speaker 4: was like, are you telling me we just sang for tips?
Speaker 4: Like are you telling me we packed your place for
Speaker 4: tip money? And she said yes. And I'm feisty, a
Speaker 4: little bit fisty, and I remember sticking my finger in
Speaker 4: her face. I was so upset for my friend.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what in the holy.
Speaker 4: Hell is this guy supposed to What am I supposed
Speaker 4: to do? Yeah? I put my finger in her face
Speaker 4: and I go, I'm cursing you. I did, I said it.
Speaker 4: I was like, I am cursing you. I'm like, you
Speaker 4: are stealing from the people that are helping you pay
Speaker 4: your rent. I go, you will fail. The word will
Speaker 4: get out that you are stealing from us, and you
Speaker 4: will fail. I was like, I walked out, dramatic, I like,
Speaker 4: keep your tip money. Later's like, why did I have
Speaker 4: her keep the tip money? But then I found this
Speaker 4: place that was going out of business, and I was
Speaker 4: just was like, can you try and keep your doors open?
Speaker 4: And I want all the door money if I bring
Speaker 4: people in and you can keep all the coffee. And
Speaker 4: I was like, and we hook and that was it.
Speaker 4: We made We made a go together.
Speaker 3: Wow, amazing. How was your latte art as a brist
Speaker 3: Are we only good at it? I can't. I can't
Speaker 3: get it.
Speaker 4: I couldn't remember how to do it. Now. Maybe I
Speaker 4: was good at it. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm so impressed by latte art, even if
Speaker 1: it's just a leaf.
Speaker 2: I'm not had it.
Speaker 4: It wasn't even yet.
Speaker 3: That wasn't a thing yet, right, No, No.
Speaker 4: I didn't even get my milk to far off hardly.
Speaker 4: You just got you God damn coffee gen x. What's
Speaker 4: up right, right, right right?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, because now there's like those frothing things like.
Speaker 3: Now you got oat milk, coconut milk, al my milk.
Speaker 2: Oat milk famously hard to froth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh my God, tell me about it. We're going
Speaker 3: to take a quick break and we'll be right back
Speaker 3: with Jewel.
Speaker 2: And we're back.
Speaker 1: So, Joel, we had asked you for, you know, a
Speaker 1: nostalgic topic to talk about today. By the way, I'm
Speaker 1: still fascinated to hear the rest of your story, so
Speaker 1: I guess I don't want to interrupt that at all.
Speaker 1: But we chose the topic Cyndi Lauper, which is something
Speaker 1: that I also feel very nostalgic for and really love
Speaker 1: so much. And I'm curious if Cindy Lapper kind of
Speaker 1: influenced you at all or why you wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about her today.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't say she influenced me particularly. I grew up
Speaker 4: on a homestead in Alaska with no electricity and right whatever,
Speaker 4: and I moved to Anchorage her a little bit to
Speaker 4: live with my mom, and MTV was a thing, and
Speaker 4: it was like Huey Lewis in the news. I think, right,
Speaker 4: Donna and Cindy Lapper, and I just felt like you
Speaker 4: fell into one of two camps. You were either like
Speaker 4: a Madonna person or a Cindy Lapper person. And I
Speaker 4: feel like I did not connect to Madonna any way,
Speaker 4: shape or form. But Cindy seemed like authentic and spunky
Speaker 4: and like she cared and it wasn't just a contrived thing.
Speaker 4: I always thought Madonna was really contrived. Sorry, Madonna was
Speaker 4: just we never resonated for you. But Cindy was like
Speaker 4: this alternative of just like, Yeah, I thought like she
Speaker 4: seemed really authentic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was just rewatching some of her music videos,
Speaker 1: and she is such a free spirit.
Speaker 2: It seems like.
Speaker 1: I also really loved their style. And I loved like
Speaker 1: you mentioned jelly bracelets, like all the jelly bracelets, and
Speaker 1: just I as a kid, would like make up dances
Speaker 1: a lot to songs, and so I remember True Colors
Speaker 1: being even though I loved girls just want to have fun,
Speaker 1: Like True Colors was the one that I really made
Speaker 1: up a.
Speaker 2: Lot of dances too. Do you remember that music video.
Speaker 4: I don't remember the music video. I know that song
Speaker 4: it's just a full time forever song, so good.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's on a beach. It's a really weird music video.
Speaker 1: There's these kids and she's where. It's someone who has
Speaker 1: such a huge imagination came up with this video, you
Speaker 1: can tell. And I also remember, because I didn't understand
Speaker 1: corporate culture at all. I don't know if you remember this,
Speaker 1: but there was a Kodak commercial that used the song
Speaker 1: True Colors, and I remember being just completely like blown
Speaker 1: away by.
Speaker 2: The fact that a Cindy Lomer song was in a commercial.
Speaker 1: And it's a pretty intense commercial, like it shows all
Speaker 1: these kids kind of like I guess, for lack of
Speaker 1: a better term, like reaching their potential, like just doing
Speaker 1: this stuff and like dunking a basketball or something like
Speaker 1: they're just like living their best life. Sure, I feel
Speaker 1: like I really resonated with that too. Have you ever
Speaker 1: met Cyndi Lauper.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we met at a Grammy's once. I think she
Speaker 4: was sitting behind me and somebody tapped me on the
Speaker 4: shoulder and I was like, Sidney Laupper really lovely, you know, lovely,
Speaker 4: lovely person. We stay in touch.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I think that she's a real artist and
Speaker 4: she's a real woman, and not that other people aren't,
Speaker 4: but I think some people get stuck in images of
Speaker 4: themselves in my business, and other people don't get as stuck.
Speaker 4: And she didn't seem like she was stuck. She seems
Speaker 4: like she's alive in her life. You know. Yeah, she's
Speaker 4: a great advocate. Again, I hate to pick on Madonna,
Speaker 4: but I'd rather be Cindy Lapper right now than Madonna. Like, yeah,
Speaker 4: watching Madonna' social media's rough, like doesn't look like whoa, it's.
Speaker 3: Hard, Vanessa. Have you met you met Cindy?
Speaker 2: I met Cyndi Lauper once.
Speaker 1: She was on Seth Meyer's show, and I guess I
Speaker 1: was at thirty Rock and they were like, do you
Speaker 1: want to meet Cyndey Lapper And I was like yes,
Speaker 1: And I went in to her dressing room and she
Speaker 1: had like I couldn't really see her because she had
Speaker 1: one of those sheet masks on because she was getting
Speaker 1: ready to like I don't know. And she was just
Speaker 1: so nice and she gave me an album and I
Speaker 1: just pink hair. It was like, she's exactly kind of yeah,
Speaker 1: who you want her to be. I just loved her style.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've talked about this many times on this
Speaker 1: podcast that when I was a kid, I had short,
Speaker 1: curly hair and I used to wear like thick yarn
Speaker 1: like around my head and like a million breads, so
Speaker 1: it looked like long hair and stuff. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: a real and it too too to school, like just
Speaker 1: looked into and I think I was kind of channelling
Speaker 1: Cindy Lauper a little bit, and I just love that spirit.
Speaker 1: I think it sort of comes through when I was
Speaker 1: just watching her music videos again, like I was saying, like,
Speaker 1: it really comes through that she was her own person,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure, like you, like she really had to,
Speaker 1: like you were saying, she's an advocate for a lot
Speaker 1: of other causes now and stuff, but she really had
Speaker 1: to like figure stuff out. It was to get your
Speaker 1: own kind of unique voice out there. I'm sure you
Speaker 1: really have to advocate for yourself.
Speaker 4: Yeah, definitely, you know this business for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, the other thing that Cindy Loper kind of makes
Speaker 1: me think of that sort of I guess it's not
Speaker 1: directly related, but like sort of in the nineties, there
Speaker 1: was also like all the Betsy Johnson stuff that that
Speaker 1: clothing and I don't know, I just feel like that's
Speaker 1: very Cindy lopersk had Cindy loperesque. Were you sort of
Speaker 1: inspired by that kind of stuff too? Were you into
Speaker 1: Betsy John? I feel like you had like such a
Speaker 1: sort of unique sound and also unique style, like very
Speaker 1: sort of.
Speaker 2: I don't want to put you in a box in any.
Speaker 1: Way, but just very like chill and kind of like
Speaker 1: to me, I was just like, Okay, everything she does
Speaker 1: is so cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I remember seeing my video on MTV. Yeah, and
Speaker 4: I think that's kind of like the MTV Music Awards
Speaker 4: the next day, and it was like Beck and everybody,
Speaker 4: and I was like, somehow I had never watched MTV
Speaker 4: like in my career, but I remember like seeing all
Speaker 4: these videos and then my little dorky one in the bathroom.
Speaker 2: Yes, in the bathroom.
Speaker 4: How did I end up on EMPTV like who Will.
Speaker 2: See Your Soul?
Speaker 4: Yet?
Speaker 1: Famously in the bathroom? What made you want to do
Speaker 1: that video in a bathroom? Or was that something that.
Speaker 4: Something for me? You know again, like when I was homeless,
Speaker 4: I was so lonely. Moving out of fifteen's hard, right,
Speaker 4: It's very fucking hard, of course, I'm sure, And you
Speaker 4: tap into things that you have naturally, like I was
Speaker 4: always naturally really independent, you know. So if given a
Speaker 4: choice of being in a cabin with a guy that's
Speaker 4: mean to me or just being in a cabin, I'd
Speaker 4: rather go in a cabin, right, But paying rent and
Speaker 4: hitchhiking to school, and it was very hard, and for me,
Speaker 4: safety was being independent, being alone, being away. So fast
Speaker 4: forward to homelessness, very lonely. I didn't want to hang
Speaker 4: out with the other homeless kids because they'd lost hope
Speaker 4: and they were doing drugs. And I had vowed when
Speaker 4: I was eight to never drink or do drugs because
Speaker 4: I grew up in bars. And I was like, yeah,
Speaker 4: that doesn't work. That's not a great strategy. Like I'm
Speaker 4: seeing the end result and they're dying, and so being
Speaker 4: homeless was dangerous, Like you don't make it out of
Speaker 4: that all the time, and so being off by myself
Speaker 4: was like the strategy. But I was so lonely, and
Speaker 4: I was like, yeah, it's kind of interesting. I kind
Speaker 4: of deserve it. I don't tell anybody the truth about
Speaker 4: what's going on. I keep the truth incredibly well guarded.
Speaker 4: The only place I was honest was in this notebook
Speaker 4: that I wrote in, and so I was like, what
Speaker 4: if I tell the truth? What if I take the
Speaker 4: risk of I think now what we would call being vulnerable.
Speaker 4: It was such a relief, you know. And I got
Speaker 4: on my first stage and my first coffee shop. It
Speaker 4: was two boys, two surfer boys, and I sang a
Speaker 4: five hour set of the most gut wrenching, emotional bearing
Speaker 4: muspic you've ever heard. And they cried, like these guys
Speaker 4: that I pretty sure you know and like came in
Speaker 4: off the street. We were all just crying together. And
Speaker 4: the next week they told two more people came, and
Speaker 4: then six more people. And the reason I loved that
Speaker 4: little community is it really was life saving. I got
Speaker 4: to be authentic, I got to be myself. I got
Speaker 4: to be so flawed and fucked up and sincere and
Speaker 4: earnest all at the same time. And it was such
Speaker 4: a relief that I never wanted to go back, you know.
Speaker 4: And the risk with celebrities that you play a part.
Speaker 4: I didn't want to play a part because that would
Speaker 4: make me feel like I was lying. It make me
Speaker 4: feel like, yeah, like I was lying, Like I had
Speaker 4: to maintain something that wasn't authentic to me. So for me.
Speaker 4: It was just authenticity at any cost. You know, that
Speaker 4: to me was more valuable than anything else, than being famous,
Speaker 4: than making it. And so just everything I did, I
Speaker 4: wanted it to really be who I was. You know,
Speaker 4: my record is really who I was. I was not
Speaker 4: more talented than what was on that album. That was it.
Speaker 4: That was the level of my guitar playing ability, of
Speaker 4: my songwriting ability. It was really me, and that video
Speaker 4: was really me. You know. I came from a homestead
Speaker 4: where I shit you not. I carried around a tupperware
Speaker 4: container of dirt because I was so homesick that I
Speaker 4: would just smell it. And I think in the video
Speaker 4: you will see a thing of dirt. I don't know
Speaker 4: if anybody caught it. And I would go in the
Speaker 4: bathroom to pray. And I don't subscribe to any religion
Speaker 4: all for all of them. I just would go in
Speaker 4: there for a moment to pray, to be quiet, to
Speaker 4: be still, to try and recalibrate myself of how I
Speaker 4: oriented myself in the world. And so the bathroom stall
Speaker 4: was like my little alter. And so that's what I
Speaker 4: made the video about. And it's where I watched people,
Speaker 4: it's where I wrote a lot of my lyrics. I
Speaker 4: would just hang out in bathrooms and watch people do
Speaker 4: heroin and get in fights and drag someone in by
Speaker 4: the hair. And you know, it's gnarally when you're homeless.
Speaker 4: If you hang out in a bathroom, you just you
Speaker 4: see a lot of life. It's like hanging out in
Speaker 4: a bar in a weird way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, wow, I'm curious, Like, I work as like a
Speaker 3: mental health clinician, and obviously you experienced so much trauma.
Speaker 3: Sounds like you're a child, Like, how do you feel
Speaker 3: like the trauma kind of do you feel like your
Speaker 3: art was a release for that or influenced by that
Speaker 3: or is that what do you think the role was
Speaker 3: maybe of trauma in your kind of own artistic vision.
Speaker 4: When I moved out at fifteen, I knew statistically, kids
Speaker 4: like me repeat the cycle. I was really lucky because
Speaker 4: I had a philosophy class amazingly really young, probably in
Speaker 4: eighth grade, and so I'd been recont and Socrates and Plato.
Speaker 4: By the time I was fifteen, I had read a
Speaker 4: fair amount, and I knew this idea of nature versus nurture,
Speaker 4: and I realized my nurture was really bad. I would
Speaker 4: didn't know the word traumatizing at the time that I
Speaker 4: knew it was damaging, and it made me wonder if
Speaker 4: I could ever get to know my nature. That's a
Speaker 4: really heavy thing to worry about because moving out at fifteen,
Speaker 4: you want to think you might have a shot, but
Speaker 4: statistically you don't have a shot. So what are you
Speaker 4: going to do? What was I going to do? That
Speaker 4: made me think that this was a good idea. It
Speaker 4: was actually very dangerous, So I should stay home with
Speaker 4: an abusive dad if I didn't have a better plan,
Speaker 4: because just moving out and thinking it would work out
Speaker 4: wasn't smart, right, And so I spent a lot of
Speaker 4: time pondering at really writing about it. And it scared
Speaker 4: me because I had this bunny named Caramel, and it
Speaker 4: was raised with chickens, and it acted like a chicken.
Speaker 4: It would pecket its food and it didn't hop normally.
Speaker 4: It had this funny wattle hop and it would lay
Speaker 4: on the nests for hens and it would hatch eggs
Speaker 4: for them. It super cute, but super frightening to think,
Speaker 4: what if I'm a bunny that thinks it's a chicken
Speaker 4: that we'll never get to know It's bunny nature? How
Speaker 4: well I know my own bunny nature? And so I
Speaker 4: set off on this mission to see if you could
Speaker 4: lift the skin of nurture, How could I get to
Speaker 4: know my nature? I was willing to presuppose that it
Speaker 4: doesn't just go away, and so that was so fascinating
Speaker 4: to me intellectually, Yeah, that it was like a thread
Speaker 4: to pull. And I wanted to see if happiness was
Speaker 4: a learnable skill, and so all my music was an
Speaker 4: extension of that very simple question. Is happiness a learnable skill?
Speaker 4: Is it a teachable skill? What if nobody's coming for me?
Speaker 4: What if I have to come for me? What if
Speaker 4: I have to save my own soul? You can see
Speaker 4: why I wrote Who Will Save Your Soul? Is my
Speaker 4: very first song. That was my first thing I ever wrote.
Speaker 4: I was sixteen, because that's what I was thinking about. Oh,
Speaker 4: nobody else is responsible? I am? What if the book
Speaker 4: stops here? You know, people living their lives for you
Speaker 4: on TV they think they're better than you, and you
Speaker 4: agree like oh, like you know, it was really me
Speaker 4: trying to make sense of this kind of pop culture idolatry.
Speaker 4: And you know, it's funny looking back at the lyrics
Speaker 4: that I said, she says, hold my calls from behind
Speaker 4: the cold brick walls, says, come your boy, there's nothing
Speaker 4: for free. I talked about the Me Too movement that
Speaker 4: I flipped the roles as women doing it to men
Speaker 4: because it's what I was. I saw it everywhere. I
Speaker 4: saw the leveraging of power, whether you were male or female.
Speaker 4: So my career was about trying to understand my nature. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and my life was really traumatic. You know, being homeless
Speaker 4: was traumatic. And then my mom took all my money.
Speaker 4: When I was thirty, I ended up three million dollars
Speaker 4: in debt as a thirty three year old. Wow, And
Speaker 4: it was you have to read the book to understand
Speaker 4: what it's called ever Broken. It's too much to get into,
Speaker 4: but I basically had to, as a thirty four year old,
Speaker 4: go back through my life and reassess every single thing
Speaker 4: I'd been told and whether it was true or not.
Speaker 4: And I had so much anxiety and so much had
Speaker 4: been done to like really kind of brainwashing, that I
Speaker 4: didn't want to go to a therapist. And when I
Speaker 4: was young, I didn't have access to therapists. And then
Speaker 4: when I was older, I didn't want to let have
Speaker 4: access to me right, and so I had to come
Speaker 4: up with tools that started to help reprogram me. And so,
Speaker 4: just like that time of being homeless, I came up
Speaker 4: with a tremendous amount of behavior I was very behavioral oriented.
Speaker 4: That wasn't a word that I was aware of, but
Speaker 4: I know I needed to act differently for things to
Speaker 4: be differently. And for some reason, I had a freakish talent.
Speaker 4: I didn't note at the time, but I had a
Speaker 4: freakish talent for creating behavioral skills that became an entire
Speaker 4: curriculum that now is a curriculum for public schools. It's
Speaker 4: a curriculum for my foundation we've been using for twenty years.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 4: During this time after my mom, I had to come
Speaker 4: up with a whole other set and one of the
Speaker 4: best things I'll just share, like because talking about tools
Speaker 4: is so general, but I'll like share one just kind
Speaker 4: of anchor into something. It suddenly dawned on me because
Speaker 4: we're talking about nature and nurture. I don't know if
Speaker 4: anybody's ever heard that allegory of the Golden Statue. It's
Speaker 4: a story about a village has a beautiful golden, solid
Speaker 4: gold statue. They hear a warring tribe is coming. They
Speaker 4: cover the statue in mud to hide its value. The
Speaker 4: war comes, it devastates the village. The villagers don't even
Speaker 4: think about the statue. Generations go by a huge rainstorm
Speaker 4: and happens. A child's at the foot of the statue
Speaker 4: and sees a peak of gold, and they realize they've
Speaker 4: been living with a solid gold statue for generations. For
Speaker 4: some reason, I'm very, very broken. My mom's betrayed me
Speaker 4: in the most ultimate ways. I had to put a
Speaker 4: hold on my career a mirror. Mirrors really seem to
Speaker 4: do epiphantal moments for me. I look in the mirror
Speaker 4: and I think of this golden statue, and I go,
Speaker 4: your nature can't go away, Like your nature is into
Speaker 4: teacup that just breaks. It's there. It exists fully at
Speaker 4: all times, from what I know of quantum physics, like,
Speaker 4: it doesn't cease to exist whatever it is it energy,
Speaker 4: can't cease to exist. Okay, So what if I'm not broken?
Speaker 4: What if I just have to do an archaeological dig
Speaker 4: back to the golden statue? You know, that was a
Speaker 4: whole different thing, because thinking you're broken and that something's
Speaker 4: wrong with you is a really fucked proposition. Realizing you're
Speaker 4: actually intact and you have to get rid of the
Speaker 4: blood and the hurt and the trauma and the pain
Speaker 4: and the betrayal and the suspicion. That's a big job, mind,
Speaker 4: but you have to dig back to your authenticity. That
Speaker 4: felt doable somehow. I don't know why, but it felt
Speaker 4: doable because I started coming from this proposition of what
Speaker 4: if something's right with me? What if something's not wrong
Speaker 4: with me? And where that really comes into play was anxiety.
Speaker 4: What if I was that anxious not because something was
Speaker 4: wrong with me. What if I was that anxious because
Speaker 4: something was right with me.
Speaker 2: What if my.
Speaker 4: Anxiety was actually meant something was working. Like a car alarm,
Speaker 4: somebody's breaking into a car, the car alarm goes off.
Speaker 4: Don't get mad at the car alarm. Make sure that
Speaker 4: there's no robber. Food poisoning. It made me think of
Speaker 4: food poisoning like you eat a bad piece of fish,
Speaker 4: you get violently ill, you throw up, Don't be mad
Speaker 4: that you're throwing up, Get curious about what you ate,
Speaker 4: and don't eat it again. Yeah, so I was willing
Speaker 4: suddenly to presuppose that my anxiety was my body's only
Speaker 4: way of communicating that I was consuming something that didn't
Speaker 4: agree with me, that was making me sick, and my
Speaker 4: body was trying to say, I just consumed a thought
Speaker 4: of feeling or an action that made me sick. And
Speaker 4: could I get curious and observant and write down what
Speaker 4: was I just thinking, feeling or doing? So the amounts
Speaker 4: of anxiety, you know, panic attacks, agoraphobia that I've had
Speaker 4: in my life for intense, I have gotten all of
Speaker 4: it to quiet down because of this one exercise of
Speaker 4: going all right, I can tell in my body I'm
Speaker 4: super anxious. Rather than push it out and trying to
Speaker 4: avoid it, I'm going to get closer to it. I'm
Speaker 4: going to invite it in. I'm going to go thank you.
Speaker 4: Something must be making me sick. What am I consuming?
Speaker 4: What thought was I just having? What was I just saying?
Speaker 4: What was I just doing? And then the trick is
Speaker 4: will I stop doing it? That's where the real rubber
Speaker 4: meets the road in people's practices. You know, am I accountable?
Speaker 4: Does the book stop here? Am I willing to stop
Speaker 4: making excuses of why I have to think that? Am
Speaker 4: I willing to stop making excuses of why I have
Speaker 4: to do this or why I have to tolerate this
Speaker 4: thing in my life. That's when you start getting a
Speaker 4: lot healthier. And so now I teach kids to use
Speaker 4: anxiety like no, no, no, no, no, this is not a
Speaker 4: bad thing. This means something's really working, your body is
Speaker 4: really communicating to you. All you have to do is
Speaker 4: use your anxiety as the map to find out how
Speaker 4: to improve your life.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's incredible.
Speaker 4: So those are the kind of the skills we teach
Speaker 4: you'll never broke in. We're right now actually starting a
Speaker 4: new campaign at launches really soon. Actually it's called hashtag
Speaker 4: You're Not Alone. But what we've developed over the last
Speaker 4: twenty years are mental health tools that work for people
Speaker 4: without therapy. I love therapy, I'm all for it, just
Speaker 4: not everybody has access to it, and not everybody's honestly
Speaker 4: getting the results they want from therapy. It makes them
Speaker 4: feel better while they talk, but maybe their life isn't
Speaker 4: improving in the way that they want. Definitely encourage people
Speaker 4: if you're working with a therapist, what is your goal? Like,
Speaker 4: how do you know when it's working? You sho have
Speaker 4: some metrics around it, you know, you should see improvements
Speaker 4: in your anxiety. You should see improvements in your bill
Speaker 4: to go out in public if you have social anxiety.
Speaker 4: And if you're not seeing those improvements, nothing's wrong with you, right.
Speaker 4: You just haven't found the right tool yet. Maybe you
Speaker 4: need a different therapist, or maybe you need to be
Speaker 4: more into like a cognitive or dialectical or different types
Speaker 4: of modalities. Anyway, what we developed works without therapy. It's
Speaker 4: all behavioral based. It's practices like what I just told you.
Speaker 4: You know, write down what you're thinking, feeling, and doing
Speaker 4: when you're anxious, quit doing it, come back to me
Speaker 4: and evia worse basically, And so we're getting celebrities and CEOs.
Speaker 4: We'd love if you guys would join. Actually I didn't
Speaker 4: think of that. Little did you know you were getting
Speaker 4: pitched into these Well.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, I'm sorry that when we
Speaker 1: introduced you, I talked about the masked Singer instead of this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, not a lot of people know about it, but
Speaker 4: we're just having people make thirty second view those saying,
Speaker 4: you know, mental health is at an all time crisis.
Speaker 4: Fifty percent of people that need tools don't have access
Speaker 4: to them. So I'm donating x auction item and we're
Speaker 4: using those funds to be able to scale proven tools
Speaker 4: digitally to people that live in mental health deserts. So
Speaker 4: that's what we're doing on that.
Speaker 2: That's incredible. That's incredible.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: When we post about this podcast, will put the link
Speaker 1: and all that stuff in the in the description. But
Speaker 1: it's so amazing to hear your story. And here, when
Speaker 1: I was fifteen, I had leukemia and I started seeing
Speaker 1: this I don't even know what kind of therapist she was,
Speaker 1: like when I was in my early twenties, and she
Speaker 1: told me that I had this thing called stress hardiness,
Speaker 1: which is basically like you take a difficult situation and
Speaker 1: you sort of thrive from it, like you sort of
Speaker 1: go up from it as opposed to like letting it
Speaker 1: crush you. And it feels like if anyone is an
Speaker 1: example of that, it's you that you have this stress
Speaker 1: hardiness of like you took all of these things and
Speaker 1: you actually let them inform you and make you that much.
Speaker 1: It's just like it's interesting because so many people who
Speaker 1: didn't have the background you had, you know, got fame
Speaker 1: and in some ways not that you would ever wish
Speaker 1: for those things. It set you up in a way
Speaker 1: or you set your elth up in a way that like,
Speaker 1: look at you now, and you're doing all this incredible
Speaker 1: work and have some of my favorite not only.
Speaker 2: Nineties songs, but nineties looks.
Speaker 4: Okay, it's a beautiful Navajo proverb that says the obstacle
Speaker 4: is the path, and it's a beautiful thing. You know,
Speaker 4: the quickest way is through, And like what we teach
Speaker 4: our kids. We've worked with thousands and thousands of kids.
Speaker 4: I work with CEOs, there were tons of people, and
Speaker 4: it's just sort of this idea that we have to
Speaker 4: be exposed to stress and we have to find healthy
Speaker 4: ways of dealing with it. It's like an immune system.
Speaker 4: I've never heard stress hardiness, but I love that concept
Speaker 4: because it's really true. It's like an immune system. If
Speaker 4: you overwhelm your immune system, you die, Like right, we
Speaker 4: don't want to do that. You have to hopefully give
Speaker 4: it stimulation that lets your body rise, struggle, get smarter,
Speaker 4: and then it gets exposed to something new and it
Speaker 4: struggles and it gets smarter. Our stress systems are that way.
Speaker 4: You know, something's tank us. That's not ideal, but we
Speaker 4: have to learn how to trans mute poison. You know,
Speaker 4: trama's a poison. You have to figure out ways of
Speaker 4: transmuting it and working with it and just continually working
Speaker 4: with it so that you can transform it and it
Speaker 4: will transform into rocket fuel. You have to let it.
Speaker 4: With bitterness and the angriness. Yeah, things will tie you
Speaker 4: down forever. But those don't just happen either. There have
Speaker 4: to be practices. You can't just forgive somebody, and you
Speaker 4: can't just stop being angry, you know. It's a practice
Speaker 4: of transmutation. That's what I love. I love that every
Speaker 4: bit as much as I've loved music. And the new
Speaker 4: record that I made of a new album called Free
Speaker 4: Wheeling Woman, so the first album I wrote from scratch
Speaker 4: in my whole career. By the time I did Pieces
Speaker 4: of You, I already had at least one hundred songs
Speaker 4: to choose from. I have thousands to choose from. I've
Speaker 4: never had to make a record and write it. I've
Speaker 4: always just gotten a cherry pick, like what songs I
Speaker 4: wanted This one I didn't want to do that. I
Speaker 4: wanted it to be who I was now. And it's
Speaker 4: the first time in my life I've had to write
Speaker 4: it from scratch. I wrote two hundred songs to get
Speaker 4: the twelve I liked because it was so hard to
Speaker 4: really I didn't realize that I had myself a little bit.
Speaker 4: There was like a ceiling or a floor would be
Speaker 4: a better way of saying, psychological floor that I didn't
Speaker 4: let myself write beneath. My writing was proficient, but it
Speaker 4: wasn't in my guts. And so the kind of psychological
Speaker 4: dig I had to do, I see why middle aged
Speaker 4: artists do a crap ton of drugs to get their
Speaker 4: artists their new sounds, you know, because doing it the
Speaker 4: old fashioned way was a real gritty fistfight of just
Speaker 4: a new archaeological dig of getting back to something wild
Speaker 4: and authentic. And so the record, I hope does what
Speaker 4: I wanted it to do, which was really show a
Speaker 4: forty eight year old grown ass woman in the music
Speaker 4: business now with the life that I've had, feeling happy
Speaker 4: and feeling empowered and feeling like I earned it. Because
Speaker 4: I didn't want to make a PILLI pop album or
Speaker 4: after wear a little mini skirt. I wanted to be like, no,
Speaker 4: this is fucking empowerment, bitches. I fought for this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's incredible that's so great as someone who's been
Speaker 1: doing this has the same hour long stand up set
Speaker 1: since when I was twenty five, Like can I really
Speaker 1: have a lot of respect for you for digging in?
Speaker 1: And I'm sure it does sound different because it's you today. Now,
Speaker 1: before we take a commercial break, I have to ask
Speaker 1: you about something. There's a video that Obviously I love
Speaker 1: your sound so much. I've always thought it was so
Speaker 1: unique and you have such an incredible way of singing
Speaker 1: that I think, and your music in itself is so
Speaker 1: incredible that I think a lot of people like to
Speaker 1: sort of you know that you've inspired a lot of people.
Speaker 1: There's a video of you on the Jessica Simpson and
Speaker 1: Nick Lache Show where you sing who Will Save Your
Speaker 1: Soul with Jessica Simpson, and it really seems like she's
Speaker 1: channeling you.
Speaker 2: Do you remember that experience? Do you have any thought?
Speaker 1: I just you can just tell she loves you so
Speaker 1: much and she just wants to be you. But it
Speaker 1: must have just been so shocking. I just want to
Speaker 1: see if you have any thoughts on that.
Speaker 4: That was definitely a funny experience. Out of the corner
Speaker 4: of my eye, I just sort of saw a lot
Speaker 4: of gesticulation.
Speaker 2: Okay, you can see you looking at her kind of
Speaker 2: being like.
Speaker 4: She was making fun of me. I was like, it
Speaker 4: may be fun of girl, get yeah, And I was like, no,
Speaker 4: it's think it's just actually really flattering, like she was
Speaker 4: really bringing it and bringing the influence, and so I
Speaker 4: went with flattery.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I will say I had the same experience watching it.
Speaker 1: My friend came with Kuchi showed it to me. I
Speaker 1: had the same experience where at first I was like
Speaker 1: is she making like how dare she? And then I
Speaker 1: was like, no, she just is such a fan of
Speaker 1: jewels that she's trying because she was getting so caught
Speaker 1: up in it, and then it's like it's so natural
Speaker 1: to you that seeing her like put it on, like
Speaker 1: seeing her do her best jewel was just Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I think it is flattery.
Speaker 2: I agree with you.
Speaker 4: I feel like if somebody like punked me, it's like
Speaker 4: on Saturday Night Live and like imitated me, that's how
Speaker 4: I would be imitated. You know. It was like that
Speaker 4: for sure.
Speaker 1: I'm like, it's fair, fair, but it is so everything
Speaker 1: you're saying, like out of the court. You can sort
Speaker 1: of see you sort of being like what but yeah,
Speaker 1: I think she's just liked me a huge fan. And
Speaker 1: with that, we're going to take a quick commercial break
Speaker 1: and we'll be right back with jul Okay, and we're back.
Speaker 1: So now we're going to play a game with you
Speaker 1: that's called back to the Present.
Speaker 2: Vanessa, We've got to go back to the present.
Speaker 1: It's just a really fun game where basically we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about something from our childhood or growing up
Speaker 1: that's nostalgic to us that we wish would come back
Speaker 1: and just kind of talk about it. So we'll have
Speaker 1: you go last, so you have some time to think
Speaker 1: about what you would bring back from your childhood if
Speaker 1: you could. I will start. Oh, and this game is
Speaker 1: called back to the Present, by the way, and it's
Speaker 1: a hilarious take on the nostalgic Back to the Future
Speaker 1: film franchise.
Speaker 2: The name is by the.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: So my pick for what I would like to bring
Speaker 1: back to the present is there used to be a
Speaker 1: perfume oil bar at the body shop. I don't know
Speaker 1: that body shops are quite as popular as they were
Speaker 1: in the nineties, but there was this definitely not okay,
Speaker 1: there was this perfume oil bar where you could like
Speaker 1: try the different perfume oils. And I remember that all
Speaker 1: of my friends were really into white musk, like that
Speaker 1: was the one that everyone was wearing. But I was
Speaker 1: into lilac because our mom was really into had lilacs
Speaker 1: growing up by her house and was always very pro
Speaker 1: lilac scent, and so.
Speaker 2: I was always wearing lilac. My friends were always wearing
Speaker 2: white musk.
Speaker 1: But the thing that was just so cool about it
Speaker 1: was just these little oils, like it was just you
Speaker 1: could try any one of them. I just had a
Speaker 1: blast with them. So it seems like neither of you
Speaker 1: really remember this.
Speaker 4: But getting to like blank faces.
Speaker 2: But really huge h no, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: And really I never was like quite a white musk person,
Speaker 1: but I really loved it. Okay, Jonah, what would be here?
Speaker 1: And I tried to find photos of it and they
Speaker 1: don't really exist. But I know I didn't make it
Speaker 1: up because people have written about it.
Speaker 3: Well, let me ask the jeel, were you into any
Speaker 3: kind of sense like that? Like I was really into punks.
Speaker 3: I remember like Petrulli was like we were like if
Speaker 3: someone is wearing Petrulli, like we that's not like cool
Speaker 3: with us, Like were you into certain sense or anything
Speaker 3: like that, or certain within your scene or anything like that.
Speaker 4: What age are we talking.
Speaker 1: I'm going to say twelve thirteen because I also remember
Speaker 1: wearing a lot of ck one around that time.
Speaker 4: For me, I had a weird childhood. You know. I
Speaker 4: was raised on a homestead with no running water and
Speaker 4: no television.
Speaker 2: Your first concern wasn't like, what's my signature sent?
Speaker 4: I mean, I was like Laura, except I didn't even
Speaker 4: know she existed. So yeah, I just had a really different,
Speaker 4: very uncommercial upbringing. So I just wasn't aware of.
Speaker 2: The body shops, body fragrance spot.
Speaker 4: I remember in sixth grade moving to Anchorage, and yeah,
Speaker 4: I think it was really overwhelmed with like all the stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I remember the kids at school said I smelled like
Speaker 4: horse poop because I came from a ranch. I did
Speaker 4: not smell like horse poop. Okay, I'm sure you didn't.
Speaker 4: We lived in the city. We weren't even around horses anymore.
Speaker 4: It's impossible. Yeah, sure, Yeah, but one of like the
Speaker 4: most worst stories of my life are from this time,
Speaker 4: and I think it has to do with things. So yeah,
Speaker 4: this is the only way to do relate to the story.
Speaker 4: There are your guys is game here? I apologize my
Speaker 4: friend Amber, who was so pretty and had like the
Speaker 4: perfect poofy bang and the short Diana haircut like Princess Diana,
Speaker 4: like right right, really rocked it. She was a skinny,
Speaker 4: beautiful but like haadboobs, and I was like, what, Like
Speaker 4: she befriended me and invited me over to her house,
Speaker 4: and she had things. She had like eighty sweaters that
Speaker 4: was a eighty sweater was a thing. The plastic beads
Speaker 4: that looked like real pearls was a thing. Right. Leggings
Speaker 4: were a big, big thing with like geometric patterns. And
Speaker 4: she was so nice and she let me stay alone
Speaker 4: in her while her and her mom went out. Oh
Speaker 4: my gosh, I robbed this bitch, y'all. I robbed this woman. Like.
Speaker 4: It started with just the wants of like this cute
Speaker 4: necklace was so cute and we were so broke. I
Speaker 4: thought she was so rich by the way she lived
Speaker 4: in a massive apartment building. She was like in hindsight,
Speaker 4: she wasn't like to me. I was like, she's rich,
Speaker 4: She's everything, and I just was going to take this
Speaker 4: one necklace. But then it was like oh, the sweater.
Speaker 4: And then it was like, oh, I went downstairs and
Speaker 4: got a garbage bag and I filled it. It was
Speaker 4: like I had a psychotic break. And then I was
Speaker 4: like I now have all these things and I have
Speaker 4: to walk home. I was walking down the sidewalk with
Speaker 4: a garbage bag of all of her prized eighties objects,
Speaker 4: and of course her mom drives by and was like, ah,
Speaker 4: I'm so busted. I mean, there was no really planned
Speaker 4: I was.
Speaker 1: Going to say, because it would be hard to wear
Speaker 1: it to school anyway, because she would be like, that's
Speaker 1: my sweater I'm missing, that's my necklace.
Speaker 3: I'm waiting.
Speaker 4: And the mom, you know, took it as what it
Speaker 4: was a massive cry for help, which was even more
Speaker 4: mortifying because you're like, that's apathetic guy. I'm like, she's
Speaker 4: not even mad.
Speaker 3: That's a really bad.
Speaker 4: It was a total pity and kindness was like, oh,
Speaker 4: it must have been really bad shape. So yeah, there
Speaker 4: was like some eighties things in there that I coveted.
Speaker 4: Clearly is a thing.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, that's thank you for being good.
Speaker 3: Sported as an amazing connection. Jull my pick you probably
Speaker 3: will relate to even less. It's Dutch apple pop tarts.
Speaker 3: I was just thinking about fall out. I living the
Speaker 3: Berkshire's it's apple season. I was doing some research on it.
Speaker 3: I always have trouble finding a topic for this, but yeah,
Speaker 3: Dutch apple was an initial frosted flavor. It was discontinued.
Speaker 3: There are some apple flavors, like crisp apple. There's another
Speaker 3: like kind of donut flavored one. But there is a
Speaker 3: Facebook page dedicated to bringing back Dutch apple pop tarts.
Speaker 3: It doesn't have a lot of posts. The owner also
Speaker 3: of this page seems to really like top gun post
Speaker 3: at that, So I don't know, that's my pick. I
Speaker 3: guess such apple pop tarts, who knows?
Speaker 1: I mean, how privileged were we that we're thinking about
Speaker 1: the body shop?
Speaker 3: I know?
Speaker 2: But perfume?
Speaker 1: But I mean, I love pop tarts. I haven't had
Speaker 1: one in a while, But don't I.
Speaker 4: Remember McDonald's having apple pies. Is that still a thing? Yes? Okay,
Speaker 4: I remember burning my mouth many many times on the
Speaker 4: hot apple pie at McDonald's. Yep, yeah, yeah, did I
Speaker 4: do it? Did I do one?
Speaker 3: You did one?
Speaker 2: You did one?
Speaker 4: It can still seek out that stealings?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: We topped it. We topped it. Yes, McDonald's apple pie incredible. Well,
Speaker 1: this has been so much fun. We are so happy
Speaker 1: that we got to do this with you today. And
Speaker 1: it's really inspiring and incredible to hear your story and
Speaker 1: you will always be like my true I'm such a
Speaker 1: fan and just always wanted to be like you and
Speaker 1: to quote you, to be near you, and I got
Speaker 1: to be always near you remotely today, always to be
Speaker 1: near you always.
Speaker 3: And yeah, if there's a ven diagram of Vanessa's interest
Speaker 3: like you and Cyndi Lauper and even for me too.
Speaker 3: I had my first cappuccino at Lilla Fair with Vanessa
Speaker 3: and so coffee. Yeah, your music, it's all, it's all
Speaker 3: so yeah, thank you so much for doing this.
Speaker 1: It's such a treat for Yeah, yeah, such a treat.
Speaker 1: And where can people find your work? And you're you know,
Speaker 1: all the incredible things you're doing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I have a new album out called Free Wheeling Woman.
Speaker 4: I really love it. If you're allowed to say that
Speaker 4: about your own work, I'm really really proud of it.
Speaker 4: Songs like almost or half Life I think are things
Speaker 4: that'll really you might really like. And then with my
Speaker 4: mental health work, my foundations called Inspiring children. We have
Speaker 4: a free mental health platform called Jewel never Broken. I
Speaker 4: wrote a book called Never Broken, and people were like,
Speaker 4: but what tools, and so I listed them out on
Speaker 4: this website. There's a really great community there. It's around
Speaker 4: behavioral based tools. I think I only have about ten up,
Speaker 4: but it's an amazing community with book clubs and things
Speaker 4: like that. Yeah, and then we'll be doing the Not
Speaker 4: Alone Challenge and that's Not Alone Challenge dot org. And
Speaker 4: I want an auction it them from you guys.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, we'll think of something fun. We'll think of something.
Speaker 2: That means people will want.
Speaker 3: To get, maybe a sign box at Dutch Apple pop
Speaker 3: Tarts or something with.
Speaker 4: Jelly bracelets and body slopes like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: I think our mom still has one of her Lilac
Speaker 1: Body Shop oils, but probably no one wants that because
Speaker 1: it's kind of like been sitting in their house, so
Speaker 1: well creepy.
Speaker 4: If somebody wants it, we need to worry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's not that's on this.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah you're wrong.
Speaker 2: Audience, Well, thank you so much. That was so much fun.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much to Juel for joining us, and
Speaker 1: to everyone for listening.
Speaker 2: If you enjoyed that.
Speaker 1: Please subscribe to this podcast and keep an eye out
Speaker 1: for next week's episode, and we'll tell more stories from
Speaker 1: our childhood and discuss more cultural milestones like coffee shop, music,
Speaker 1: Cindy Lapper, and all.
Speaker 2: Of those incredible things.
Speaker 4: Think.
Speaker 2: Thank you again, Joel. We've had just a blast with you.
Speaker 4: Thanks guys.
Speaker 2: It was racy and yet