If I don't record the songs I make, it's like they build up inside me and I feel like I'm going to explode," says Sara Hickman. "I've been pregnant way too long. There's a time to give birth and a time to move on. I haven't really been allowed to give birth." Hickman's statement is a hilarious double entendre that only someone in the room could truly appreciate. "I just want to make art," she continues. "It's really frustrating to have this box of crayons inside me and not be able to draw."
There she goes again.
What Hickman's metaphors refer to is her acute Elektra syndrome. No, she doesn't have the hots for pops. Elektra is a major record label that she feels, to put it in a blues colloquialism, `done her wrong.' If you're unfamiliar with the story, it goes something like this: In 1991, a happy Sara Hickman signed with a really big major label known as Elektra. They put out her first two albums, Equal Scary People and Shortstop. Both sold respectably, moving about 50,000 units each, thus setting the stage for a third release, which Hickman handed over in 1993.
But the folks at the label didn't like what they heard, and decided to shelve the LP and drop Hickman from their roster. They complained that the singer hadn't delivered a `radio hit,' and said that none of the songs on her latest LP had such potential. Hickman asked for the masters back so she could release the album herself, but the label refused, claiming the masters were their property. It was then that Hickman's mother came up with the grand idea of buying the masters back from Elektra.
When approached with this idea, Elektra's attorney's initially told Hickman that `this just wasn't done.' But she persisted until the label finally gave in, putting a $100,000 price tag on the masters. Eventually the price dropped to $50,000 and finally landed at $25,000, but it wasn't like Hickman had this sort of scratch just lying around. So, it was at this point that Hickman cautiously asked her fans to help, and much to her satisfaction, money, and letters of encouragement poured in.
"It was a big bonding experience with my fans," says Hickman about the selfless generosity of her dedicated audience. She eventually sold her house and some guitars to raise the remainder of the $25K, and the masters were purchased. The result is Necessary Angels, the name Hickman bestowed upon all the fans who donated money to her cause. The album was released on Discovery Records in 1994.
In the present, Hickman is not exactly dancing an interpretative jig about her relationship with Santa Monica-based Discovery. She fears they may pull the same stunt as the guys at the megalomajor. Two words keep rearing their ugly heads.
"What started my frustration with Discovery," confides Hickman, "was that I'd take a song to them and I'd be really excited about it and I'd walk in dancing and singing and there'd never really seem to be a reaction. They'd say, just keep writing. The key words that kept coming up were `radio hit,' `radio hit.' I don't think about that when I write. To me it's just the miracle of writing anything at all." Her fractured relationship with Discovery has been cause for reflection. She has done some priority measuring and has examined some tough questions.
"What do I love to do?" she ponders aloud. "I love to make music. What's stopping me from recording the music I love to make? Other people. And why are other people stopping me? Because they feel like I'm not doing something that's going to make them money."
But from all of her pondering and questioning, she seems to have come to a resolution. "I'm going to go to [Discovery] and say `Thanks. You've put out Necessary Angels and the first Domestic Science Club CD, but I think I'm going to do this [a new LP] by myself.' It's not about fame and fortune to me. It's about satisfying this hunger in my soul." But all this grappling with labels and a famished soul is nothing compared to the truly big news in her life. The singer is pregnant with more than songs. She's pregnant with child.
"This is Lily," says Hickman sitting on a cowhide couch, rubbing her plentiful belly, "Lily is a gift from the universe. I was chosen to be her mom. I hope I'll be a good mom." Lily, possibly Hickman's most ambitious endeavor to date, has a tentative release date of August 15. As for the father, whom she gleefully married immediately after getting medical confirmation of her pregnancy: his name is Keith and he's the CEO of a natural products company based in Dallas. That's all Hickman will reveal about her husband of five months. It's a matter of privacy.
Hickman has no plans of letting mommyhood slow her life in the least. She will keep touring, recording, and working on numerous projects right through pregnancy and after Lily's birth. "Keith has always wanted to be a housewife," she says. " He has the freedom to work from home on his computer and take care of the baby. That's something I don't have." Lily will officially live in Dallas with dad, as will Hickman for a while. As Lily gets older, the singer plans to do lots of driving between Austin and Dallas in her cool black Volvo, playing careerist in one town and mommy in the other.
Hickman's current projects are numerous, but three are getting the bulk of her attention. One is a live album to be called Misfits. "A lot of times people come see me live and go `Oh wow, there's something really mesmerizing about you live that hasn't been captured in a recording studio.' So last year when I toured with Nancy Griffith, the sound engineer, Adrian Cunningham, recorded me every night on DAT. I have about 50 hours of me live. He captured some really good moments. I'm also taking songs I've done since I was eight. Misfits will be a compilation of live stuff and songs I haven't recorded before. It's called Misfits because nothing will go together." Number two in the hopper is an album of new material tentatively titled Two Kinds of Laughter, which she says will be a grand departure from her earlier work.
"I have some songs that lean toward love songs," she says, "but the bulk of my songs are about the human condition. This LP will be about the joy of being in love or the heartache of being in love. I know the world is flooded with love songs, but it'll be new to me."
Number three is, surprise, a children's album. "I played in Denton at a festival. There must have been 4,000 people there. I was playing some of the childrens' songs. They're interactive and can be for kids or adults. People were making conga lines and dancing around. It was really fun. People like the kids' material. It'll be especially beneficial now since I'm going to have a child." Hickman hopes the first Misfits CD (she plans on a series, Misfits I, II, etc.) will be out in the fall ("while I'm nursing") and Two Kinds of Laughter will be out next spring.
Aside from these three future projects, there's also her current one, Domestic Science Club, her female trio with former Dixie Chick Robin Macy and bluegrass veteran Patty Mitchell Lege. That band has just released a new album, Three Women, on Dallas-based Crystal Clear label (see "Record Reviews"), and though Hickman really considers it only a side project, she's been impressed with the reception the group has received at live shows and plans to continue doing occasional gigs and recordings with the group.
Perhaps the best reception she's received of late was with Too Many Girls, essentially a local supergroup featuring Hickman, Kris McKay, Kelly Willis, Abra Moore, and Barbara K, which formed as a one-shot endeavor for the Austin Music Awards Show. The group's Awards Show performance was without argument the highlight of the evening and the masses have been calling for a reunion ever since. Still, there hasn't been a peep about a reunion, though Hickman has intended to raise some discussion. "I left a message on Kris McKay's answering machine the other day," she says with a chortle, "that's really about it so far."
Hickman is also involved with numerous philanthropic organizations. Her main three are Habitat for Humanity; Romanian Aid, Inc., a fund for orphaned Romanian children; and Race for the Cure, a national foundation that organizes foot races to raise money for Breast Cancer Cure Research. Hickman wrote a song for the group called "Only One Cure," which she sings at select races throughout the nation.
Hickman has also branched out recently into the fields of video production and comic book art. Her self-produced video for "Joy," her song about a homeless woman from the Necessary Angels album, won first prize in 1993 at the U.S.A. Film Festival. The character Pillow Man, which fans may know from T-shirts sold at Hickman shows, will finally go public in comic book form within the next year. Hickman has found a distributor based in San Antonio and will work on story boards while homebound during the waning months of pregnancy and first months of nursing.
Major contract or no contract at all, the next two years will feature some pretty heavy deliveries from Sara Hickman. n