FAYETTEVILLE — That there is discussion about her music’s genres has always baffled Jewel Kilcher.

She’s never thought about it, that’s for sure.

“These songs don’t sound like styles. They sound like me,” she says by phone from Birmingham, Ala., before a concert there.

So, what does the songwriter who releases albums simply as “Jewel” sound like? Well, like a woman who was homeless for a time, pleading for change for something to eat. Like someone who grew up in the rural parts of this country, raised in Homer, Alaska. Sometimes, she sounds like a woman in love, recently married to champion bull rider Ty Murray. And she always sounds like a poet, both through her lyrics and the verses she collected for the book “A Night Without Armor,” which was released in 1998.

Her music, Kilcher says, is a combination of her experiences and those of her influences, which are as varied as they are vast. There is opera singer Maria Callas and her voice, novelist John Steinbeck and his words, folk poet and songwriter Bob Dylan for his mastery of lyrics and the sounds of big band vocalist Sarah Vaughan.

Kilcher takes those elements of her life and filters them through those who have come before her, musically speaking. What she writes is simply what she writes. When she has a dozen or so songs that seem to have the same feel she records them, whether they come in the form of those featured on the big band-sounding album “0304,” or the country-tinged tunes on “Perfectly Clear,” an album that hit No.

1 on the Billboard County Album Chart when it debuted in 2008.

“There were never these lines you didn’t want to cross,” she says.

Kilcher is currently on a tour that will take her to 17 cities in 17 days, including a stop at 7 p.m. Sunday at Downstream Casino Resort in Quapaw, Okla. Tickets are $50-$75 and can be purchased through her Web site at www.jeweljk.com. She alsomentions that she likes to give away free tickets via her Twitter page at www.twitter.com/jeweljk.

New classics

After training extensively on the West Coast, composer Teri Card Heller is back in her native Ozarks, and she’d like to show off her newest works. SIRËoNa, an ensemble featuring flute, oboe, clarinets, violin, cello, keyboard, percussion and original compositions by Heller, debuts at 8 p.m. Thursday at Teatro Scarpino in Fayetteville.

Heller, via her Web site, describes her music as being characterized by “moody harmonies, lyrical melodies, driving rhythmic pulses and orchestral tone qualities.”

Doors open at 7 p.m. The show is free, but donations will be accepted.

Those donating $10 or more will receive a copy of Heller’s CD titled “As the Leaves Turn.” A reception will follow the show.

The Eureka folks

The 62nd annual Ozark Folk Festival, which organizers believe to be the longest continuously running folk festival in the country, continues through Saturday in venues throughout Eureka Springs. Headlining the event is Loudon Wainwright III, who is perhaps best known for his song “Dead Skunk (In the Middle of the Road)” but has also recorded more than a dozen albums, including the critically well-received “High Wide & Handsome: The Charlie PooleProject,” earlier this year.

Wainwright performs at noon and again at 8 p.m. today at the Eureka Springs City Auditorium. Tickets to his early show are $5; tickets to the late show are $30. Find tickets or a full schedule of the other performers at ozarkfolkfestival.com.

Going places

University of Arkansas professorChris Goering is scheduled to introduce his debut CD at a release party tonight at the Perk on Wedington in Fayetteville. The alternative country disc is tied to the assistant professor of secondary English’s love of literature and www.

littunes.com, which seeks to develop literacy through contemporary music.

The show will take place from 7-9 p.m. today. Copies of the album, called “Where He’s Going,” will be $10.

Entertainment, Pages 17 on 11/06/2009

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