DIAMOND GIRL : Sara Hickman’s a Top-Flight Shortstop Among Singers

Range, nimbleness afoot and a powerful throwing arm are the prerequisites for playing shortstop in the big leagues.

Sara Hickman’s trade has nothing to do with stopping grounders up the middle or turning the double play, but the Texas-based pop singer was not being presumptuous in calling her new album “Shortstop.”

On “Shortstop,” and her 1989 debut album, “Equal Scary People,” Hickman shows a range of styles and themes, and a vocal nimbleness and power that qualify her as a shortstop among singers.

Hickman’s starting point is a blend of folk and pop, with Joni Mitchell a clear influence both vocally and lyrically. While Mitchell moved gradually from the straightforward folkie approach of her early career to the jazz borrowings and atmospheric hues that came in later, Hickman seems bent on splashing all her colors on a single canvas.

The folkie touch comes through on such numbers as the strong folk-rocker, “In the Fields,” and the sweetly acoustic “Claim on My Heart.” But “I Couldn’t Help Myself,” Hickman’s hit on the adult-contemporary charts, is a bit of slick, swooning, contemporary pop-R&B; that has nothing to do with folk. And the hot-soul style of “Take It Like a Man” is closer to sassy Tina Turner than to sensitive Joni.

Hickman’s subjects are similarly varied. She can profess giddy infatuation on one song, then take a barbed, sardonic, feminist shot at male dominance in the next. She sometimes evokes luminous, captured moments where time seems to stand still. But on the album’s title song, Hickman observes with a blend of animation and melancholy that life’s great ballgame can be dismayingly fleeting as she stands at shortstop, helplessly waving at a parade of passing baserunners.

Hickman, 28, began pursuing a musical career in 1986, after she had earned a fine arts degree in painting from North Texas State University. Her first album was an independent release on a label run by the Texas polka-rock band Brave Combo. Elektra Records signed Hickman and released “Equal Scary People” without further embellishment. But for “Shortstop,” she worked with a band of studio all-stars--except for “Take It Like a Man,” which underscores its feminist point by employing an all-female band.

Who: Sara Hickman.

When: Tuesday, March 12, at 8 p.m. With Cliff Eberhardt.

Where: The Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano.

Whereabouts: San Diego Freeway to the San Juan Creek Road exit. Left onto Camino Capistrano. The Coach House is in the Esplanade Center.

Wherewithal: $13.50.

Where to call: (714) 496-8930.