Liberated musician to perform in Unity Hawkins finds strength after label battle

Sophie B. Hawkins never went away. Over the course of her career, she has had two enormous radio hits, fought – and won – a battle against a record company Goliath, had a documentary film made about her, and has built a devoted fan base around the world that helped to save her latest record from oblivion. But she never went away.

The Grammy-nominated singer, songwriter and multitalented musician has been creating, creating and creating and – even more important to her these days – staying true to herself. See the results for yourself tonight at 8 at the Unity Centre for the Performing Arts.

Hawkins burst into pop-music consciousness nearly a decade ago with the single, “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover.” The album from which the song came, “Tongues and Tails,” garnered her a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist. And that perhaps is where some of her troubles began. The success of the song started a long and antagonistic relationship with her label, Sony. Not only a singer and a songwriter, but also a multi-instrumentalist, Hawkins says she sought to produce music with integrity while the label wanted to be able to make changes to make hit records.

“It can be so sad when you’re working so hard and you’re spinning your wheels because you don’t have a purpose,” Hawkins said of her struggles with the label in a recent phone interview.

In 1996, Hawkins had another hit, “As I Lay Me Down,” a song which became the longest-running Billboard single ever. But despite another major success, Hawkins says more pressure was put upon her to be somehow more marketable,

more successful and ultimately more profitable. And the less she compromised, the more the label began to ignore her.

“When you’re an artist, you think of your work’s survival, you don’t think of your typical survival so much,” she commented. “How am I gonna be doing great stuff when I’m older? How am I going to make ways that I can work things out without getting sucked under?”

Frustrated, Hawkins took legal action, requesting that she be released from her record contract and that she be given ownership all of her albums’ master tapes. Ownership of the masters would mean that she would decide how her albums and songs were used and ensure that Hawkins would profit from any further releases. She won the case and surprised everyone, including herself.

“I would say I have more fun now … I left behind a lot of crap,” Hawkins said of being a performer on her own. “And part of leaving the label was deciding what was important in my life. You know, my work was important and to stay true to my work. So I can do it until I’m 90.”

In April, Hawkins rereleased her last major label effort, “Timbre,” on her own imprint, Trumpet Swan, through Rykodisc. In addition to writing, singing and producing, she played piano, guitar, banjo, udu, djembe, vibraphone and marimba on the album. But before she struck out on her own, that album and its lead single virtually had been shelved and buried by Sony, despite an enormous demand from her fans, a demand which was expressed in a deluge of e-mails that overwhelmed the label’s Web site.

“They got over 2,000 e-mails from all over the world and that was the first time I knew that I had fans,” Hawkins said. She also said that she actually saved all of those e-mails and would like to publish them in a book just for fun.

Since her release from Sony, Hawkins has continued to tour in support of “Timbre” as well as the release of “The Cream Will Rise,” a documentary of her 1996 tour. Also, she is preparing to record a new album this fall, tentatively titled “Sweet Cantaloupe.”

By virtue of her own strength and commitment to her art, Hawkins fails to fall in any way into the category of struggling pop performer; rather, she’s a musician liberated. Neither is her passion for music rekindled, because it never got cool.

As she’ll gladly tell you of her career, “It’s an is, not a was.”

Oh, and her live shows?

“They’re fabulous,” she said with a laugh. “They are. Because every time I get up on stage, it’s like I’ve never been up there before.”

Tickets for the Sophie B. Hawkins concert are available by calling 948-SHOW.