EASE DOWN THE ROAD

“We released our first record, Boundary County, on our own with money that we borrowed,” said Boston-based singer/songwriter Eilen Jewell when whatzup asked how the 27-year-old spent her days before the release of her acclaimed 2007 record, Letters from Sinners and Strangers. “At that point we weren’t touring much or anything. Boundary County somehow ended up in the hands of Jim Olsen, who runs Signature Sounds Records. When he heard it he loved it and pretty much wanted to sign us as soon as he could.”

The warm friendliness in Jewell’s eyes and always present (though slight) grin – and more importantly in her songs – is echoed in each word that falls out of her mouth as she explains the groundwork of her still-young career. The sound of her songs, even more importantly, is big. Not Flaming Lips or Bitches Brew big, but equally demanding of attention and repeated plays.

Imagine a crowd of meandering Middle Americans at a fall fair, standing around, waiting for sound. Elephant ears and handfuls of cotton candy and German-roasted almonds instantly fall to the ground; Eilen Jewell and her band – Jason Beek (drums), Daniel Kellar (violin), Jerry Miller (guitar) and Johnny Sciascia (upright bass) – are suddenly pumping out a sound made to embrace listeners like an old friend. Jaws drop. Jewell and her crew of razor-sharp musicians play it big. Their sound is neither fancy nor innovative, but the timeless organic folk-meets-jazz-meets-country-meets-lady crooner rock is played with smiles and soul, familiar sounds ringing from new breath, done as if it’s never been done before. Spirited. Sweet. Timeless.

“I really loved early rock n’ roll and remember listening to that stuff when I was seven years old,” explained Jewell, who is often compared to Gillian Welch and Lucinda Williams. “I still love that stuff and feel like my music taste hasn’t really changed at all. My taste in clothes hasn’t really changed much either. I still love cowgirl boots, jean skirts and stuff like that.”

The genesis of her music career began when a seven-year-old Jewell was on a 1,500 mile road trip to Anchorage, Alaska with her family. Jewell simply fell in love with the sounds she heard on the radio. Upon returning home piano lessons were set up, and a musician was born.

The next decade and a half saw the budding musician often moving around, in time becoming a regular performer at farmers markets and local bars in Santa Fe, New Mexico while attending the artist-friendly St. John’s College. Jewell later moved to Los Angeles, where she became a fixture in the storied Venice Beach street busker circuit before moving to the Berkshire Mountains in Massachusetts and eventually her current home of Boston.

“I’ve read a lot about place, specifically the West,” said the soft-voiced singer when thinking back on her travels. “I’m originally from Idaho; I had to get really far away from that state before I could really appreciate it. Now that I’m on the other side of the country I feel really nostalgic about where I came from, and that’s been good for me in a lot of ways. I’ve learned a lot about the world and about myself and my family and where I come from. It’s sort of a paradox, but all these things have become more important as I’ve gotten further away from them. There’s just a lot of nostalgia in my songs – place has a lot to do with that.”

In time, Boston became the place for Jewell’s second chapter.

“I met Jason first, back when I was still living out in western Massachusetts, out in the country. I’d come into [Boston] on the weekends to hear music – this was 2003 – and started toying with the idea of moving to Boston because I’d heard it was a really great music city,” said Jewell – who often stops while talking about the past, likely to live in the memory for a moment – when asked about the formation of her band. “When I met Jason he heard me sing and convinced me to move to Boston and start a band with him. We had that first band for a while before I reached the point where I decided I wanted to play with other people, and I didn’t want to be tied into a band. I wanted to see what it was like to play by myself again. Then I went through this musical identity crisis for a while. Once I’d gathered enough material to do Boundary County Jason recommended Johnny and Jerry because he had been a fan of theirs for years. When he recommended them we started playing together a bit and eventually recorded the album. Through all that I realized that I liked playing with these people more than anything I’d done before.”

From there a band was born. The quartet began working modestly, setting up their own shows and releasing their own records.

“It’s a different world for me now,” Jewell says while reflecting on her unpretentious history as an artist (she’s often said that she doesn’t even think to call herself an artist, if that tells you anything about her). “We’ve kept very busy since signing on with Signature Sounds. We started touring heavily since last fall and have kept really busy since then. We’ve been to Europe four times in the past year and are going to go two more times in the next month. It’s been a lot more work and lot of excitement.”

For the near future Jewell and the boys will be on the road, playing in support of the nearly year-old Sinners album that put them on the map. “We’re crossing the country in a van right now, trying to make it to a show in San Francisco, which will be the start of our West Coast tour,” Jewell said from her cell phone on the road. “We’ve seen a lot of the flooding – whole farms under water even – but it hasn’t hampered out travel or anything. It’s been really hard to see.”

August 5 will see the release of the band’s country-meets-gospel side project on Signature Sounds. “That record has four other people on it and four different people singing. We all love gospel music, so this is something we wanted to do,” Jewell said when asked how she plans to spend the rest of her 2008. “We’re also going into the studio in September. I’ve been writing songs for the new record. Really, I’ve been struggling with that a little bit this year just because I spend so much time in the van with people around me. Sometimes it’s hard to find time to let your mind catch up with you so you can write. We’re looking forward to the new record, though, and plan to have it out by February of next year.”