Hi again all,

     Jewel and Ty recently celebrated their first anniversary of becoming parents as their son Kase arrived at birthday numero uno a couple weeks ago. They will also be celebrating their wedding anniversary in a few days.  With these events in mind, for this month's free Club EDA download I thought it would be fun to explore their songwriting collaboration from nearly twelve years ago, "Till We Run Out Of Road." 

    Co-written during a December 2000 camping trip in Texas, this ballad would be one of the first album tracks to clearly convey Jewel's country music roots.  Featuring a lyric open to interpretation, this song expressed Ty Murray's thoughts about life on the rodeo trail, but not surprisingly, equally conveyed the bittersweet feelings many a touring musician has experienced during life on the road.  With this song Jewel and Ty honestly expressed some of the mixed feelings associated with fame and celebrity. This song's thoughtful lyric made it clear that being a professional entertainer, whether it be one of the world's greatest rodeo champions or a multi-platinum recording artist, even while at the top of one's game, is not always such "a beautiful life."

      The tail end of 2000 was another extremely active time for Jewel.  Between the promotion of her Joy: A Holiday Collection album and the press junkets for Ang Lee's "Ride With The Devil" movie,  it was pretty much a nonstop media blitz.   Jewel had a particularly grueling schedule, including dozens of high profile television appearances, which had her bouncing back and forth between New York City and Los Angeles for six weeks.  Immediately following this, both Jewel and Ty embarked on the annual USO Holiday tour, where they spent a week visiting and entertaining American servicemen and women deployed overseas, traveling to the Balkans, the Mediterranean and Europe.  They would fly home on December 21st and Jewel would continue her media blitz right up to Christmas Eve.

     To unwind after all that, Jewel and Ty decided to go camping together.  It was during this camping trip, on New Year's Eve December 31, 2000, that the collaboration on "Till We Run Out Of Road" occurred.  As Jewel wrote in the This Way album liner notes, the song's autobiographical lyric addressed Ty being on the rodeo circuit with his traveling partner, Cody Lambert, and the name "Lou" in the lyric referred to three-time all-around rodeo legend, Louis Field.  Jewel further explains how this songwriting collaboration came about:

Yes! Ty and I were camping on New Years Eve and I decided to write a song with him, to show him how the process works. I chose a topic he knows about- his sport- and it was really the first time he tried to put words to his desire to perhaps retire.  His ability to ride was still very good - he was number two in the world - but his desire to ride seemed to be leaving him... He tired of the traveling and the grind... So the song is about how some guys wished they never quit, and advised him to go as long as he can, while others found they missed their families too much and the danger was not worth the risk... So its really a song about Ty weighing the pros and cons of retirement from the sport...

   Along with "Jesus Loves You" (which Jewel had just completed writing during the aforementioned USO Tour), "Till We Run Out Of Road" would be further addressed immediately after the holidays.  Both songs were initially recorded on January 5th and 6th, 2001 during demo sessions in North Hollywood, which can be considered the beginning of the preproduction phase for her next album, This Way.  The following April,  Jewel would enter Emerald Sound Studios in Nashville, with the intention of recording "Till We Run Out Of Road" for an upcoming compilation CD called Dancing With Thunder: The Official Music Of The PBR, which would feature contributions from various high profile artists.  It was on this session that Jewel first worked with producer and guitarist Dan Huff, who would subsequently be brought on board as her co-producer on the This Way album.  That studio recording would also eventually feature on This Way, which was released that November, but would first see the light of day two months prior, when it was initially issued on the Dancing With Thunder PBR CD.

    In terms of live performances, "Till We Run Out Of Road"  debuted at a private event in Minneapolis on December 7, 2001.  It's first televised performance and real public debut occurred two days later in Toronto, when Jewel and her new band were the featured guests on an episode of "Intimate & Interactive."  During the extensive world tour of 2002 that followed the release of her This Way album, "Till We Run Out Of Road" became a permanent staple of Jewel's sets.  Performed every night with the touring band, it appeared less frequently after that tour and hasn't been heard from since 2004.  Relatively few ever had the opportunity to hear this song in its rarer solo acoustic form, so thats what we'll be listening to today.  Recorded live in North Charleston, South Carolina on April 8, 2004, this would be the second to last time Jewel would ever perform the song before a live audience.  In addition to the live recording, a pdf file of the handwritten lyrics are also included for you.  

    If you are already a registered member of jeweljk.com, simply log in to the community area and help yourself to the files here. If you are not yet registered, please register first here.  Its free and easy.  If you experience any technical difficulty, don't hesitate to ask for help at help@jeweljk.com.  If you’ve missed any of our previous Club EDA downloads, all of them are still available, so you can help yourself to those files as well.  For details on the previous downloads, you can access my previous blogs about them by clicking "Alan."  In regards to our free downloads, we respectfully request that rather than share the free files elsewhere, that you do Jewel the favor of instead sharing the link to join her free Club EDA community, so that others can download the free files themselves. Please spread the word rather than the files and help Jewel build her online community. You can read her thoughts on this here.


    Recorded live at the North Charleston Performing Arts Center in North Charleston, South Carolina on April 8, 2004, enjoy this month's free Club EDA download of "Till We Run Out Of Road."    Alan