Kristin Hersh
SPEAKING IN TONGUES
Kristin Hersh Muses About L.A., Appalachia, and Rocking Out Again
Alt-folk icon Kristin Hersh is like a big sister to righteous babes from Ani DiFranco to Sleater-Kinney's Corin Tucker. A college-radio heroine during the late '80s and most of the '90s, the former frontwoman of Boston's bewitching Throwing Muses has spent her solo career chronicling motherhood and madness on mysterious, stirring albums like 1994's HIPS AND MAKERS and 1998's STRANGE ANGELS. That same year, she released MURDER, MISERY, AND THEN GOODNIGHT, an Internet-only CD of Appalachian folk songs. Yet if old fans were worrying she might never return to her indie-pop roots, Hersh's new SKY MOTEL finds her rocking out on the cathartic, textural sound of the Muses in some of the toughest tunes of her career. Jon Dolan recently caught up with Kristin and got the word on the magic and mystery behind her music.
barnesandnoble.com: SKY MOTEL sounds a lot like your work with Throwing Muses. Did you make a conscious decision to move back to that sound?
Kristin Hersh: Yeah, I did -- with an exclamation point! I was brokenhearted when the Muses ended [in 1997]. We didn't want to dissolve ourselves, but we could no longer afford to make records or tour. So, we just suddenly weren't. And so I was left with my solo career, which was really "solo-acoustic," 'cause I just thought that's what you did -- oh, "folk chickie" now! Which never felt comfortable for me, although it was enjoyable. It was liberating to make SKY MOTEL and find I hadn't lost my sound along with losing the Muses.
bn: Were the songs inspired by anything in particular?
KH: Most of the time I can go through a record and say "This I wrote in New Zealand, this I wrote in Scotland," but this time they were all California songs. I lived in Los Angeles for a while, where people are very intricately involved with each other and want to impress each other -- to get jobs from each other, to sleep with each other, to get money from each other. And I found that human-anthill business fascinating. Later, we moved to the desert right outside of L.A. -- Joshua Tree -- where people live on 40 acres alone, and they feel involved, but their involvement is with nature and animals and they have no interest in the anthill. The combination of the two was perfect for me. And that, I think, gives you the right mind-set for a song to happen. Not thinking or feeling necessarily, but being intrigued and being empty, and then a song will start to talk.
bn: Can you describe that process?
KH: It used to be frightening. It used to be hallucinatory, where I would just fight the songs and hope I didn't hear any until they had to kick me in the back of the head and wake me up in the middle of the night, playing louder and louder. It was scary, and I just thought, Well, this makes me crazy, what a bummer, I don't want to be like this. Before SKY MOTEL I had spent about a year and a half without having written a single song, and I was relieved and felt really good. So I just set the stage for them, and then I played guitar and they came very easily. I didn't censor them. I didn't say "You need a moral," "You need a chorus," "You need a break." I just let them go, and they didn't say such crazy stuff after all.
bn: Are there any musicians who've influenced your songwriting?
KH: Oh, I wish. I've been trying to be "influenced" my whole life.
bn: Do you have any favorite artists?
KH: Um, Vic Chesnutt, Jimi Hendrix, X, the Violent Femmes. I like the soundtrack to PARIS, TEXAS a lot.
bn: You recently recorded an album of Appalachian folk songs. Anything you'd recommend to someone trying to get into that era of music?
KH: We listened to the Carter Family in my house when I was little, alongside the Talking Heads, and the Clash, and Patti Smith, and they are all kinda mixed up in my head together. That's what Throwing Muses ended up sounding like.
bn: How did the project get started?
KH: My dad used to play those songs for me, even though we lived in a commune, which was very different from where he heard them when he was a little boy in the Tennessee mountains. He just thought it was a part of childhood, and he instilled in me a love of Appalachian music without my really being aware of it -- I was so little. But the more I talked to my husband about it, he convinced me that I should put these songs down if only so that our children can hear them too. It was great to be able to see their reaction. I wasn't sure they'd respond to music like that. The input is complex for children now, even more so than when I was little, but they really responded, and they played piano and sang backups on the record. I wasn't even sure the content was appropriate. It was all about killing and drinking and going to hell, but they just kinda sang along and played along, and [laughs] went back to "Sesame Street."
Jon Dolan
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