A Conversation with Sara Hickman (continued)

PM: So my buddy Monte Warden shows up with a song on the record, and that's cool, that he wrote with Tricia Mitchell.

SH: Yes, I love Monty.

PM: Is he an old friend?

SH: Oh, yes, we go way back. We always end up doing stuff together like songwriting panels. And then, of course, nobody else gets to talk but me and Monty.

[laughter]

PM: He's a great dude.

SH: He is. Whenever I know I'm going to be doing something with him, whether it's on the stage performing or just sitting around talking, my heart fills with glee because he's just a complete joy. He's like the light that the moths are attracted to, because he's just got that joy in him.

PM: Yeah, he's irrepressibly up.

SH: Yes, he is.

PM: This Tricia Mitchell co-wrote another one, which was one of my favorites, "Learn You Like a Book." Can you tell us something about her? I don't know anything about her.

SH: Oh, she's wonderful. She has a CD out called Purple Room. And you can go to triciamitchell.com and check it out. She's a young lady I met originally in Dallas, through a circle of friends--through Robin Macy, who founded the Dixie Chicks, and then Robin and I had had the Domestic Science Club. And Tricia knew me and Robin and Colin Boyd, who I co-write a lot of songs with. And Colin is really super-talented, too, and he deserves a lot more worldwide recognition.

PM: He wrote another song with her on your record, right?

SH: He wrote "Learn You Like a Book" with Tricia. Tricia, she's really tall, and she's got an aquiline nose, and beautiful, big almond eyes. And she's got this way of moving through the world that's very charged.

PM: Wow.

SH: Where I'm kind of maybe enthusiastic, or I come across as maybe--I don't know what I come across like, but very open--she seems very still and observant.

PM: Ah, she keeps it in reserve.

SH: And that's one reason why her songs are so beautiful. I mean, to me, "Twenty Years to Life" is a brilliant song.

PM: Oh, yeah.

SH: That song is just brilliant. That's perfect. That's a perfect song. And when I first heard it on her album, I was like, "Oh, my, that song is perfect." And she was compelled to write that song because she heard a woman talking on TV from prison about why she killed her husband. And Tricia thought, "There's a song there. Why don't we ever get to hear it from this woman's point of view?"

PM: Right.

SH: So I think Tricia will go on to do great things and people will know her name, because she's very, very talented.

PM: Yeah, I certainly wrote to her this morning and said, "Hey, send us your record, please, will you?"

SH: Oh, yeah!

PM: Yeah. So there's that connectedness always in play. [See our review of Tricia's CD in this issue.]

Gretchen Phillips is credited with "keening" on the Roland Orzabal [from Tears For Fears] song "Mad World." I'd never heard that word before.

SH: The word "keening"? Well, you know what it is, though, right?

PM: Well, I looked it up, but I'd like to hear it from you.

SH: Well, I hope I got it right, because keening to me was when women are hired to walk through funeral processions--

PM: Oh, wow.

SH: --and to cry. And they do it in Africa, and then of course, translated over to New Orleans, where they wail and they keen, and they're the--I think this happens in China, too--they take on the role of the family to grieve for the deceased.

PM: Oh, my lord, no, it didn't say that in Webster's. That's much deeper, then. I mean, it was more of the Irish derivation, and it was some kind of singing. But I didn't know it was funereal and processional. Wow, that's unbelievable.

SH: Gretchen is one of my oldest friends. I've known her since I was 14, and had my second band ever with Gretchen. She's awesome. She's from Two Nice Girls, which I don't know if you've ever--

PM: Well, I've heard of them. That was a previous group of yours, right?

SH: I wish I'd been in Two Nice Girls. No, Two Nice Girls was a trio of women that did music from a lesbian standpoint.

PM: Oh, yeah, that's right. I saw pictures on the web of Two Nice Girls.

SH: Yeah. And then Gretchen branched off and had her own group called The Gretchen Phillips Experience. And then she had Girls in the Nose, and then she had Lord Douglas Phillips. And now she's working on her own CD, which, I must say, is my favorite CD of 2006. It hasn't even been out yet, and she's looking for someone to pick it up. And it's brilliant. If you want, before we hang up, I will definitely give you Gretchen's email, because you should contact her and get a copy of it.

PM: Oh, yeah, I'm all about it.

SH: It's phenomenal! I can't say enough about it. So anyway, I had to have Gretchen on the CD because I love her so much. And she said, "Oh, I can do this high-pitched kind of thing." And I said, "Oh, my God, that would be so great on 'Mad World.'" And then she did it. I originally had a baby crying in there, too, but it freaked everybody out. Everybody was like, "It's too much, it's too much." So I took the baby out.

PM: Yeah, some people find that sound very upsetting.

SH: Yeah, it was. It was almost too war like. It was like you had come into this devastated catastrophic place, and there's a wounded child. And I loved it, because I thought it really pushed the song over the edge, but everybody just got upset, so I thought I'd take it off.

[laughter]

print (pdf)     listen to clips      puremusic home