Singer-Songwriter Sophie B. Hawkins’ Finances Finally In Tune With Her Art

The young man who recently carried singer-songwriter Sophie B. Hawkins’ bags up to her Seattle hotel room got more than money for his tip.

“He was going on and on about how [being a bellhop] wasn’t really who he was and that he really was an artist,” Hawkins, 34, said in a recent interview. “I told him that you can’t hate your job. You can’t hate what you do for a living. I was a coat checker, a dishwasher, a waitress, and those were some of the happiest times of my life because I still got to do my writing. You’re lucky when you can work and then do your art.”

Not that Hawkins has always lived by her own advice. After two successful albums in the early ‘90s, bad decisions torpedoed her career and left her just about broke. Now she’s in control of her career and finances and it’s paying off.

She was the opening act for two Sting concerts in January in Florida. Hawkins’ third album, “Timbre,” was released April 27 by Rykodisc under Hawkins’ own label, Trumpet Swan Records. Its first single, “Walking in My Blue Jeans,” is No. 23 on the Radio and Record adult contemporary charts. She also has a song on the soundtrack for an upcoming Miramax Films movie, “40 Days and 40 Nights,” and she’ll go on tour this summer.

Her story is probably similar to many in the record industry. In 1992, at the age of 26, she was dazzled by a bidding war between record labels and had virtually no experience in negotiating what she wanted. She had no mentor to help her avoid common mistakes. Her only friend at the label, a producer, was subsequently fired.

Hawkins lacked experience in making good financial decisions. She had delegated that side of the business to managers. She didn’t know how to invest her money. By her own admission, just trying to read the stock market pages in a newspaper was scary to her.

But there were more fundamental problems. One of them, chronicled in a 1997 documentary on Hawkins called “The Cream Will Rise,” which was reprised on the Sundance Channel last month, was her inability to commit to becoming a celebrity. Though some celebrities feared professional failure more than anything else, Hawkins practically embraced it as a familiar friend and an escape.

“Before, I used to truly look forward to [failure],” Hawkins said. “It would mean that I didn’t have to show up on ‘The Tonight Show.’ I didn’t have to show up on tour. I could just go away and write, which is what I really wanted to do.”

That lack of commitment extended to the people Hawkins entrusted to handle her career. “I kept people around me who wouldn’t commit either,” she said.

None of these things was immediately apparent to Hawkins, whose first album, “Tongues and Tails,” released in 1992, went gold and featured a top-five hit that the record label wanted her to call “Darn, I Wish I Was Your Lover,” instead of “Damn,” which she used.

Two years later came another gold album, “Whaler,” and another hit single, “As I Lay Me Down,” which spent several months on the charts. That song represented the pinnacle of her success at Sony’s Columbia Records. Years would pass before the release of her third album.

Hawkins said the label wanted her to work with a producer of its choosing, not hers.

She added that record company executives suggested that she create songs with another songwriter--again, not of her choosing. Some music industry experts say it’s common to suggest collaborating with other writers.

Columbia music executives would not comment on the record about their relationship with Hawkins.

“Suddenly, they were building this personality for me,” Hawkins said. “I guess what they thought was that I was not quite platinum at all and that I had a fan base but it wasn’t growing. They felt ‘She needs to make a crossover to the Faith Hill-Celine Dion thing. . . . I couldn’t possibly do that. I wouldn’t be interested in writing lyrics like that.”

Someone to Help Get Her Finances in Order

That eventually translated into career quagmire. Fortunately for Hawkins, everything she needed to have creative independence was available to her or in place. She just didn’t know it.

As in most turnaround success stories, there was no single epiphany or big moment of enlightenment, but several small ones along the way.

Hawkins, for example, had been making plenty of money on royalties and had already met the person who would become her best choice for a business partner and advisor.

That was Gigi Gaston, a screenwriter and director who met Hawkins in 1996 and found Hawkins so interesting that she decided to do a documentary during the singer-songwriter’s 30-city “Moxie Tour.” That resulted in the “The Cream Will Rise.”

Crash Course in Building an Investment Portfolio

“I lived in a shoe box [in New York]. I never saw a dime until I moved out here and met my business partner, Gigi Gaston,” Hawkins said. “She looked at me and said, ‘There’s all this money. Where does it go? Have you ever put money away?’ And I said, ‘Put money away?’ I had never heard of such a thing.”

With Gaston’s encouragement, Hawkins fired her business manager and quickly entered the world of personal investing. When royalty checks came in, they were quickly deposited into Hawkins’ investment portfolio.

Hawkins also was naturally frugal. She pays only $700 in rent and has a $200 monthly payment on a truck. She often uses a bicycle for transportation.

“Gigi put me on a crash course,” she said. “I had a retirement fund. I basically established this whole kitty. I thought ‘This is wild.’

“It isn’t hard to be an artist and do your money thing. It’s much harder to wake up in the middle of the night knowing that you’re being ripped off and starting to get this feeling in your stomach almost bordering on bitterness toward people who are saying one thing and doing another.

“It is so much easier to set up a time . . . every two weeks on a Sunday, turn on great music, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, whatever, and pay your bills and keep your life together and make your own business files. And it becomes beautiful, like a vibe. You have your animals or your kids around or your lover. It’s a groove.”

Rebuilding Career in Her Own Image

Next came severing her ties with Columbia Records with the help of a well-known film industry lawyer, not one connected to the music industry.

This was why the advice to that bellhop came so easily, and with sincerity.

“What do I have to lose?” Hawkins asked. “That’s when I began to get so excited and back to the way I was when I first started, when I had to have six jobs and work on my songs until 3 in the morning, I felt like I was really going into the trenches and that excited me so much as an artist.”

From there it was only a short distance to her own imprint with partner Gaston.

Achieving a keen business sense was only part of the change for Hawkins.

She said she always was at her best when she was writing her songs. The other half of her success was growing as a performer or, in her words, “finally, the person I was when I was writing became the person I am all of the time now.

“My songs are always four years ahead of me,” Hawkins said. “They’re like my teachers.”

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Playing a Different Tune

Sophie B. Hawkins’ advice to aspiring artists, as gleaned from a recent interview with the singer-songwriter:

* Love the job, no matter what it is, that pays the bills and enables you to pursue your art in your free time.

* Be willing to do whatever it takes to promote your art, even if it means singing the karaoke version of one of your hits. “You have to be ready at any moment to woo someone with your songs.”

* Never insulate yourself from the business side of your art. You must actively participate in it. When you’re in business for yourself, you’re responsible for your own financial future.

* Deliver instructions, not speeches or pep talks to the people who work for you.

* Don’t be afraid to jump ship when the company you work for, in this case a record label, has lost confidence in you.

* Find the right mentor, business partner and legal advisor and never assume they have to come from the industry in which you’re trying to succeed.

* Do not blame your failures on others. “I knew I should have been able to get my work out there and it was only myself holding me back.