Best-selling singer-songwriter Jewel’s career as a versatile pop, adult contemporary, and country music recording artist led to a second outlet as a television personality and outspoken activist. She was born Jewel Kilcher on May 23, 1974, and raised in rural Homer, AK, where she showed an early talent for singing and regularly accompanied her folk musician/music teacher father onstage at venues. Her musicianship was further nurtured with opera training at the famed Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan, after which Jewel joined her mother in San Diego and quickly built up a local
