In conversation: Kristin Hersh
On fighting commercial pressures and delivering medicine
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Hello,
For a long time after Wintering came out, I struggled with one particular thing. People wrote to me and said, ‘This book changed my life!’ and my kneejerk response was: No it didn’t. I’m not pretending it was gracious, but it seemed true to me. I just didn’t believe them. I couldn’t believe them. After all, no book had ever changed my life. I couldn’t relate.
And then, one day, when I was listening to Throwing Muses, I realised that it had been a singer, and not an author, who had done that for me. Listening to Kristin Hersh’s work through my teenage years saved me. At the time, I thought I was a mad girl, irredemable, and fated to self-destruction. But here, in her extraordinary lyrics, was the mirror I needed. Long before there was any public conversation about mental health, Kristin was talking about it, and showing the beauty of a mind like hers. I thought that mine might just be beautiful too, if I let it make the work it needed to.
After reading her brilliant new book, The Future of Songwriting - a treatise on staying authentic in a hypercapitalist world - I plucked up the courage to ask for an interview. (Actually, I got
to do that on my behalf; I’m a chicken.) She said yes. Here is the resulting conversation.
In case you don’t already know Kristin’s work, I’m linking to Spotify playlists for her solo work, her first band, Throwing Muses, and her current band, 50 Foot Wave. You can support her work through her community Strange Angels. And if you ever get a chance to see her live, grasp it with both hands.
Okay, enough fangirling. Here’s the interview.
Hello Kristin, this is Katherine - hopefully you’re expecting an interview!
Kristin Hersh: I’m here, take your time…I’m cleaning my toaster :)
😂 That is the worst job! It’s so unsatisfying.
Right? It’s not working…glad you’re calling 😂
Dreadful! Okay, happy to distract you. So first I need to say that I’m a huge fan and I’ve seen you live about a million times, so I was so interested to see you write about what it means to be a songwriter and performer in this strange age we’re in. What made you feel you needed to create this book?
Songs are cheats when it comes to experiencing reality as a spiritual endeavor because they turn dreamy energetics into something we hear. When that process was co-opted for an industry we lost something that I feel we can regain.
I love the way you talk about songs as having a life of their own - I feel like that about my books. They exist, and I have to listen out for them.
Yes! Ask yourself, “is my work alive?” If not, you just added to the pile of zombie art.
Of course it’s alive! How can it not be? I couldn’t think up that stuff myself. But that makes the incursion of commercialism all the more painful…
Exactly. And we’d be bored. If you have to do this, you’ll work in a basement, under a tree, in your head, work yourself into poverty, but you will work and that work will breathe. If you buy into the attention economy and work from vanity, neither you nor the work is really breathing.
Yes. I always feel a strong pull from the more commercial end of writing, to do things in a certain way. To offer solutions rather than explore the problems. To be simple rather than complex. It’s a true discipline to avoid it.
Interesting. I imagine there are angels and devils on our shoulders as we strive to offer something (entertainment) and recreate our inspired moments (art). Both demand clarity but occasionally one demands idiosyncracy and complexity as well.
You’ve always drawn on your life a lot in your songs, and I wonder about the tension there - the desire to write from life, but also the need to protect yourself. There’s often demand for confessional work but without the authenticity I find- like, there’s a false idea that what happened is the interesting part, rather than how we interpret it.
Oh wow, yeeeeessssss…. We’re here to turn our senses on and turn them on hard, right?
Well, WHO’S here to do that? We offer a unique lens through which to view these stories and when we share that, it’s with the decent hope that we achieve the universal function of living our lives. We’re a social species, even us shy people.
When I’m slamming my hands on the guitar and yelling, it actually feels like a kindness. To relive, recreate and color a story hoping it finds resonance in others.
Yes! I share my sensing of the world! And I’m wary of who receives it. I mean, I don’t get to choose, but when it lands with the right people - the people who need it - it really matters, and I feel the connection. But often I’m interviewed by people who just have morbid curiosity about me as a phenomenon and it’s actually painful. That’s not what I offered! (I write about being autistic, and some people are weird about it.)
I do too! Though I haven’t admitted it yet ;)
I used to have this argument with Warner Brothers executives who replaced my audience of true listeners with “fans” who were subject to marketing (sexist product as opposed to music). Fans like the star, then move on to the next star. Listeners love the music and take it as their own soundtrack. You can’t tell people what to love. So I’d rather sell one record to someone who listens a million times than a million records to people who listen once. The record executives don’t love that math!
I hate the word ‘fans’ being imposed on people, and I hate the word ‘followers’ too. It’s so unilateral! Tell me more about the sexism there…
This is true. It’s part of the insult of the entertainment industry to mobify human beings.
Just horrible. Objectifying.
I had no idea I would be treated as a female fail rather than a musician. I didn’t wear makeup or tight clothes and I didn’t flirt with cameras. I mean, obviously. You can’t put personal gain before principles. Instead of placing me in the category of professional musician rather than pop star, I was just called unattractive and my work wasn’t promoted.
Which is just goofy and I didn’t care, but then I realized that they did the same thing to the songs and that’s what I found too objectionable to live with, so I fought my way out of my contract, trading my first solo album for my band’s freedom.
God, that’s so depressing.
Thank you ❤️
They’re presented with beauty but it’s not the right kind.
Yeah. Power is a confusing and ridiculous ego tornado.
It’s like they see unpretty female musicians and ugly, unruly fans, and no music anywhere. I think publishing is mostly gentler than this!!
In fact, they try to keep music out of the music industry because listeners can’t be told what to love (what to buy). So they sell product to people who “like” it
This is making me think of ‘brat summer’ - is that on your radar?
Publishing has some trouble in the high brow marketing (snob as opposed to bandwagon appeal). Foie gras vs. fast food. I think you and I go for the real. The apple trees ;)
What’s brat summer? We had rat girl summer here 😂
Okay so Brat is an album by Charlie XCX, but the conversation has been about the idea of being ‘brat’ as a marketing concept. It’s about a trademarked colour, a font, and some memes. It feels like the opposite of music to me.
I am here for Rat Girl Summer
I’m wary of criticising the artist - it’s the conversation that I find unnerving.
I sort of like that Top 40 has distanced itself from quality to the extent that no one would confuse it with music. The shattering of the industry is nice too!
I have many friends who consider themselves famous and none of them have ever heard of each other. That’s gotta be a good thing. Lol.
Seems like fame has played out…and we’re about to admit the peak capitalism product problem. They call Grammy winners “artists” because they know there’s no art anywhere near that world. Kind of nice when they admit that it’s all McDonalds.
It’s sort of comforting - partly because they’ve made it more pretentious than it needs to be! It lets the rest of us not worry about labels like ‘artist’ (the equivalent for me is ‘literary’ - ugh)
You’re so awesome 😂
Yeah they can have pretence
But you’ve been a true pioneer in terms of starting a community for people to support your work - Strange Angels must be one of the longest standing crowdsourced platforms. I always get the sense that the connection is important to you, over and above the financial model? (The financial bit also matters! Eating is good.)
I’m sure it is, though I like to believe I work in a vacuum.
The closed circle effect means that finally no one is asking me to “suck to succeed” — never thought I’d see the day. I used to work from the planet Music and then go squinting out into the garish light of gruelling attention and vanity and fashion and all the enemies I felt were waiting to hurt me and my songs and my kids.
Strange Angels helped my kids eat by paying my studio costs, they helped my songs live by accepting them as their own and they’d hate it if I started to suck or sell myself as “fuckable.”
Amen to that! And it also funds you as a musician - a fluid, ongoing thing - rather than individual recordings. Your book made me realise that songs as we know them are quite static - one version, frozen in time. (Argh I time is up. I will wrap up after this, I promise!)
“A fluid ongoing thing” !!! If we could absorb that concept and live by that principle as organisms…I dunno, I feel like everything’d be ok :)
Well, indeed. And you make the point in your book that music is medicine but the musician is - just the conduit. I needed to hear that! It takes a big weight off.
As it should. Otherwise you’re subject to the myth of Narcissus that seems to run this place. Are you in love with your image? Meaning have you lost yourself as an experiential, are you for sale, is your name BIG. So silly.
Too true!
Thank you for being who you are. It matters.
Kristin, thank you so much! I know you have a toaster to tend to but I’m so grateful to you 🤍
Same! Lovely thinker…
The only thing I’m good at! Take care x
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I cannot express enough excitement and delight that you interviewed Kristin! She also was a pivotal figure for me when I was involved in music during my 20s. And her book is both hilarious and extraordinary. So happy the two of you connected, and thank you for sharing the interview!
"Ask yourself, 'is my work alive?' If not, you just added to the pile of zombie art."
I LOVE this and look forward to diving into Hersh's music in the days to come. Thank you for this refreshing conversation!