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Sophie B. Hawkins

Presented by Kennett Flash at Kennett Flash

June 12, 2010

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Sophie B. Hawkins emerged in 1992 with a fierce bidding war for her debut album, Tongues&Tails. The Columbia Records release quickly went gold, earned her a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist, and fired a single, "Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover", into the Top Five. Another gold album, Whaler, followed two years later along with the single, "As I Lay Me Down" that would chart in Billboard for a record-breaking sixty-seven weeks. By the time she got to Timbre in 1999, she had won universal respect for her rare blend of gutsy honesty. Hawkins subsequently worked out an agreement that allowed her to leave her label while retaining ownership of the masters to Timbre. She re-released Timbre on her Trumpet Swan imprint and hit the road--on her own, with her band in a station wagon. 2004's Wilderness followed. Working out of her home studio near Los Angeles Hawkins wrote and laid down Wilderness' tracks on a variety of instruments: guitar, cello, drums, keys, plus the exotic percussion that has fascinated her since her studies while growing up in New York with African drum legend Babatunde Olatuni and at the Manhattan School of Music. On Wilderness, these elements flow through nuanced arrangements, in which echoes of Nina Simone, Laura Nyro, and other influences only enhance Hawkins' unique sound. August 2006 saw the release of her debut live album, the Bad Kitty Board Mix. Recorded in Seattle, the two-disc set captured the true energy and essence of Sophie as a performer. In her words, "This live album is primarily a gift to my fans. Beyond that, it's a gift to myself--in that I am finally comfortable with who I am REALLY as a musician, as a storyteller/improviser and as a living the moment creative human." The last year has been a busy one for Sophie, personally and professionally. In November 2008, she became the proud mother of a son Dashiell. At the present time she is hard at work writing a broadway musical for Kristin Chenoweth and working on her new album.