kristin

The gay and laughing McCarricks are back in London now, which is too bad, ’cause I was starting to get used to having them here. They play a mighty beautiful string and their porn names are easily the best this side of Bernie’s**.

Now Steve, Billy, the dogs and I will finish the record alone but, I gotta say, it’s sounding e-freakin’-normous. I don’t often make big records, especially not solo ones, but this record is size large. Size chest-thumpingly large. A husky boy. 6X.

I’m weak and wacky right now, having only barely survived a downright funky 24 hour flu bug (which we were sure was a touch of food poisoning when Bodhi had it a few days ago – until Wyatt and I got the exact same food poisoning 3 days later). Billy and Ryder are still holding their breath.

I gotta put down a few vocals and guitar overdubs today, so I’ll keep this short. I’m having trouble spelling…um…whaddyacallem…words, anyway.

Love,
Kristin

** Porn Names of the Studio Crowd: Bernie – “Joe Le Gros”; Martin – “Shandy Charleton”; Kim – “Boscoe Aquarius”; Billy – “Duckie Bennett”; Rizzo – “Woody Penbroke”; Me – “Honkey Bear Kay”

California is long gone; today I’m in Rhode Island where it is raining or snowing or sleeting or…”slushing” I guess is what it’s doing. Slushing like a bitch’s son. Weather only a dog could love.

But I’m watching Dave Narcizo play drums and it is good. In fact, we’re playing together again, just not at the same time. Science marches on.

It’s been awhile since I’ve seen Dave do anything but draw pictures. Really good pictures, mind you, but I can’t hear them and hearing is my favorite sense (I fell in love with my husband over the phone). Dave drumming is very easy on the ears — a happy sound.

If you disappoint my baby son, Bodhi, he looks at you intently and calmly says, “I don’t love you when you do that”. It is a crumpling experience, to say the least, so, of course, Billy and I have adopted this expression. It comes in awful handy when you want to lay waste to someone’s ego and make them chuckle at the same time.

Conversely, when one is stunned and impressed, it works to say, “I love you when you do that”. You gotta save it for special people, special occasions and motive-free moments of grace. Anyway, I love Dave when he does this:

Love,
Kristin

I’m writing from Japantown in San Francisco where it is, of course, another perfect day. We had to stay on a bit after Saturday night’s show to see if it is ALWAYS perfect here (it is) and to do a buttload of laundry at Dave Triebwasser’s house in the East Bay. Dave was the drummer for Portland based Pond, one of the best bands I’ve ever heard. They opened for Throwing Muses on the Red Heaven tour and just played their last show in September. Billy and I watched a fan recorded video of that show yesterday (we missed the actual show, as it was the same night 50FootWave played the KEXP Crocodile Cafe show in Seattle).

What I wouldn’t give to see Pond play just one more time — though sharing Thai food with Dave and his beautiful wife Erika while our kids colored on their kitchen floor was pretty good, too. And we scored a CD of Dave’s garage jazz band, Vrbata. Now Billy wants to play it as lead-in music at solo shows before I go on…it’s a very cool, off-kilter sound.

Billy and I were also thrilled to meet the amazing Moore Brothers on this trip. Paula Frazer invited them to sing with her at the Swedish American Hall — as if Paula’s voice wasn’t gorgeous enough on it’s own. We’ve been huge fans of the Moore Brothers ever since Dave Triebwasser turned us on to them 3 years ago on the 2003 Throwing Muses tour and, like most quality musicians, they turned out to be lovely people.

Lauren Shera, the 17 year old songstress who opened the first night at Tangier in LA and played before Paula in San Francisco was an impressive surprise. So many women sing like little girls and this little girl (well, 17-year-old anyway) sings like a woman — a woman with a story. I’m really intigued to hear what she does in the future. The Good Listeners, who played the 2nd night at Tangier, were also a treat-2 guys who sound like 10. I have their CD ready to go when I get into the van in a few minutes.

The love fest that was the LA shows warmed my heart enough to head back into the northeast winter and included Wavers Bernie and Rob; our producers, Ethan Allen and Mudrock; our videographer, Orrin Anderson and photographer/videographer Lisa Fletcher. What a crew!

Leaving California is never a good thing, but I have a teen aged (for a couple of months more at least) son and a half finished record waiting for me in snowy Rhode Island and I seem to have crammed a lifetime of perfect days into a few weeks, so I’m good.

And now we drive…

Love,
Kristin

Taking off this morning. We have packed 5 suitcases, 4 grocery bags full of, like, 20th century pemmican, 3 children, 2 dogs and some guitars. We are ready for every season and every possible occurrence. If there is a heat wave, we will be un-dressed appropriately. If we find ourselves in a blizzard, we will appear to blend with the locals. Frankly, we’re scared not to. Appearance seems to be a big deal when it comes to locals.

We drove across the country one summer when we all had shaved heads (August in New Orleans’ll make anybody reach for the razor) and people seemed to think we were a tiny cult. The kids wanted to play this up by only referring to each other as “Brother” and “Sister” but that’s because they’re not scared of anything (they say they got the idea from the Berenstain Bears — which they always thought was a little creepy). That whole trip, waitresses would drop our pancakes on the table and skitter away before we…I don’t know, recruited them I guess, and this worried us. We much prefer the safety of invisibility.

So we carry everything in the hope of nobody noticing us. Our enormous suitcases don’t seem to raise any eyebrows.

And we all have hair.

Love,
Kristin

Standing in the snow the other night in Chicago, talking to smart, funny, good people outside Schuba’s after the show, I was amazed at the number of times I was thanked, just for playing. These incredible people — willing to drag their asses out of their apartments and into the freezing night, miss dinner driving around looking for a parking space and part with hard earned cash just for the privilege of standing in a smoke filled room smushed up against other people — were thanking ME for showing up and doing what I would be doing anyway. Someone actually said, “What you do is so hard!” and I thought, “No…everything ELSE is hard; this is easy.”

If you ask my youngest son, who is three, what he wants to be when he grows up, he replies, “Floppy like a manta ray”. If you ask him why, he says, “Um, ’cause I would be happy-floppy.”

For those of you who’ve been told that music is hard and musicians are tortured, here is proof that at least some of us are “happy-floppy”. These are actual real-life emails my string players, The McCarricks and I exchanged before our London show last month:

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11/7/05
Hi there BillyO and Kitten Hell,

Hope this e mail finds you guys happy and grooving to whatever it is you guys groove to.

Can you give us any info on these 4AD 25th anniversary shows at the Scala? Will there be rehearsals? We hope so. Are we playing anything we haven’t yet worked on? We hope so. We know it’s a few weeks away, but any info will be mucho appreciated. We are so excited. Can’t wait to see you. Can’t wait to play together again.

Love to all,
McCarricks

P.S. Set list?

11/9/05
Hello, darlings. We get to play! We get to play! We get to PLAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here’s my set list:

Highway to Hell; Jukebox Hero; Candy Man; Candy Girl; Cinnamon Girl; Yesterday; Tomorrow; Sunrise, Sunset; Sunshine on My Shoulder; Good Morning Starshine; Good Morning; Morning Girl; Candy Girl; Cinnamon Girl…

‘kay?

K

11/10/10
WE LOVE YOU SO MUCH!

Kim has offered to talk to the audience this time around. We feel that that part of the show all too often gets left to you and it isn’t fair. So she may tell some anecdotes, but most likely she will just “cry” and remind the audience of how much your music has meant to her.
xoxo
McCarricks

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And then this exchange after the shows:

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11/24/05
Help! Billy and Kristin are gone! We’ll never forget your tear stained faces, waving goodbye from the window of a black cab and screeching away into the rainy darkness…

Seriously, though: oh no! Now we can’t play anymore. Now we are sad. Now you must book an American tour with us. NOW.

Love,
The McCarricks

11/25/05
I want to fly back to London and bang on the doors of the Scala until somebody lets us back in — or else take the “tube” to your “flat” so we can keep playing there, at least.

Don’t you miss the best drug in the world?

xoxo

K

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Merry Hannukwanadon & Happy New Year every one of you — and thank you for listening to records and coming to shows and making me floppy as a goddamn manta ray. Hope to see you all soon, somewhere.

Love,

Kristin