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Around Dusk

My latest song from “Speedbath” is here. It’s called “Around Dusk” and I hope it treats you well.

Now that CASH is a viable entity and not just an amorphous blob floating around in our heads, those of us who work here are becoming increasingly aware of its quieter gifts. I knew this construct was necessary in order for us all to share interesting music, but intangibles like political implications are now sneaking into my world view.

I’ve always believed that what I do has more in common with the field of research than the field of entertainment. Of course, from the beginning, I knew that in order to reach people with sound, I had to make records and play clubs. Sounds simple, gets ugly.

In order for someone like me, (The Artist) to reach out and grab the Music Business Experts who in turn, reach out and grab someone like you (The Audience), they ask you in not-so-subtle ways to play by the “rules” of the entertainment industry.

These rules are not mysterious, nor are they difficult to follow. In fact, there’s only one real rule: be attractive. If you work in the recording industry, you must play attractive music, you must be an attractive human. If you work in the film industry, you must make attractive movies, you must be an attractive human, etc.

The definition of attractive is where we all fall down. Healthy people view it as a melange of sensory, intellectual and emotional input. Healthy people are attracted to music and film — and humans — that move us.

The wildly unhealthy entertainment industry views attraction as: easy. That’s it. Just like high school! This is how bimbos happen and I don’t just mean the Barbie doll kind. Male bimbos, female bimbos, musical and filmic bimbos…a bimbo is anything one-dimensional enough to be taken at face value with no potential for insight or growth on the part of the consumer (oooh…scary…insight!)

Every time Nothing is wrapped in Fashion and sold to the Public, a bimbo is born. Bimbos can always make someone money. They’re e-e-e-e-easy.

I’ve watched musicians I loved buy into this insidious phenomenon. The idea that to bring their music to more people they’d need to dumb it down. Whether they believed in their own success or their own failure didn’t matter, the end result was the same: something imaginary killed their art.

The “experts” ask, are you a bimbo? If your answer is no, then you flunk the music business and eventually you disappear. If your answer is, “well…I could be…here’s a picture of me ‘looking cool’…here’s a flimsy song…” then you’re allowed to share your music with the public. But what music? You dumbed it down! Why bother? For twenty years I lived with this quandary.

Thank you, CASH people, for removing me from that ugly world, for taking our amorphous blob and running with it. I make records, I play clubs, I’m in the music business, but I no longer have to answer to some vague idea of a “market” or demographic. I no longer have to play by the crap rules of the entertainment industry, I only have to answer to my stake-holders.

Now my job is to throw myself, body and soul, into my research and share it with you.

Love,
Kristin

Note: As of this writing, Kristin’s CASH subscribers come from 12 different countries on 5 different continents.

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.

Torque

This song was written under water.

On my last tour, our bus broke down and left us stranded in Idaho for a few days. When my band members and I finally arrived at a hotel, we were at first too dirty and disoriented to mind that we were either trapped in our rooms watching bad t.v. or trapped in the hotel lobby with sports fans and evangelist types. It got old fast, however and so did living on complimentary apples from the front desk.

I took refuge in the pool where it was quiet, swimming laps for days. Under the green, hyper-chlorinated water I began to time trip back to a winter night at Logan airport where I sat on a bench in the cold for hours, waiting to be rescued, as I was doing now. This is how songs work; they take your life stories and mix them up because, like old relatives and unconditional lovers, they really don’t care about getting it right, they just care.

When Mudrock suggested we throw a KH solo song down for CASH during the recent 50FootWave recording session in LA, I knew this was the song. Rob Ahler’s emotional drumming is somehow wintry, Mudrock’s production anthemic without pretense.

In order to reduce file sizes, we’ve made the mix stems available as lo-res mp3s as well as the normal (but huge) WAV files. Soon, I’ll be posting what someone called “sample packs” — short clips from each of the stems, to make remixing a little easier. Not this month, but soon.

I want to take a second to thank you all for your comments, your financial support and especially the time, effort and creativity shown by those of you who have chosen to post remixes on my “-RW” page. It’s been a great first month.

Love,
Kristin

CASH Music is Now – (Slippershell)

Welcome to my sparkly-new CASH Music project.

As many of you may already know, CASH is an acronym — it stands for the Coalition of Artists & Stake Holders. The name indicates just what we’re all hoping to build here — a coalition through which we blur the line that’s traditionally stood between creators of content and the consumers of that content.

Just to head off any potential confusion, CASH Music is not “me”, or “mine”. It’s a group of people that have built a framework that is not meant for any single artist. I’m only the first. Look for more artists soon. The next featured artist and a co-founder of the coalition is Donita Sparks. CASH will soon be open to any and all independent artists who want a set of tools to offer their music directly to their audience for collaboration as well as financial support.

We’re all stake holders here. We all stand to gain from a productive relationship. Maybe it will help to think of this relationship as a conversation. For instance, I start the conversation by writing and recording a song every month, like the one I’m posting here this month, “Slippershell”. You respond by listening & sharing “Slippershell” with others.

Sharing is encouraged, I license my work through Creative Commons. If you’re unfamiliar with Creative Commons, do yourself a favor and check out the licenses I use. They’re in plain English and provide better, more realistic and rational copyright protection.

•••

Here are some beautiful things from a world none of us remember:

• a folk song is carried across the ocean, altered by the voices which relay it. Chord progressions, lyrics and instrumentation change as the original material is shaped according to different concepts of beauty in sound.

• a blues player walks a song from town to town, playing on street corners, in dance halls, at parties and bars. The song stays when the musician leaves, adopted and adapted to suit various personalities, voices and life stories.

•••

Art is by nature a conversation. I’d like us to make it a community. Think about what you have to offer. Read-only culture is not enough anymore. We’d like you to treat this stuff as read-write. I’d also like to hear your comments on the songs I post each month. I’ll read them all and reply too.

What does read-write mean? Maybe as you’re listening to “Slippershell”, you’re inspired to DO something: paint a picture, write an essay, make a video, remix, or even re-record the song. Please do so. And share your work with me and the rest of the CASH community by uploading it somewhere and sending me a link. I’m offering my Pro Tools mix stems to make it easy to work with my recorded material. We will review all the links submitted, I promise. At some point, I’ll release the songs I post here in the form of a CD. It’s my intention that the CD release should also include lots of the stuff you send me. I think that would be incredible.

What we’re doing today is just the beginning. It is in the nature of a share and share alike community to grow. Gradually, over the next weeks and months CASH Music will be revealing it’s “real” self. Other artists will be involved, the final and fully-capable site will be launched and new features will be added — all incorporating your input and creativity. CASH is a community that in the end will be defined by itself.

•••

Here’s an ugly thing we all see every day:

• Big business tries to replace your opinions because this makes big business money. But big business isn’t me and it isn’t you.

Here’s something you can do about it:

• Demand substance. Substance in music, in education, in art, in health, in film, in information, in everything. When you find people doing something you like, support that endeavor as an investment in the future of quality output.

•••

CASH asks for your financial support. Please consider contributing or subscribing in whatever amount is comfortable to you. Your money will support not only me and my work but CASH directly, allowing this community to grow and become something to be proud of. A forum for all of us as creative individuals to collaborate, creating “read-write” culture from user-generated content.

This should make for an exceptionally interesting conversation, don’t you think?

Love,
Kristin

Tour Diary – part 12 – New Zealand

Auckland – Billy West is on our flight today (the second coolest Billy on the whole airplane). We’re pretty excited about this, as close to geeked-out as we get in our old age. We cut our teeth on Ren and Stimpy and Futurama is our best friend.

When we land, no less than seven people meet us at the airport. They introduce themselves not in their professional capacities, but by their first names, so we really have no idea what any of them are doing there. They seem nice though and they carry guitars and suitcases, so we go with them willingly, us being free spirits and all.

And they do, in fact, bring us to our hotel after working out who should ride with whom in whose car and who gets to carry the equipment in whose boot, etc., all the while apologizing for the rain. “Sorry about this. I did request better weather for you,” says a sunny young man named Jim.

“Yeah? Who do you know, God?”

“My cousin went to school with him. He’s my in.”

“That’s a pretty good in.”

“Yeah, well…” he puts his hand out to feel the rain. “It is usually.”

All seven Kiwis get out of their cars and go into the hotel with us, still carrying our stuff and chatting pleasantly. We try to figure out what their actual jobs are with subtly ham-fisted questions, to no avail.

“So…how’s…work?”

“Oh, fine. Busy.”

Seven people will hover around us the entire time we’re in this country and we will never figure out exactly who they are. They all know each other and they seem to know us, and they’re all swell human beings who appear to be working on either the record or the tour, but exactly how, we’re never sure. Every now and then, one will leave and be replaced by someone else who also knows the group and us, is pleasant and helpful, but whose role is as mysterious as the person’s that he or she replaced. We figure there is a promoter, a tour manager, a publicist and…well, we don’t really get much farther than that.

Since they are all lovely and I don’t have to be in charge of anything but the shows, I just leave it be. I do try to keep the conversations about work to a minimum so as not to embarrass myself. There are plenty of other things to talk about, of course and I find that most people in the music business hate it as much as I do and are relieved when you don’t make them talk about it.

Our first night in Auckland is a little dismal after the fun people leave. Auckland is completely unrecognizable to us. We remembered it as a watery city like Seattle: hilly and beachy. It is watery, but only because it’s raining so hard. We’re staying downtown and tonight downtown Auckland looks more like Detroit. Just not what we expected. We hunker down in our hotel room and watch anime DVD’s Bodhi’s brothers gave him for bedtime stories.

In the morning, I have a session at Radio New Zealand. Some members of the gang pick us up and drive us around the corner. I feel guilty. “We really could have walked, you know.”

They are appalled by this thought and refuse to discuss it. They also insist on carrying my guitar. Golly, these people are nice.

During the session, employees of the station gather in the control room to listen. I can’t see or hear them, but Billy says later that the general consensus in the room was that the music wasn’t coming from the person playing it. I will hear this time and again on this tour; people close their eyes when I play because that’s the only way it makes any sense. I’m still trying to figure out what I think about this.

After the session, we’re taken to a restaurant where we meet up with other members of the Kiwi gang and our breakfast is bought. Then we’re driven to a playground so Bodhi can play. “Are you sure you guys want to go to a playground?” we ask them. It can’t be standard rock star treatment.

They insist, of course. They also insist on buying us groceries at a health food store when they see us blanch at the prices. “We’ll just call it the rider…” Golly, these people are nice.

The whole gang comes to soundcheck, takes us out to dinner, hangs in the dressing room, laughing and joking the entire time. It’s like being in a big, happy family. One mystery solved: a member of the gang is actually a musician in the opening band. What the hell he’s doing driving us around for two days is beyond me, but I’m happy to at least know one person’s job.

Sunny Jim carries posters for the show in to the dressing room for me to sign: beautiful posters with a drawing of a beautiful woman on them. “Is that supposed to be me?” I ask him.

He narrows his eyes at me. “What would you like me to say?”

The show sells out which makes them even happier. They all stay and watch my whole set, they all help us pack up, they help us sell my homemade signed t-shirts, then they all bring us back to the hotel, gleefully. I’m going to miss this happy family.

Wellington – Before meeting our friend Paul McKessar from Ye Olde Muses Days for coffee, I check e-mail. Grant Lee Phillips has written me about the earthquake on the south island, asking if it’s my fault. Me and natural disasters are pretty tight, but I don’t see how I can be blamed for this.

At the airport on the way to Wellington, Bo is so jet-lagged, he’s practically high. He lounges on the suitcase. “Mom, where are your tunes?” he asks. I’ve never heard him use this word before. I don’t say tunes. “Did you forget to pack your tunes?”

“What?”

“Where are your tunes??”

“They’re in her head,” Billy says.

Bo looks up at Billy. “Did she forget to pack her head?”

“Her head? What are you talking about?”

Bo looks back down again and waves Billy off. “Aaah, go mate with a shark.”

Billy looks at me. “Did he just tell me to go fuck myself?”

“Well, not exactly…”

The Kiwi gang is still here, as it turns out. Some of them flew with us, we lost some (they’ve been replaced) but we are still members of a large and very happy family. We are still carted around gleefully, our luggage is carried, our needs met (including finding tropical fish tanks in the airport), the rain apologized for. We still aren’t sure why these people are doing this, but we’re enjoying it so much that we’ve stopped trying to figure it out.

We also see our friend Tanya here in the airport. Tanya lives in Wellington and is flying home after having been to the Auckland show. We met years ago when she was deejaying at a radio station here in New Zealand. She even came to a 50FootWave rehearsal while visiting LA. She appears to know the members of the gang (how small is this country, anyway?) and offers us her house and car for our day off tomorrow. We readily accept; nothing like a taste of home when you’re away, even if it’s someone else’s home.

I do radio in the afternoon, then soundcheck is late because a refrigerator in the club’s kitchen died in the night and now the whole place smells like sour milk. They are inordinately upset about this. I don’t know too many clubs that smell good; I’m not sure I would even have noticed, but club employees scrub floors with baking soda, light scented candles and spray air fresher into fans placed strategically around the room. They’re beside themselves; they can’t stop apologizing. “We’re so sorry, Ms. Hersh!”

“Please don’t call me that. I really don’t care how it smells in here.” I think of some of the places I’ve played. “It could be so much worse.” We stand in a small group, all of us taking a minute to imagine worse smells.

A club guy offers, “Once a mouse died in my bedroom and I didn’t find it for a month.”

The soundman talks through his t-shirt which is covering his nose and mouth. “My roommate threw up in the laundry hamper and didn’t tell anyone.”

The group appreciates this. Oooooh’s and oh man’s. I slip away before the conversation gets any grosser.

Another sell-out tonight makes for a happy gang. I’ve challenged myself with the set I’m playing: trying to play both bass lines and leads, Throwing Muses songs as well as solo songs I rarely play live. It’s far more interesting to me to be able to play catalogue material with my effects pedals rather than a straightforward acoustic set of only the new record, but it’s a little nerve-wracking, too. Especially in these big, packed rooms. Luckily, it seems that these audiences want to hear songs from all the tours that didn’t make it down here as well as new material. Like I said, these people are nice.

Walking from the hotel to the club in the rain right before my set, I step over puddles and garbage and make my way past dumpsters to a fire escape I need to climb in order to get into the dressing room without going through the crowd. It’s funny. Even in this beautiful country, I gotta walk through Meningitis Alley in order to get to work.

The sour milk smell is mostly gone anyway, obliterated by clouds of perfumey goodness. Everyone’s a little dizzy from the headiness of this mixture, but none the worse for it. This is an intensely happy crowd. After the set, I sign many, many CD’s, posters and oddly, t-shirts. “But I already signed your t-shirt,” I argue. “That was the whole point of the signed t-shirts.”

“Please?” they say, smiling.

What can I do? “Alright. Should I sign my name over my name or under it?”

Our day off is as cold, windy and rainy as our days on have been. Tanya picks us up as promised and takes us on a tour of Wellington which includes the ubiquitous (for us) beach and breakfast place which beats out the last breakfast place to become our new favorite. This one was right on the beach.

After a short walk in the damp sand and wild wind (Bodhi’s Melbourne Aquarium hat blew off his head and into the surf — Tanya raced in and retrieved it), we headed for a table by the window and drank endless cups of floral tea while she regaled us with stories of national health programs and shipping container architecture. She even surprised us with dark chocolate that Bodhi and I ate on the drive to her house (“Breakfast dessert!” Bodhi squealed).

Tanya lives on a hilltop which is so windy, satellite pictures of her house taken by insurance companies show an enormous red “X” on the roof, meaning, I suppose, that it will soon blow away. Today, the wind screams and buffets the tiny house, pelting it with rain. It’s not unlike hurricanes I’ve been in. She says her car door has blown off a few times up here. We love it. Bodhi and I race around her back yard, pretending to fly. He does appear to fly for a second which worries me, so I then carry him while we race around the yard.

Back in her cozy living room, Tanya takes out her crafts box and we throw ourselves into paste and sparkles (Bo makes pasty, sparkly sharks — I make pasty, sparkly Bodhi’s) while Billy calls the kids back home. They sound happy and healthy, if a little wistful that they aren’t in New Zealand with us today. We ask them what they want us to bring them.

“A koala,” they decide.

“No koalas in New Zealand,” says Billy. “Try again.”

“A kangaroo.”

“Nope.”

“Well, what do they have there?”

“Wind,” we answer.

“Okay, bring us some of that.”

In the morning, we wake long, long before dawn, say goodbye to the fish in the aquarium at our hotel and climb sleepily into a taxi which takes us to the aquarium at the airport. Bodhi says goodbye to these fish, too. “Where are we going?” he asks, taking my hand through the departure gate.

“Back to Australia.”

“Do they still have fish there?”

“As far as I know.”

“Phew,” he says.

(thanks to Tanya Fretz for the photo of our table at the Maranui Cafe)

Toby Snax

Toby Snax is a character and a book written & illustrated by musician and mother of four, Kristin Hersh.

Kristin is a singer-songwriter, guitarist and recording artist.

For over 20 years she has performed all over the world, solo as well as with her bands, 50FootWave and Throwing Muses. She has always taken her four sons; Dylan, Ryder, Wyatt & Bodhi on tour with her.

Sometimes the younger boys needed a little encouragement before embarking on these long “family trips”. At times like these, Kristin would tell them the story of Toby Snax.

Toby Snax encourages little kids to be open to travel & new experiences.