Does your state have an official state musician? Well, as a person who's been living in and traveling to/from Texas for about a quarter century now, I can assure you that Texas cares about its music. And for 2010 the Official Texas State Musician is none other than Sara Hickman. Considering that their 2009 Official Texas State Musician is Willie Nelson, Hickman's in fine company.
She's also in other fine company. In this week's newletter she announced that she was going spend year focusing on families...
Sara has decided to utilize the opportunity to bring attention to arts/music in the schools, in families. Her mantra is FAMILY TIME ROCKS! and she hopes to raise awareness of how school funding is being cut for the arts, and to sell cds to generate income for BIG THOUGHT (Dallas, TX) and Theatre Action Project (T.A.P./Austin), two groups that bring poetry, theatre, creative expression to kids in Texas that, otherwise, would not be exposed to creative thought... Her feeling is that families who create and play together, stay together.And to that end she's collaborating with a whole lot of folks. Of greatest interest to fans of Sara's family music (namely, me), she will be:
-- Working with Jason Molin on Family Time Rocks!", which will "incorporate music, ideas, conversation to stimulate/motivate/create family creativity time!" (Exclamation point in the original, though, hey, I'm OK with it.)
-- Producing a CD for Monica Cravotta and friends "musician moms sharing songs for wee ones! Whee!" (again, exclamation points and "Whee" in the original, though I'm partial to "Whee!" myself.)
-- Working on a DVD of animated shorts of her children's songs.
The second and third items are exciting enough. The first? Really exciting. One, because Molin has a little experience with writing kid-friendly music (The Jellydots covered Molin's "Lake Rules" on their Hey You Kids! disk). Two, because if this song from Hickman's and Molin's "Newspaper and Trumpet" compilation is any indication of what the rest of the disk will entail (at least musically), it will be way fun.
