Thursday, March 15   10:00 p.m.
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  Eilen Jewell - Back To Dallas
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It's not the kind of newspaper story you see very often these days, when all the attention seems to be on fame, gold records, and which pop diva is dating which movie star. But there it was, in the Sunday Arts section of the Boston Globe, beneath a headline calling a largely unknown young singer-songwriter named Eilen Jewell "The latest local gem."

Everything about the story seemed aimed at not just praising her music, but anointing the Idaho-born Jewell, with just one self-released CD, BOUNDARY COUNTY, under her belt, as the next star to rise from Boston's rich and prolific folk scene. The story raised eyebrows all the more, because it was written by the Globe's longtime folk critic, Scott Alarik, who's known for picking tomorrow's stars today. He was the first Boston critic to write about Ani DiFranco, Ellis Paul, Alison Krauss, Solas, Dar Williams, Eileen Ivers, and many other of today's biggest folk, roots, and Celtic stars.

"Jewell's music has the languorous quietude of [Gillian] Welch or Norah Jones," he wrote, "but there is something more direct, almost in your face, about her stark, neotraditional melodies, subdued vocals, and confident, slow-swaying groove. It's as if she's daring us to say we miss the bells and whistles of pop."

There was no doubt he meant to pick Jewell as a rising star. A few months earlier, he had written in the Globe's Calendar section that she was "the most exciting neotrad star to emerge from the Boston scene" in years. Similarly, the Boston Herald’s Daniel Gewertz, with his own impressive history of picking winners, wrote that "If it were based on talent alone, Boston's Americana gem, the Eilen Jewell Band, would be huge."

She's been getting a lot of that kind of attention lately. The first time Signature Sounds owner Jim Olsen heard BOUNDARY COUNTY, he immediately offered to help sell it through his label's website. The only time he'd ever made that offer before was for Josh Ritter. Next spring, Signature Sounds will release Jewell's first national album, now being recorded with her crack roots studio and touring band, featuring Jerry Miller (electric guitar, steel guitar, dobro), Jason Beek (drums, percussion), and Daniel Kellar (violin) and Johnny Sciasica (upright bass), both alumni of Boston's storied Tarbox Ramblers.

"Eilen's music blends several different styles associated with rural Appalachia decades ago," Olsen says. “She deftly blends country, blues, jazz and folk to create a unique sound that can’t be pigeonholed into any particular format or era. Her voice evokes Billie Holiday and Bessie Smith without imitating either and her song craft is reminiscent of great country poets Townes Van Zandt and Gillian Welch."

Jewell grew up in Idaho, and first discovered folk music on one of the long car trips her family often took. Her father liked to pick one particular kind of music to play through the whole journey. When she was 14, it was Bob Dylan's Bootleg Series. "There was something very mysterious about folk music," she told the Boston Globe, "that made me want to figure out where it was coming from. It's like any time you hear a strange sound in the night; you want to follow the trail, and see what the source is. That's how this music made me feel. Who is this guy? Where is this coming from?"

As she built her music and career, Jewell became part of the music scenes in Boise, Santa Fe, Venice Beach, the Berkshires, and finally Boston, drawn by word of the flourishing neotraditional revival there. Her travels clearly shaped her writing, giving it a timeless sweep and ageless grace. As Alarik wrote, "Though only 25, [she] sounds like she's been writing songs for at least a couple of centuries...her writing is both intimate and vivid, classically framed and closely observed."

Jewell told the Boston Globe, "I want to encapsulate an image or emotion, and just let people think about it. It's like how a painter will paint the foreground in focus, and make the background blurry. That's part of the sparseness I like in music; focusing on what you're going for, and not getting distracted by the peripheral."