Justin Hicks
Issue No. 21 • Spring 2020
HOLE IN THE BUCKET
(written by The HawtPlates, Jade Hicks, Justin Hicks, Kenita Miller-Hicks)
Where's the gold
Where my luck is
All dried up all dried up
Where’s the gold
Where my luck is
All dried up
Tell me where is my gold
And it’s here that needs mending
It’s wasted in their spending
And the fear that came ringing
They'll pull me over to reply
Where’s the Gold
Where my luck is
All dried up in spite of
Where’s the gold
Where my luck is
Darlin tell me where is my gold
Henry I know
It got so cold they wouldn’t leave you alone
Henry I know
They got you prone to the murderer’s home
Where’s the gold
I took off running
Already knew that I was free to start again
Emancipation
A piece of paper didn’t do it so I will
Paper or Poker
I’ll use my face to maybe disguise
How will I do it
It is my choice to choose what I will decide
There's a hole in my bucket
Dear Liza, dear Liza
there's a hole in my bucket
Liza darlin there is a hole I want to trust him
Talk to him like he was a friend of mine
He didn’t notice
He pulled for his and so I pulled for mine
Could’ve but didn’t
Saw the reflection of fear in each other’s eyes
We overreacted
Where’s the gold
Into the sunset
Riding the open
Justin Hicks is a multidisciplinary artist and performer who uses music and sound to investigate identity and value. As a composer and performer, his work has been featured at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Performance Space New York, The Public Theater, JACK, Dixon Place, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Highline, The Institute for Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), and The John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, among many others. Hicks has collaborated with notable visual artists, musicians, and theater-makers including Abigail DeVille, Kaneza Schaal, Me’shell Ndegeocello, Cauleen Smith, Helga Davis, and Steffani Jemison. In 2018, he was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for his work as the composer of Mlima’s Tale by Lynn Nottage (The Public Theater, dir. Jo Bonney). Hicks was born in Cincinnati, OH, and works in the Bronx, NY.
The HawtPlates (Justin Hicks, Kenita Miller-Hicks, and Jade Hicks) make conceptual live vocal works. The performance trio cultivates a unique sound that is specific to them as a family by breaking down folk and vernacular musical forms and reconstituting them into other modes of performance in order to address the trauma of being a working class citizen in the modern world. Together and individually, the trio has worked with various institutions including National Black Theater, the Guthrie Theater, the Public Theater, Performance Space New York, Jack, the Bushwick Starr, and the Park Avenue Armory. They have inspired work by Meshell Ndegeocello, Abigail DeVille, Kaneza Schaal, Charlotte Brathwaite and collaborated with Ahrens and Flaherty, Helga Davis, Cauleen Smith, Steffani Jemison, Reggie ‘Regg Roc’ Gray and the D.R.E.A.M. Ring, Lynn Nottage, and Queen Esther and the Harlem Gospel Singers.