Once More, With Feeling

The following is from Entertainment Today:

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Once More, With Feeling

Damn, do you remember singer-songwriter Sophie B. Hawkins? After reacquiring the rights to her own material, singer-songwriter Sophie B. Hawkins looks to make a fresh start with a re-release of her latest album Timbre

by Brent Simon

If you had a radio in 1992, it’s pretty much impossible to forget “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover.” With its soft drum shuffle, sultry, ungussied production and searingly open lyrics (“I’ll do such things to ease your pain/Free your mind and you won’t feel ashamed”), the Top 5 smash pushed its host album, Tongues and Tails, gold and launched the career of Sophie B. Hawkins, whose layered melodies were at charming contrast with a slightly husky, New York-tinged singing voice.

It was an alleged 50 song demo (more on that later) containing the first version of “Damn” that brought her to the attention of major labels, and after her debut she went on to record 1995’s Whaler, which produced the hit “As I Lay Me Down,” and 1999’s blink-and-you-missed-it Timbre for Columbia/Sony. Following her last album, questions of autonomy and promotion led Hawkins to strike out on her own, buying back the rights to her material. The result is this month’s Rykodisc re-release (via Trumpet Swan, her own imprint) of Timbre, with a bonus disc of two new songs, home demos, alternate takes and additional video elements. Hawkins took some time recently to chat via phone with Entertainment Today about her signature hit, the state of the industry and her passion for music in general. Below are excerpts.

Entertainment Today: There’s a saying about Hollywood with regards to movies: “Nobody knows anything.” Based on your experiences, do you think the same thing is true of the music industry, specifically with regards to how acts are packaged and sold [to the public] via the major labels, how fear and uncertainty over commercial prospects dictate business?

Sophie B. Hawkins: That’s an interesting question. I think there’s some amount of predictability if you have a lot of money and inroads, if you set up a system where you can package [singers] and make them be a star. I think there is predictability there and I think a lot of the industry relies on that for the amount of records they want to sell and the control they want [to retain]. And I think with art and real life creativity is something very spiritual — that’s where nobody knows nothing, and that’s the beauty of it, because you never quite know what an audience is going to pick up on or find. I mean, someone who’s really connected to themselves can believe in something for years and years, having a sense that it’s just good, and then eventually a lot of people will get it. …But I think that’s been around forever, this control factor of the bigger elements always trying to keep the lid on, to keep control.

ET: As an artist, you want as large an audience as possible to experience your work, but I imagine there are a whole new set of questions and problems that crop up when part of your dream comes true and you find yourself on major label with major time commitments.

SBH: Fame cuts into your life and promoting yourself cuts into your work and that’s something you can never predict. And I’ve never been famous in the way that other people are famous. But I always did have a certain trepidation… when I was practicing to be a great drummer or writing my first songs, I did know that it took a lot of time in my room and I never wanted that time, that freedom to create, to go away. …I protect that time like nobody’s business. So if I ever got famous, it wouldn’t be because I was out there trying. I figured out how to hold to my money to live my lifestyle. I have a very small shack, I like shacks. I like a simple life more than anything, I was never seduced by the money or anything. Famous people are the most boring people in the world! I’ve been around them just enough to know. So basically I went into music knowing what was real [to me] and then I proved it to myself again. And now that I have this label, I feel like I have the best of both worlds; so every time I am promoting I’m doing something very much for myself and my soul.

ET: One thing I’ve always loved about your music is all the different instrumentation — you play guitars, keyboards, drums, marimba, banjo. When you tackle a new instrument is it a fundamentally new way to express yourself or is it basically that these are all different languages that allow you to keep the music interesting and fresh?

SBH: That’s really a good question, because I often wonder why I gravitate to different tones at different times. …Like the banjo, that was a very specific feeling and tone. Even when I was learning it I tended to go more toward how beautiful the chords were. I didn’t go so much for the “Foggy Mountain” breakdown sound. But I remember playing it in the bathroom and being swept away. I think that was a tonal thing. And the piano! One guy said, “If you ever want to come to my place…” He’s got a beautiful place in Santa Barbara. He said, “How do you regenerate, how do you get inspiration?” I said, “If the inspiration came from my life I wouldn’t have anything.” It almost comes from someplace else. I’m almost tapping into another world or another life, and [instruments] are part of how I get there. I even started playing my body right now, I just started wiggling my finger like the vibrato. There’s something very physical about the whole process.

ET: Many of your lyrics seem to come from a place of pain, not necessarily just physical or emotional turmoil, but sometimes just a painful honesty. I was interested in your take on the age-old question: do artists have to suffer? I’m not fool enough to suggest it has to be a continual thing, but is the creative process at least somewhat about finding inspiration and strength in grief?

SBH: Oh man, again, that’s such a great question. I could try and be above it, but conscious suffering is a big part of creating and I feel that, I know that I go through a lot during the process. And if I don’t go through a lot of grief and pain on one level, I’m going to go through a lot of grief and pain on another level. And even the emotions that make me want to write a song, it’s like cutting through parts of myself. I even felt this when I was, like 9 years old, letting go, letting go of parts of my family. No matter how much I loved them, I had to change and differentiate and leave them.… Also realizing things about yourself can be painful. I can’t deny and say that I’m different than any other person.

ET: Actors talk about having a weird relationship with the lines that won them a part or the role that they’re most known for. I wanted to ask you about “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover,” because it must hold a special place in your heart but you probably also have this evolving relationship with it.

SBH: It does and I do. I was drumming for dance classes when I wrote that. I remember everything around that song, like all the stuff that led up to it? I remember actually I was going through a lot with my family, going up to see my aunt in Massachusetts. And just before I left I had the sense that I had found these [special] chords. Finally things came together. I remember the beat, it was summer and I was in New York, and I remember having a really strong sense that this was something big for me. It wasn’t at all intellectual but I had this feeling of being in love with the chords. I just came back and recorded it, played it for people and they didn’t respond to it. And even the person that I had most wanted to hear it, because it was inspired by this relationship? No response whatsoever.

ET: Now was there really a 50 song demo? This was how you got noticed?

SBH: Yes, I still have them!

ET: And are they still trickling down into later albums and other songs, sort of “inspired by…”?

SBH: You know what, that’s a good question. There are still times when, if I’m going through something and I want to relook at something and see if I can rewrite it, I go back and listen. I can’t believe I still have them all, but I do. I have them right here, I’m looking at them. And the funny thing is there are all the stages of how I wrote my name and the different types of pen I was using when I wrote label, you know how when you’re young it’s all so personal. Now I just burn CDs and put labels on them. Then it was so much more personal.

ET: Hey, it was personal. “Damn” was a staple on a whole series of mix tapes I made from that era.

SBH: Wow! That’s great.

ET: I have very specific recollections of your performance of that song on The Tonight Show.

SBH: Oh no. I’d forgotten that.

ET: It seemed like Jay Leno didn’t really know what to make of you.

SBH: Hey, neither did I. I never watched it, thank God, but I had such a hard time being who I really was. I had so many things coming at me, and I’m not saying people were telling me to be this or that, but… they were! I was just so confused and unclear and unconfident. I couldn’t just sing it the way I’d written it or recorded it. I felt like I had to be this major star. There was so much pressure on me to be a star, and I wasn’t a star in any way. Now I actually have fun performing because I’m just myself, which is really funny and candid and spontaneous and improvisational. But then I just thought I had to make myself into something.

ET: I think it goes back to what you were saying: you didn’t have some burning desire to be famous.

SBH: Oh no, I didn’t want to be seen. I didn’t want to be on TV. When that red light went on I thought, “What am I doing with myself?” To me at the time it didn’t seem like a big break, it seemed like a nightmare. And it’s funny, I have such a hang-up with that one show. …I think I had to do it two times for “As I Lay Me Down”. Horrible, horrible, horrible. Because it’s The Tonight Show and I think I had those first memories. So now it’s coming up again. I think I’m going to do it this Friday or the next Friday, and I really just hope I’ve evolved enough to just be myself!

ET: Wrapping up on “Damn” what do you think the appeal of the song was: that it was from, traditionally, a male’s point-of-view? Or was it the naked sexuality of the son—

SBH: No one has ever said that!

ET: No one?

SBH: No one. And I’ve always thought that. Why you’re the only person who ever picked that up or said out loud what it is, I don’t know.

ET: Oh come on, someone, sometime, had to have said something—

SBH: No one has ever said that, even at the record company. And I remember trying to talk about that. What is the appeal? I don’t know, I tend to think it’s the kind of honesty [in the song]. You always hear people say, “I wanna be your lover, baby, baby…” but never quite that [earnest], maybe? It tends to hit people on an uncomfortably deep level. There’s something a little bit different than most “pleading-to-be-someone’s-lover” love songs. …I love singing that song, there’s not a false lyric in there. When we went to make the video and all this make-up was being put on me, I remember being very embarrassed to have to sing the lyrics of the verse in front of people who I didn’t know [she mutters a passing line]. I just thought, “This is so personal, how can I ever sing this in front of people?” But now it’s my most fun song and I’ve found my feet. It took so many years to grow into all this stuff.

ET: I was talking to Chris O’Connor of the Primitive Radio Gods and he said if faced with a choice, an ultimatum, he would much rather still be able to listen to music than play it. He loved it that much.

SBH: (squeals with laughter) That’s really interesting what he said. My absolute favorite thing would have to be as unselfconscious as I am in writing, and to be as happy as I am living my life. I do think that I am very able to channel something for people when I do stuff live. And I do want the music to reach people, I love writing. …but, I don’t know. I don’t know why our minds fuck us up so much, cause us so much tension. Maybe I’ll get to [the point] he said later.

ET: This question is perhaps a bit esoteric, but what do you think the function of music is, and has that changed over the past 10, 20, 30 years?

SBH: Wow. Well definitely communication, because the kinds of subtle ideas that can change people’s lives can be communicated through music. It’s happened to me. I wasn’t supposed to be a musician, and that’s another reason I love it so much. I wasn’t steered to do anything, but I was definitely criticized [by family] for doing music and it was kept at bay from me. So when I finally found the drums, it began this healing process for me, of being able to interact in a way that was really true to myself. It’s allowed me to share feelings, and communicate feelings that open people up. So when I talk about giving a song to someone, it’s not just like I want to seduce them, I want to give them something that opens them up on a deeply feeling level because that’s what music has done for me. When I think about how much I love it, and how much sometimes I just need it, it’s the only thing that I need. I couldn’t imagine a world without it.

ET: What type of stuff really caught your ear growing up?

SBH: Well, I loved that my mom played a lot of Beethoven, Vivaldi, Bach, Handel. My mother was addicted to music, her most beautiful side came out…. She was such a music freak, I love that about her. I thought she wrote some of the songs on the radio. (singing) “Clouds in my coffee,” [You’re So Vain”], by Carly Simon is it? And (singing again) “Wild thing, you make my heart sing”? And my father listened to jazz, he was so into it that I really got this great love for drums and bass. …And actually when I heard Bob Dylan, I was young, but that was when I got the sense that I was going to be a songwriter. But it wasn’t intellectual and cocky, it was just like, “Oh, that’s what I am!” Not that I could say that to anybody.

ET: You’re doing some small in-store appearances [for the re-release]. How are they going?

SBH: I’ve loved them because everything hard brings you something good. I was a bit scared obviously because I thought, “How can I sing in a department store, who’s going to come?” Then I just thought, “So what if no one comes, it’s a great rehearsal.” …Then what happened was that all sorts of amazing people came, some people who had never heard me and some people who had heard me but didn’t know that I sang the songs I sang or whatever. But the basic thing was again: this tremendous sharing went on. It’s a lot of fun, like vaudeville for me. I was surprised too, because there [have been] a lot of older women…. And again, no one cares about them. They become mothers and they’re supposed to spend their whole day at the mall and so no one is really selling something to them. Everyone’s always telling me, “We gotta market you to Generation X, Y,” whatever — the embryos. And I always feel like you know, “If they like me, they’ll find me. But I should be marketed to anyone who wants to get into the lyrics. It’s not one age.”

Sophie B. Hawkins will be performing at the House of Blues on Friday, April 27. The Rykodisc re-release of her latest CD, Timbre, with a bonus disc of two new songs, home demos, alternate takes and additional video elements, is in stores April 24.

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Ryan

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