{"id":3183,"date":"2011-08-09T01:03:24","date_gmt":"2011-08-09T08:03:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=3183"},"modified":"2011-08-09T01:03:24","modified_gmt":"2011-08-09T08:03:24","slug":"sara-hickman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2011\/08\/sara-hickman\/","title":{"rendered":"SARA HICKMAN"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Sara<\/h1>\n

SARA HICKMAN<\/h1>\n

In music and in business, Texas\u2019 Official State <\/strong>Musician has it covered<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Sara Hickman doesn\u2019t waste a moment. An adept multitasker, she is devoted to both her family (she lists her role as wife and mother prominently in her r\u00e9sum\u00e9) and a far-flung 22-year career that\u2019s brought her success as a singer, songwriter, producer and entrepreneur. These days the tireless Texan is busier than ever with a long list of projects. They include her first animated DVD, Big Bird<\/em>, Little Bird<\/em>; a new all-ages trio dubbed Family Time Rocks; Best of Times<\/em>, an album of her songs performed by fellow artists like Willie Nelson, Marcia Ball and Shawn Colvin, benefiting arts funding in state schools; and her latest album, Absence of Blame<\/em>. Then too, there are the attendant honors and duties accompanying the recent legislative decree naming her 2010\u2019s Official State Musician of Texas.<\/p>\n

Hickman doesn\u2019t deny the difficulty of maintaining the equilibrium between her various career pursuits. While she\u2019s quick to credit husband Lance Schriner for helping her manage her record label, Sleeveless, and her other disparate business interests, she maintains a regimen\u2014she calls it her \u201cwork feng shui\u201d\u2014that allows her to appropriate her time judiciously. \u201cIt\u2019s very easy to get caught up in the business side, especially now that there\u2019s Facebook and Twitter and other distractions,\u201d Hickman admits. \u201cBut at some point I need to be creative. So I block out time to write and that\u2019s all I do. You learn to balance. It\u2019s like heroin. You can get so addicted to a certain part of this business\u2014\u2018If I do this, I\u2019ll be at this level.\u2019 But there are calmer ways\u00a0to go about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

That philosophy has served Hickman well since she self-released her debut album, 1989\u2019s Equal Scary People<\/em>. Major label Elektra Records later re-released the album and issued Hickman\u2019s follow-up, Shortstop<\/em>, which yielded the radio hit \u201cI Couldn\u2019t Help Myself\u201d and garnered her a hosting role on VH1. But her next album, Necessary Angels<\/em>, was rejected because the label felt it lacked commercial potential. \u201cThat was one of the saddest moments of my life,\u201d she recalls. \u201cSuddenly I realized I was back to square one.\u201d With encouragement from her mom and help from fans, Hickman bought back the album\u2019s master tapes for $350,000. Necessary Angels<\/em> was eventually released by Discovery Records, but she soon encountered creative differences with that label as well. \u201cIt was more of the same,\u201d she says. \u201cI just wanted to be me, because this was who I am.\u201d<\/p>\n

After releasing three more albums on Shanachie, Hickman opted to strike out on her own. The birth of her daughter prompted a series of well-received children\u2019s albums and the founding of Sleeveless, home to all of her work since 1999.<\/p>\n

Touching on themes of alienation, peer pressure, weight issues and a friend\u2019s sudden suicide, Absence of Blame<\/em> is Hickman\u2019s most reflective record yet. \u201cI wanted to go edgier and darker, and all those songs are personal, about horrific things that I\u2019ve had to process,\u201d she says. \u201cI felt they needed to be shared.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to all music-related activities, Hickman has developed parallel careers as a designer, photographer, graphic artist, inspirational speaker and spokesperson for several humanitarian causes. She also aspires to develop her own one-woman comedy show. \u201cWhen people talk about diversifying your portfolio, well, nowadays you have to diversify your artistic portfolio. You have to be prepared to do something different to help you in the long run. To me, it\u2019s all the same thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Lee Zimmerman<\/strong><\/p>\n


\n<\/strong><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SARA HICKMAN In music and in business, Texas\u2019 Official State Musician has it covered Sara Hickman doesn\u2019t waste a moment. An adept multitasker, she is devoted to both her family (she lists her role as wife and mother prominently in her r\u00e9sum\u00e9) and a far-flung 22-year career that\u2019s brought her success as a singer, songwriter, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18],"tags":[2322,1062],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3183"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3183"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3185,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3183\/revisions\/3185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}