What exactly is art; who defines it; who makes it, and where in Atlanta do poets, thespians, and artists congregate and create? We’ll use this space to catch up with a few for a few…some you may know; others we hope you’ll be pleased to meet their acquaintance.
Sophie B. Hawkins’ music career took off in the early 1990s with the big hit, “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover” – so big that it has its own Wikipedia page. Thirty years later, Hawkins is still making music and has a brand new album, Free Myself, her first since releasing The Crossing in 2012.
Counting Atlanta’s neighborhoods’ different vibes as one of her favorite things, Hawkins will give us the hometown treatment when she performs at Eddies Attic on May 25 at 7 pm.
A multitalented percussionist, pianist, and singer-songwriter, being an artist is in Hawkins’s DNA—her mother, Joan Hawkins, is an author. Like “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover,” her mother’s first book, Underwater, published in 1974, is considered a cult hit centering women, including themes like sexual exploration and feminism.
Growing up as an audience member to her mother is when Hawkins first knew she wanted to be a writer. She began writing to capture the complex feelings we all experience in our families: love, sadness, fear, and joy…an artist who listens and translates what she hears into language and song.
How do you know when you have a hit—a song that will stand the test of time?
I don’t know how you know, but I knew “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover” and “As I Lay Me Down” were…years before, even when other people told me they were not hits. “As I Lay Me Down” wasn’t allowed on the first album because Sony didn’t hear it as a good song. Thank God, because it became the biggest hit on the second album, Whaler! I’ve also been wrong–other songs I thought were, did not become hits. So, there’s more to it than just knowing; there’s timing–in the world and with myself. Maybe those songs are hits, just not now…maybe in a musical I write…or even after I’m dead. Who knows?
In QueerForty.com, you referenced going through a “personal tsunami” recently. So many of us can relate in many ways with the pandemic taking center stage as our reason. Could you share how the pandemic shaped your art and how you navigate the intersection of art and grief?
The pandemic was a reset for me…I became aware of my “third act,” and that I only have a certain amount of time to do what I want, so I want to do things differently. In addition to writing music, I became more focused on playwriting and writing a book. I became incredibly good at balancing my schedule and not being obsessed with one medium. Before the pandemic, I could only write that one song I was writing. Now I can focus on other things during the week or at different times of the day. I want to keep everything going.
Art is the greatest comfort at the intersection of art and grief because it takes all your feelings and allows you to sew them into a beautiful, new, hopeful tapestry. The only thing about art is you have to get to it; sometimes, in tragedy, we can get stuck in our feelings. But art can use our pain and sadness as raw material…because we’re open during these emotions, what we create can lead to great happiness and wisdom.
Free Myself feels like a personal love letter. In a Soul Sisters interview, you said, “I would’ve been such a great mother for myself.” Which one of your songs on your Free Myself would be the number one song you’d gift yourself, mother to child, and why?
Definitely “You Are My Balloon.” “You Are My Balloon” is such a beautiful balance of holding on and letting go, of life and death, of acceptance of the phases of life and the stages of loss. Like a balloon, I see a child as full of its own oxygen, meandering direction, and loftiness that, by nature, has to be let go of. You have to hold on to them lightly but adore them and love them so much as they go into the universe. That’s what I would give myself.
If you could leave items in a time capsule to be opened in 30 years by an artist who’d be the same age you were when you recorded “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover” what would it be?
Oh, that’s so easy. I would leave the memoir I’m writing. It’s based on my journals from the time I wrote “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover,” so it’s an honest portrayal of not being an artist, but becoming one, so that’s really a gift. It’s bolstering to see someone who may not have made it…but did. Also, to encourage people’s enigmatic, unpredictable selves, I would leave my first home demos; they had everything I would become. I was such an artist and didn’t know it, cute and confident but with so little experience. The greatest thing I could give people is a sense of confidence, a sense that they should trust the parts of them that nobody else likes. That is, strangely, what I did back then.
What can fans expect from your shows on this tour?
I encourage people to come out and see the show because they are way different than they used to be. It’s always been said that I put on a really exciting show, but now I’m as excited as the audience. I love my musicians, and I love and appreciate the people who come to the show because I know, especially since the pandemic, how hard it is to commit to coming out to see a show. I appreciate it when people come out, and they get 1,000% of our efforts when we’re up there on stage.
Sophie B. Hawkins will be in concert at Eddie’s Attic on May 25 at 7 p.m. You can listen to her latest album here: https://sophieb.fanlink.to/FreeMyself and a playlist of her songs below via Spotify.
