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Kristin Hersh

Kristin Hersh

Kristin Hersh • Throwing Muses • 50 Foot Wave

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Kristin Hersh

Gin

I met Gin in Sydney; a two-parter, both casual and complex. Called Rizzo right away to book time, telling him to be prepared for a nocturnal me when I got home from down under. “Great!” he said. “Looking forward to it.” Rizzo himself is a night creature, a gentle vampire.

Gin is also a night person, and a good way to begin the CASH year, I think. A New Year’s Eve song containing an exceptional Bodhi quote: “Here’s the plan: I don’t go out of my backyard.” Good plan. Great plan. A resolution to end all others.

Gin says that it isn’t the shock, it’s not even the aftershock, but the shock that follows that. I hear ya, sister. Aftershock shock shows up when the lights go out; when there’s nothing else to look at. Which is okay, I guess.

Aftershock shock demands attention not ’cause it’s bitchy, but because it’s real. The point that gin makes, though, is not for you, but for others. Remember their midnights.

This was the first recording session for The Guitar that Love Built and it shone. Both percussive and melodic, depending on what I asked it to do, it played tame wildly and tamed wild…whoo-hoo! I was charmed, Rizzo impressed.

I would love to hear Throwing Muses play this song someday. Night people, they step in when they get the chance and compress hours of darkness into moments of clarity. Sometimes they have to stay up all night to make this work, but their midnights are valuable, worth sharing.

As Gin asks, “Are you completely numb?” and then answers, “mmm…probably not.” In that case, playing for each other is the least we can do.

Love,
Kristin

Find this song and all my recent work, in multiple formats – including lossless, free for download on my CASH Music pages. Information on how you can support the creation and distribution of this music by becoming a subscriber is here.

Rubidoux

I’ve posted the last in my year-long series of CASH tracks. It’s called Rubidoux and it’s here. Another of my “songs from the backseat”.

Love,
Kristin

Find this song and all my recent work, in multiple formats – including lossless, free for download on my CASH Music pages. Information on how you can support the creation and distribution of this music by becoming a subscriber is here.

Fortune

I think Fortune’s my favorite Speedbath song yet. Not that I have favorites or anything. It’s just such an interesting take on Wonder Bread and the East River and gold, smoking devil people. When I finished writing it, I felt like I’d just met someone who’s very cool but too weird to hang out with for an extended period of time.

Recording it at Steve Rizzo’s Stable Sound with a CASH meeting going on in the next room, I got to know it a little better, pulling the CASH guys in every now and then to critique an overdub or evaluate my girl-drum levels in a mix. Fortune turned out not to be such a weirdo after all, just kinda spacey. Now I wanna hang out with it all the time. I’m a total sucker for lead bass.

And then it just floats away, which I’m also a sucker for. I’m not normally a lyrics guy, given that I don’t talk right or understand human speech, so when Act 2 kicks in with only reverb-soaked melody, spooky and sweet, I feel nicely …I don’t know…let off the hook.

Fortune says it’s piece and then wanders out of the room, lost in a zone.

Love,
Kristin

Find this song and all my recent work, in multiple formats – including lossless, free for download on my CASH Music pages. Information on how you can support the creation and distribution of this music by becoming a subscriber is here.

Mississippi Kite

I know I just played this song yesterday, but all I can remember is hearing it pour out of the speakers. I guess because I didn’t stop to think before jumping in. All I had to refer to was a seriously scary piece of notebook paper with Sharpie scribbles all over it.

I fished this out of my bag on the flight back to the U.S. from the Edinburgh Fringe festival, dizzy with the flu, and added fuzzy production notes on top of lyrics on top of chords on top of sheet music on top of rhythm and structural changes. By the time we landed in Newark, it was a mess (Rob Ahlers calls my song notebook “an ugly mind”).

So when Rizzo pressed “record” yesterday, I squinted at my notebook, then just started putting stuff down. I could have fucked this song up real bad.

Mississippi Kite just goes, though; I couldn’t really get it in its way. It’s driven by the lyrics, which is something I rarely say about a song. They’re hot and bothered, as usual, but also woozy: this day as a dream.

Those lyrics got happy over the rhythm section and then I could do no wrong on top, adding some rather delicate overdubs and then stepping out of the way.

A happy feel can still make a sad song, though. Mississippi Kite talks and lists and spits and talks some more, never really shuts up, but ends up only telling you that something’s missing.

Love,
Kristin

Find this song and all my recent work, in multiple formats – including lossless, free for download on my CASH Music pages. Information on how you can support the creation and distribution of this music by becoming a subscriber is here.

Elizabeth June

This is Betty’s song…my friend Betty, whose ghost haunts Palm Springs, or at least haunts me in Palm Springs. She died here, lonely. I was too afraid to see her old to go looking for her. But I bet she was beautiful up to and through the end.

Recorded by the great and powerful Ethan Allen, of the late Kingsway studio in New Orleans and the first two 50FootWave records. Ethan worked on Throwing Muses’ Limbo, as well as Sky Motel and the Echo single.

Ethan’s Royal Triton in LA is a studio full of lovely old mikes, an iso booth jammed with old National Geographics and undelivered Christmas presents, and a control room decorated with tiny gears, bad lamps, broken tools and Ethan’s gentle smile.

No drums, no bass per se, though we achieved bass frequencies by dropping one of the acoustics an octave. The track sounds sweet, yet bizarre. Somehow, a B flat crept in, though there’s no such note in the chords I was playing. Maybe it’s Betty, singing along. Betty sure liked to sing.

The lyrics hurt my feelings ’cause I miss Betty and I missed her end, but I like to think of her sweet, yet bizarre self having only palm trees to answer to, after a life fraught with tension. Bullied by the entertainment industry, she was riddled with insecurity…a great brain, not given a minute to think.

The song says she found some peace.

Love,
Kristin

Find this song and all my recent work, in multiple formats – including lossless, free for download on my CASH Music pages. Information on how you can support the creation and distribution of this music by becoming a subscriber is here.

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Kristin Hersh

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