November 5, 2002 — Jewel has announced the Soul City Café Music Quest, a nationwide contest to find developing artists to perform as the opening acts on her 2003 summer tour. This marks the latest endeavor in Jewel's multi-faceted Soul City Café program, which has been established as a vehicle to expose and develop new talent in a variety of artistic media.

Beginning this week, an open call for demo recording submissions will be extended to musicians across the country. Artists can choose from two contest categories -- Band (musical act with two or more people) or Solo Artist (singer providing his/her own instrumental accompaniment). Potential entrants' submissions will be screened, evaluated, and voted on by a panel of music industry professionals. Twenty semi-finalists will then be chosen (two in each of the two categories) from five national geographic regions: Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, West, and Northwest. These acts will be featured on the www.SoulCityCafe.com website, where visitors to the site will elect two winners from each region. After a final round of Internet voting, two grand prize contest winners (One Band; One Solo Artist) will be announced in time to accompany Jewel on tour next summer.

All entries for Soul City Café Music Quest must be postmarked by midnight December 31, 2002, and no entries will be accepted after January 10, 2003. Complete rules available for download at www.soulcitycafe.com. [See Official Rules for details and entry. Must be 18 years and older.]

The Soul City Café project was launched this past summer with Soul City Café ArtBeat, a showcase for emerging musical and spoken-word artists, many of whom have been performing with Jewel on her 2002 North American tour dates. Most recently, a Soul City Café video director search took place to find an aspiring filmmaker to direct Jewel's video for the title track of her "This Way" album.

Jewel embarks this week on the latest leg of her "New Wild West" solo acoustic tour of North America. The new outing begins November 7th in Portland, Maine, with shows announced through November 24th. These concerts follow the first leg of the "New Wild West" tour -- which began in mid-August and wrapped up on September 19th -- as well as the North American "This Way" tour, which began in mid-June and featured her accompanied by a full band.

In other Jewel news, dance remixes of her song "Serve the Ego," produced by Hani, Mike Rizzo, Wayne Rodriguez and Gabriel & Dresden, have bulleted to the #1 spot on Billboard magazine's "Hot Dance Tracks Club Play" chart (issue date November 9th). The original version of "Serve the Ego" appears on Jewel's fourth album, the platinum-certified This Way. Produced by Dann Huff and Jewel, This Way marks her first work as a producer. The album was released in November 2001, and also includes the singles "Standing Still," "Break Me," and the title track.