Q&A with Kristin Hersh

Q. Tell us about a dessert you would kill for.

A. Oh cool. Uh…I’m mad at chocolate cuz when I was sad everybody told me it would make me happy. Which I guess it did if by “happy” they meant really sick of chocolate.

So I’ll go with the noble molasses cookie. Always your friend and you can’t even taste the molasses. Here in New Orleans, they have “stage planks” — best spice cookie ever baked — and their history is beautiful. They were baked and sold to raise money for the emancipation of enslaved people.

Q. What other artists were your biggest musical influence/inspiration?

A. I wish I had been more influenced than I was. My sonic vocabulary seemed to come from outer space, though I imagine it had roots in the mix of rock and Appalachian folk songs I heard as a kid. When I found my band’s voice, I definitely could relate to other artists like us…X, the Violent Femmes and the Meat Puppets. And since we played with bands like the Pixies and Dinosaur Jr. before they were known, they felt like family, too. 

It wasn’t until I heard *Live at The Witch Trials* by the Fall that I was shocked into recognizing a deeper sensibility I shared with the artist. Now I hear my kin in so many places, though, and it’s incredibly satisfying. Especially since those artists have historically been dismissed. Only recently do I hear my voice in voices I hear in passing as though the soul has developed a more musical lexicon.

Oh yeah? That’s interesting. I don’t know that song, but I imagine zeitgeist is a real phenomenon. It’d be hard to say how it plays out now, since music and the music *business* are such different things. I now relate to thousands of musicians, for example, but rarely are they in the recording industry. Our musical lexicon is out there but mostly unmonetized :)

Q. Were there any songs that gave you more trouble than others to arrange to perform with Cello Pete? (They all sounded wonderful)

A. I had trouble with “Slippershell” because of the extreme dynamic range in that song’s structure and not wanting the bottom to fall out when I replaced bass roots with overdub melodies in the cello arrangement. And then “Dark Blue” for the opposite reason: it was so samey that it got boring. Haha…

Q. Is there anything you particularly like or dislike about touring in the UK?

A. All touring is hard for me — I’m very shy and very physical — but I love the opportunity to do something akin to running away, and playing the UK is like running away into loving arms.

Q. (For my guitar-obsessed husband) Which is your favourite guitar and why - it's cool that you play interesting guitars and avoid the most obvious makes, so how do you choose them?

A. Thanks for noticing! My guitars all serve different functions; I think playing the wrong guitar can ruin a song’s effect. My Supro baritone has been really useful lately, for 50 Foot Wave’s “Black Pearl” and new Throwing Muses overdubs, but it wouldn’t serve most solo recordings. 

I still play Collings acoustics solo and I take ESP’s on the road because they’re work horses, but when an airline broke the headstock off my main guitar, I was at a loss. Really had no idea what to do. So I double parked our van in Florence, Italy and ran into a guitar shop to grab a cheap replacement as fast as I could. The dudes in the music store thought I was nutz, but with the help of google translate, I found this cool maple guitar with some interesting features that I’ve been playing almost exclusively. I don’t even know what it is, but I actually made it to soundcheck on time with it in the next city that day ;)

Q. When people buy your products, be it books, records or whatever. What is the best place to do it, so that you get the most payout?

A. Thank you for considering this. I don’t get a direct payout, but spreading the word helps raise my profile and experiencing it is, of course, what the work is for. I buy product wholesale and sell it on the road and that money pays for gas…so I suppose that’s the most direct, but I don’t make money from books or records otherwise. Raising my profile helps me get shows, though, and shows do pay :)

ElRat side note. This shows why it's so important, to go to shows, and spend our money on the merch table

Q. What is her favourite film, if she has one? Fave Christmas movie? Fave director? Does she like silent film?? Have a fave of those? Ever been to a live accompanied silent film show? If so, what was it?!

A. Favorite movie is tough…maybe Raising Arizona, maybe Harold and Maude, maybe Bachelor Mother. Christmas movie, huh…A Christmas Story, I guess?

My son Wyatt and I just watched Clara Bow and Gary Cooper in Children of Divorce and yeah, my local theater when I was a kid played silent movies with organ and saw (!) accompaniment but I was too into the music to notice the movies :)

Q. Do you know immediately or when do you know that a song is a KH, TM or 50’~ ?

Can a song change or move?

A. My methodology in that regard is kinda lame, but I stand by it: songs written on my Strat or Telecaster are Muses songs, ones written on my SG’s or Les Paul are for 50 Foot Wave and solo songs are written on my Collings. My drummers say that’s a stupid system, but whadda they know? Lol. 

I figure the moment of inspiration is the time when I hear the energetic (the song before it becomes sound) best, so I know then what sonic vocabulary will best serve it. Neither drummer listened when I told them this ;)

Q. Do you still do lots of swimming? If so, how many days a week? Where and how? And why. I want to start swimming again and this might inspire me.

A. I have a terrible swimming problem, don’t let it happen to you! Lol. It’s a true addiction in that I’m not okay without it, so touring is really hard for me. But when I can be in one place, I swim at university pools or in the ocean. I was near a northeastern beach this fall and just stopped swimming last week (first week of December). Not even dogs are willing to go in then, forget adult humans. It’s stooooopid.

Q. I’m trying to learn the guitar. What are your three top tips?

A. Invent a tuning, invent some chords, and then play what you like to hear, only for yourself, until you fall in love with the sounds you make.

Q. How easy do you find it to go back to learn how to play older songs? Are there some songs lost to the mists of time?  Have you still got notes on every song you've written?

A. Good older songs are worth playing because they breathe: moving through time and changing, so that we experience a maturing version of them over the years. Lousy ones are as bad as pop star product and don’t breathe because they never did, so there’s no point in playing them. Those are dated as soon as they’re released. Hahaha.

Most of my songs are lost to the mists of time because we only release material if we bother to record it, obviously. And we release about a tenth of what we record. 

Playing is just what we do all the time. The best stuff is not on our records by definition…I wanna say it was too special to capture, which sounds pretentious, but I mean it. Music is a process and records are way low on the list of what that process asks of musicians.

Q. Would you ever play a full album from start to finish in a live gig?  Which one if you had to choose!  

A. This new one would be a good one. Maybe I’ll try it :)

Q. Have you got any more demos hidden away, especially from older days?  We'd love to hear them all! 

A. Awwww…I miss demos. We stopped needing to record demos when we started producing ourselves. There was no one to talk into anything, you know? 

The basics could be any instrument and any pre-production tweaks were structural or production issues that could be

Q. Are you thinking of writing another memoir?  Or have you got any more writing projects on the go?  What kinds of things do you like reading?  

A. I’m ten years into writing a novel that’s mostly true. Lol. So kind of a memoir? 

I still read mostly science textbooks but I recently fell in love with Lucia Berlin.

Q. Any favourite books you could recommend?  

A. A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin

Q. How do you choose songs for your setlists? Some songs seem regular staples and then sometimes we get a curveball… we love the staples AND the curveballs! I was wondering if you had a process for choosing which songs to take on tour.

A. My bandmates help a great deal when it comes to sequencing and dynamics. On the trio tour, Rob Ahlers and I hold up in San Francisco to work on the nature of the sound we were looking for…which, as always, was the songs bossing US around. We landed on one: “Kay Catherine” and how she sounded in that practice space to determine that year’s touring cycle. Meaning, not just the records we’d pull from, but their sonic techniques and what kind of rooms we would play, etc.

Q. I guess my only question would be, why does the 50 Foot Wave song "Clara Bow" hit me so hard?  Maybe it's because I'm almost 50 and am a strong woman with gripes.  Thank you for all of your TM, solo work, 50 Foot Wave.

A. Some little surfer kid just said the same thing to me about Clara Bow. He liked the idea of being strong and griping, even though surfers like summer more than I do ;)

Q. How can we get you to sub in for Hamilton Leithauser on "The Crimps" by The Walkmen?

And which of your songs should the Walkmen cover in return?

A. I had never heard of the Walkmen, but I’m listening now, to a song called Flamingos which is pretty cool…and since we have a song called Los Flamingos, maybe they could cover that?

Q. Do you have a preference between recording music and playing music live? 

A. I prefer recording. I would go to the studio every day to make records, if I could afford it, but it’s very expensive. It’s the only place in the world where stuff makes sense and I can create beauty. Even my beautiful children were accompanied by such fear and life distortion that I found it hard to settle into anything like peace about them. 

And touring is a nightmare for me…hahaha. What a wimp, right? 

I think wealthy musicians do okay? But on a budget, it’s physically difficult — little food, little sleep, constant travel and stress — that I was hospitalized with exhaustion once. But it’s mostly that I’m so shy, I’m just not cut out for it. Hiding suits me just fine :)

Q. There's been a big discussion lately about how prohibitively expensive making music and touring is, with some acts funding their music via OnlyFans, and I know you've had the Strangels subscriptions for a while now. Do you feel that record labels are less supportive of bands now than when you started out, or are people just being more open about it? I'm thinking as well of reading recently that ticket prices have increased a fair bit, but bands aren't being paid more. 

A. I was never paid for any record I made. The budget went toward recording (because it had to) and my records didn’t recoup. Even some tours lost money, so I was often in debt as the bandleader. If you were a pop act and a label “promoted” you (bought press and radio play for your first record) you made money on units sold. Now is no different, but the numbers are smaller, both budget and sales.

Q. Do you have a favourite biscuit (cookie)? 

A. Molasses!! Look up the stage plank cookie from New Orleans…very cool :)

Q. Do certain lyrics or stories have a color like certain sounds/chords do?

A. Oh cool…I *wish* but not, not for me. My other senses can jumble in something like a gestalt effect but I don’t think that’s synesthesia.

Q. On a similar note, do lyrics involving certain stories or bits of conversation feel like they belong to one of the bands or a solo project? 

A. Actually, yes…the Muses songs have a lot of overheard conversation, whereas Fippy songs yell a kind of bitch-fest and solo quote lines are more like an intimate conversation. I think they all derive originally from actual conversation.

Q. Would/have you considered writing a novel?

A. I’m ten years into my first! Just stopped working on it to look at these questions :)

It’s unfortunately all true, so far, but my life is so nutty that no one will know that. Hahaha…

Q. I loved reading some of the authors I saw you mention on twitter / in interviews (specifically 'A Christmas Memory' by Truman Capote and 'The Haunting of Hill House' by Shirley Jackson). Can you share what is significant about these authors to you?

A. A Christmas Memory is one of the best *things* ever. It’s such a life capture, and one I can relate to as it evidences many aspects of my southern childhood. I was just reading it last night, actually, and was struck again by its perfumey simplicity. 

Shirley Jackson’s books about her children are my favorites. Life Among the Savages is particularly insane and sweet. And she had such a timeless spectrumy sadness. A lost and found then lost again quality.

Q. I was stunned by your description in Rat Girl of how you experienced music during your time in the Doghouse. And in the book, you also are bewildered by it. Have your views on what happened and the connection between the experience and the place evolved since then?

A. Sure…I had to stay true to the diary that Rat Girl was based on. So at the time, I had been told that I was bipolar, and sort of believed it. I also believed that songs were gods, which may be true, but I no longer know what that means. I guess what happened over the years was a blending of impulses to both make noise and listen. And then a life reorientation around my children that somehow brought more gravity and still made it ok :)

Q. In "Paradoxical Undressing" and in Martin Aston's "Facing the Other Way", there are some Muses songs that are referenced but were never released ("Rat", "Cowboy", and Tanya song called "Rise").  I was wondering if you've ever thought about cleaning out the vaults and releasing some of the older unreleased songs or any demos of songs that may have started very differently than what ended up on albums?

A. That would be fun. Maybe too much music, though. In both the Muses trio (the lineup for the last 35 years or so) and 50 Foot Wave, we only record and release about a tenth of what we write and play, because it’s in the nature of this job to follow music around. Capturing it is sort of beside the point and releasing it is WAY down the list of what matters to me. Pop stars who play product instead of music work that equation backward and it’s ALL about attention, but music itself is a study, so we study it. If I sent you the hours and hours and hours of unreleased music we have in our vaults, you’d be really annoyed. Hahaha…

Q. You've encompassed so many different styles over the years, while still managing to maintain your sonic identity.  What song or songs do you think best represent the Muses' aesthetic? 

A. Soap and Water from the Fat Skier, Red Heaven’s Furious, University’s No Way in Hell and Fever Few, both Sleepwalkings and Morning Birds from Purgatory/Paradise, Kay Catherine from Sun Racket :)

Q. As an artist who is always looking forward, and naturally committed to capturing in music what she learns from life with each new experience, I wonder what you think about the retrospectives of your work and your career; from the fact that we are archiving and making available to everyone all sorts of material (the graphics, the interviews, the rarities, the bootlegs) to the fact that your old records are still being reviewed fervorously. I personally believe that history is important, but what do you think about the fact that the past is periodically brought back to the present in the context of music? Do you think that it keeps the work alive?

The KH Archives

A. You’ve taught me so much. I used to run from the past, having found that my output had been so polarizing, I didn’t know if I was loved or hated. Now I love *your* work, your way of seeing, your ability to transform our likes of clay into sculptures just by allowing me to see them through your eyes.

This changed my life. I am fearless when it comes to work now because I fear no judgement and strive for no win. Thank you.

ElRat side note. The KH Archives is always looking for old/interesting items, If you have anything you would like to submit to this wonderful archive, you can Email, thekristinhersharchives@gmail.com. 

Also, if you have any bootlegs, or 10-4 recordings, you can Email me, at ch33sl3y@gmail.com, (ch33sl3y is also me, please put KH bootlegs in the subject line so I don't miss it, Thank you!🖤

Q. You used to say that the songs came from outside, that they weren’t you, you were just writing what you heard. I wonder if you would still say that, or if you now know that  they were yours… and maybe the way you heard them, was just your mind's way of tapping into what was already there?

A. That’s a really good way of putting it. I think my concept of an outline has changed, of what these bodies we walk around wanna do here. If we’re held together by will, what is our porous nature about, you know? So we adventure and we become carriers of all the cool contagions we meet out there in the dreadful and fascinating and soothing and chaotic world. Maybe a song is that adventure waiting outside or drifting into the window, plus the contagions we picked up in our last story and the pile of childhood goggle views behind our eyes. In that sense? I don’t know what an “I” is…thankfully :)

Q. I think I heard you say that songs arrive fully formed now? So, I guess that means your brain does all of this in your subconscious, and you can just tap directly into it?  Do you think your songs are better now, since music and you are now in the same place, or do you think it didn’t change? 

A. I think I’m getting better, in that tapping into something isn’t the trick so much as editing out the clay the sculpture doesn’t want to be. I used to include *everything* and got a lot of “art” points for sounding crazy, but I just didn’t know how to edit. It could be called craft, but whatever it is, I’m still learning it. And I already know how to play, I’m clear on what equipment does what and the strengths and limitations of a recording studio, etc. Craft sounds mundane to me ;)

I used to think that the song knew everything. Now I realize, I don’t even what the song IS, much less what it knows! There’s this moment of aliveness that actually could always be, or maybe always is. But until we humans learn to perceive everything that way, we can peer into that portal in a few minutes of sound wine. The wine captures blackberries or whatever and the blackberries capture sun, and so we drink the wine and an essence of summer happens to us. A song captures its own brambles which capture human effect and it holds up these magnifying glass moments. 

Q. Do songs still come to you all the time, or has the frequency changed over the years, do you have purple patches & dry patches, or is it fairly consistent?

A. Songs are always there, but I’m not always ready for them or good at writing them ;)

Q. You often name albums for places. I wondered if you had the album title before you recorded any songs, if the songs grow into the album, or if the songs come first, and the title comes later… or maybe it's different every time? Do all the songs for an album, tend to come to you together? Or are they scattered and you have to find the ones that fit?

A. I don’t believe titles are as magic as songs; they can be artful and *right* but when I name a song for a place it’s because it works like that blackberry wine above…brings about some essence. Or else I just don’t have a name for it, so calling it where I wrote it (like “Sue’s” 😂) helps me remember it.

 Album material usually describes a time and comes together that way, but at the end of a session, I always write the defining song and find a lost piece that was looking to be included. So crazy, but that’s always how it works.

Q. Did you always know “mississippi kite” was in the wrong place? That album changed so much between the original release and the remixed version, so much so that the original now feels like a demo when I listen back. Do you feel like it was always unfinished? 

A. I’m so grateful to you for knowing that. Yeah, all I did was put everything back the way it was originally. Who gets to do that??

Q. Aside from crooked, are there other albums that you would like to go back and rejig? Other songs in the wrong place? Things that annoy you?

A. I could redo all my records. Some need it more than others ;)

Q. What do you consider to be your best album/albums, and is it the same as your favourite…. Maybe you don't have a favourite, since you’ve described songs as like children? Is there a song that you think “Yes, that’s exactly how it was supposed to be”

A. Sunny Border Blue and Sky Motel are very “realized” as is Purgatory/Paradise. Power and Light is probably my favorite, but now that you ask, I guess I don’t really know what I mean by that. Lol.

Q. If you could wipe any album or songs of yours out of existence, would you? & what would it/they be?

A. Hunkpapa needs a complete overhaul and The Real Ramona also suffers from dated production. The Fat Skier and first album also need remixes and maybe some of our cooler songs could have been included…we hadn’t yet fought our way out of the trenches, so I barely consider them my records. 

Q. How do you practise with Pete for the tour, do you physically practise, via zoom or whatever, or just quick when you get into the country? or is it just that he's shit hot at what he does, and so are you, so you can adjust for someone else.

A. Now? We just meet up at soundcheck. I can’t ask ANYONE else to do what we ask of ourselves. We have to see through time and slow it down and have unspoken, continuous dialogue throughout ;) 

Q. And finally (phew) Marmite, yes or no? (be careful how you answer…🤣)

A. Jesus no.

Well, there you have it, The One Hersh doesn't like marmite, that's the big take home from this😆

Seriously, the *real* take home from this, is, we need to go to shows, and buy merch off the merch table. Since that's where Hersh makes money.

I asked her for the "Stage Plank" cookies recipe, since I was too idle to search myself... thinking she'd have something handwritten on a scrap of paper by someone's granny. She sent this one, I've got a feeling it's just granny googles, but, this is what she sent me, so... you'll have to work the rest of it out for yourselves.) I'll definitely be trying these with my Kristin, over the next week or so anyway.🖤

Thank you to Kirsten for actually finding the link this came from for us, you can find that here

Since "Like a Dog" was one of the songs mentioned by KH here, I'll add this backyard timelapse video I made of the 10-4 all version, which makes me want to cry, whenever I hear it.🎶🎧🖤

Don't forget, Kristin Hersh is heading to Australia & New Zealand in March 2025,  and Throwing Muses are coming to the UK & Europe in May 2025.

Lets not miss our chances, find all your ticket links here

Also, don't forget, that money from every Hersh shirt sold at ElRat Designs, goes directly to Kristin Hersh, to help fund studio time. You can check out all the Hersh goods right here.

Thank you all so much, once again, for everything

ElRat Designs🖤