projects

Feb. 3

It is cold. It is cold. It is so fucking cold. Like, no degrees — plus some giant number below — with wind chill. I’m a west coast weather pussy now, I guess, ’cause this hurts.

Best signage on the way to Ann Arbor: “Used Cows For Sale” and “Nervous Charlie’s Fireworks and Beer”.

Feb. 4

In-store in Ann Arbor. Very cold. People come anyway, which amazes me. They bring their children: freezing cold children in snowsuits with bright red noses. Billy swears into the mic in front of the freezing children and then looks ill. He tries to apologize and somehow swears again in the apology. He shoots me a distressed look.

“Harder than it looks, isn’t it?” I say.

“Hell, yeah…” he covers the mic with his hand. “Is ‘hell’ a swear?”

Feb. 5

Radio session with Rob Reinhart at Acoustic Café. It’s nice to see him again. It’s so cold and early, though, that my hands aren’t working right. I stop and start over a couple of times, something I never let myself do, but it isn’t live and I owe Rob a real performance, he’s been so good to me over the years.

Afterwards, Billy and I talk with Rob about the future of the music business. All three of us feel, inexplicably, that things are looking up — that the crap is being buried under itself, that an energy is bubbling up from underneath, that substance will win out over style.

Probably wishful thinking, but it keeps us from having to walk outside for another 15 minutes. Soon, though, they give us fancy and free Acoustic Café t-shirts and send us back out into the snow. The sun is shining and the cold still hurts.

Feb. 6

A genuine blizzard in Chicago today. We barely make it into town. Trucks are jackknifed on the highway, cars slide all over the place. Billy drops me off at Borders for an interview while he looks for parking, but I don’t know the journalist’s name or even its gender.

So I sit in the café hoping I look something like the poster of me on the door, reading the magazines that were left on the table: “Guns Monthly” and “Duck Hunter”. No journalist finds me, but our friend Darrell shows up. He risked his life to come to a Borders in-store, poor bastard. We talk for a good half hour and he seriously cheers me up (Darrell has the best laugh) but we’re both still cold.

Then Billy comes in with the writer, a lovely man who looks sixteen (lots of people look sixteen to me now, it seems). I give Darrell my gun and duck magazines to help him kill time until the in-store and the Boy Writer buys me a coffee to warm my lips up enough to talk.

And then people show up! Lots of people — cold ones, but they’re there. I can’t believe it. After I play, I sign CD’s for a long time. I draw a silver Sharpie tattoo on a guy’s face (at his request) and it looks so good, we all get them.

Then we drive across town to tape a Valentine’s Day special for WXRT. I’m supposed to play songs from my iPod that I find romantic. So far, they only have guy musicians on their Valentine special and they wanted a girl for a more balanced approach to romance, though they readily admit that I am not a girl.

“You look like a girl,” they say, “maybe if you just parked your enormous balls in the hallway…” Nice.

I play Vic’s song, “To Be With You”, X’s “True Love”, Latin Playboys “If”, the Velvet’s “Pale Blue Eyes” and REM’s “Perfect Circle”.

Feb. 7

It is cold in Madison. Really cold. Even for Madison. Schools are closed. Our dogs’ feet freeze to the ground when they go out to pee.

I do The Onion, a radio session and an in-store. It. Is. Cold.

Feb. 8

I don’t know what made me think a winter day in Minneapolis would ever be warmer than anything — some wild hope that there was no such thing as colder anymore, I guess. But it is, in fact, colder here.

I do Minnesota Public Radio, though, and am totally, unabashedly, star struck. When we were kids, Tanya, my brother David and I would take the Providence bus to Dude’s house every weekend. Dude would blast Prarie Home Companion while we all made pizza together, kneading dough, chopping vegetables. Now snowy nights, Lake Wobegone and the smell of pizza cooking are nicely mixed up together in my head.

So after the session, a nice man takes my picture in front of the “Powdered Milk Biscuits” sign and I send it to Dude.

Before the Electric Fetus in-store, I do a radio interview downstairs. The woman who interviews me appears sweet and jolly at first, but at one point during the interview, she drops her head and burts into tears. I try desperately to lengthen my answer, as this is radio, but do it lamely, “…and so…in other words…I mean…as I said before…”, etc. She composes herself eventually, then mouths the word, “thank you” and continues the interview.

Every employee of Electric Fetus lives up to the Minneapolis myth: funny, sweet, understated and smart. We spend way too much time hanging with them after I sign CD’s and the kids are starving by the time we leave. So we walk out to find Thai soup with the help of a little red haired woman we meet on the street. She shames us into not complaining about the cold. I mean, we walk far — and I don’t think I’ve ever been that cold — but she has no hat or gloves or scarf and chatters happily the whole time. The kids watch her as if she were an alien.

Feb. 9

Ran out of gas on the way to Omaha. Felt stupid.

The gas gauge couldn’t work in this extreme cold, so we didn’t realize we were running out of gas until it was too late. Billy and Ryder ran across snowy fields and hopped barbed wire fences to get to the public works garage while a tow truck driver drove the two little boys and me. He called neighbors on the way, asking them not to “shoot” Billy and Ryder.

“Shoot?” I ask him when he hangs up.

He smiles, “No, I said don’t shoot.”

I thank him for this.

The good people at Homer’s in Omaha didn’t seem to mind that we were late. In fact, they had read about the lack of beer on this promo tour and had little kegs brought in for me. Now that’s hospitality.

They even had lemonade and drawing supplies for the kids and a little private hang-out area where the boys could drink the lemonade and draw pictures during my set. Afterwards, they offer us our choice of CD’s, something no stores do anymore (times are tough). We thank them for their generosity and don’t take anything, as times are tough and we know it.

Feb. 10

On the way to Denver, Billy spends food money on a lottery ticket.

“Seriously?” I ask, “’cause that’s pretty much the definition of poor people.”

“Yeah, well, so are we,” he answers.

“Maybe not for long, though, huh? Did you play the right numbers this time?”

We then spend the afternoon at Costco — Billy changes the car battery (by himself! No swearing!) while the kids and I picnic in the sunshine of the employee smokers’ area. We eat as much as we can of the Giant Food we bought and then drive (with our new battery!) over to Twist and Shout, one of the best independent record stores in the country.

We get a little lost, of course, but it’s not cold out anymore and about a million (I didn’t actually count) people are waiting for me to play when we get there. That plus some excellent salt water fish tanks and bellies full of Costco keep everyone happy until it’s time to go.

Things are looking up…

Love,
Kristin

Jan. 28

Chapel Hill. The one and only Simon Harper, late of the original cast of 4AD, most British of all possible Brits (we always said he suffered from “phantom bowler” syndrome), friend, confidant and work associate extraordinaire, meets us for dinner in a loft-like restaurant near the Cat’s Cradle.

Simon and I have done many a promo tour together; he once had to escort me throughout Europe while I was pregnant and puking, and he smiled the whole time, which made me smile the whole time, which wasn’t easy.

He was publicity’s James Bond. When interviews got hairy, Simon would step in and offer tea and a change of subject. When that didn’t work, time would mysteriously speed up and the sex-and-death-obsessed journalist’s hour would suddenly be over, the journalist gently persuaded to wrap it up and be on his way by the inimitable Simon.
He enjoyed this part of his job, as he hated everyone; an equal opportunity misanthrope.

And now Simon and I will be working together again after all these years: he is living in America and working with Yep Roc, my new U.S. label. We struggle to catch up over one dinner, trying to fill each other in with timelines and stories, but really, Simon is still Simon and that’s all I need to know.

Jan.29

Chapel Hill. I visit my new label for the first time. Everyone there is smart; they’re funny and serious, real ‘music people’. They seem excited about their jobs and the company itself. They’re even excited about the future of music.

They project YouTube footage of me playing an in-store on the wall of their meeting room. Nobody boos.

Jan. 30

Atlanta. I take the boys to Little Five Points to show them where I lived when I was a kid. They feign interest very sweetly, but they don’t seem to like it much.

They do like the playground with art instead of swings, though. They climb all over some discs and hang on poles and swing each other around platforms with spheres attached. The dogs and I watch, confused.

At the in-store, I see some old friends and a little girl wearing a 50FootWave t-shirt dances throughout my set.

I go live on the radio tonight with an amazing lady named Margot who is on a seemingly subversive mission to broaden her listeners’ horizons by challenging them ever so gently with good songs in between Coldplay and other crap. She is warm and intelligent and realistic and working.

She overhears that we haven’t eaten all day and gives us clementines, a family favorite.

“How did you know?” we ask. She smiles.

Jan. 31

Nashville. Trina Shoemaker’s house. She lives in a barn with her little boy on 11 acres of mountain and meadow. I haven’t seen Trina in 2 years; I don’t think I realized how much I missed her until now.

She hasn’t changed, really. She still Windexes the dog and lives on coffee. But she’s softer now. She seems more comfortable. Her little boy is the happiest kid I’ve ever met. He has black eyes. Really, black ones.

The last time I saw him was in New Orleans, before the storm, and he was a little cube. A square infant. I pointed this out to her and she wrote a delightful song about “the little square man” that she sings to him to this day.

I give her a bunch of copies of “Learn to Sing”, a record we made together, after all. She immediately begins to read the lyrics, which makes me uncomfortable.

“Don’t worry, I already know them,” she says.

Feb. 1

Nashville. In-store at Grimey’s. I have an interview in the basement (which turns out to be an actual club called “The Basement”) before the in-store begins. A woman carries some boxes in during the interview, then leaves, closing the enormously heavy door behind her. After this, it will not open again. I’m already 5 minutes late for the in-store and the journalist and I are trapped beneath it.

Billy knocks on the door and calls for me to let him in. I yell back that I would if I could.

“Honey, it’s locked,” he yells. “You have to unlock it!”

“No, you have to unlock it!” I yell back.

The journalist frantically begins calling people on her cell phone, begging to be rescued.

I am now 10 minutes late for the in-store. I can hear muffled music and people walking around up there. Billy leaves, then returns with someone who also agrees that the door is locked and needs unlocking. I sit down to read the paper.

Suddenly, in a whoosh of cold air, Billy and 2 other guys fall into the room, having unlocked the heavy door. They are flushed with adventure and cold. Some idiot shuts the door. We’re all locked in now. Someone borrows the journalist’s cell phone to call upstairs and get someone to really let us out – for good.

Now I’m 15 minutes late for the in-store, but nobody cares. They feed me blueberry beer (ack). I say it tastes like alcoholic pop tarts and the guy who gave it to me says, “Yeah, I like it, too”.

After I play and sign some CD’s, I race out to see Vic Chesnutt, who is recording in a studio here. He leaves tomorrow morning, weather permitting. I pray for snow so that we can have breakfast together, too.

I carry a six-pack of normal beer into the kitchen (“Is that tacky?” I ask Vic. “No, it’s classy,” he says), I proceed to melt into Vic Land, a funny place where everything is dangerous and comfortable and sounds good and I don’t have to play it. Tonight, Vic plays songs without vocals.

“Instrumentals?” I ask.

“No. Just no lyrics.”

“Isn’t that an instrumental?”

“Well, at first.”

After we leave, he writes all the lyrics, of all things. What a freak.

Feb. 2

Louisville. Leaving the kids at Trina’s house, Billy and I trek out into the unrecognizably frigid south for some NPR and an in-store at Ear X-Tacy. This part of the country is covered in snow right now, traffic doesn’t move and we are an hour late for live radio.

Again, no one seems to care. We’re wondering if maybe we’re the only musicians who ever show up anywhere on time — or freak out when they’re late — which makes us feel like dorks. The people at WFPK are so nice — sweet as pie — and I don’t deserve pie today.

Outside the in-store I decide I do deserve champagne, though. I probably decide this because I’m so hungry; it’s been days since we’ve really eaten. The kids eat, but Billy and I just never have time. So we score a bottle of our favorite cheap champagne (a guy named Thuki turned us onto it — $10 a bottle and awesome) and drink it in the parking lot of the record store in the backseat of our car.

“Is this tacky?”, I ask Billy.

“No, it’s classy,” he says.

Love,
Kristin

Jan. 1

New Years Day. Moving day. We’re cleaning out the apartment, throwing away unopened bottles of beer (ouch), calming the dogs and kids and saying goodbye. Goodbye to my brother, my sister-in-law and my nieces, to our Portland friends, to Mississippi Studios and Forest Park, to my practice space. Sad. And there’s an ugly rain falling which adds to the effect.

But we’re almost always up for a new start. Back in the car, we get our road thing going and share a picnic dinner in the backseat. The stars come out. It’s beautiful again.

Jan. 3

Lordy, that gorgeous mid-western silver light. Crazy sun shining on tall grass prairie coated in ice. One of my favorite-ever things.

Jan. 6

Fake Ass Family Christmas in Rhode Island with Doony (who didn’t make it out to Portland for the real one). All four brothers eating gingerbread cookies and Chinese food, giggling over goofy presents…really sweet.

Jan. 12

I’m writing from my London hotel room where, as usual, I’m spending the whole trip drinking tea and watching Jackass and South Park. A seriously well-spent week.

Last night the McCarricks and the 50Foot boys and I played a “Learn to Sing…” preview show at a theater in Soho, mostly for press. It was like taking a test on the subject of new songs, but I enjoyed it. I’ve never been on stage with so many people before. The sound was so full, I kept walking around listening, of all things.

Bernie and Rob playing quietly! Hah! We call it “Pussy Foot Wave”. I kissed them goodbye in the hotel after the show, handed them some tangerines and told them I’d catch up with them in L.A. in a couple of weeks. I hate saying goodbye to them.

Jan. 16

Massive “Fopp” in-store here in London today. They have a venue inside the store with a stage, a full PA and a bar. They crammed a ton of people in there and then shut a bunch more out. I’m pretty sure I met them all, though -— I signed so many CD’s afterwards, my hand ached, my face hurt from smiling and I was blind from flashes.

No weirdos though. A big plus.

Jan. 18

Leaving London. It smelled really good there because the flowers are in bloom, thanks to global warming. Apparently the bears can’t sleep (what bears?), but it was working for me. What a beautiful city.

Best sign-age on the way to the airport:

“No Options” and “Altered Orientation Ahead”

Jan. 22

Boston press and a Newbury comics in-store. The Newbury Comics employees were awfully nice people, but they didn’t know how to build a PA, so Billy and Echo did sound.

Tea and Dean brought the girls (more nieces!) and I spent the whole time pretty much in tears, kissing the babies. What happened to me? I used to be bad ass.

So many old Boston friends — a wee little love fest. When we stepped outside, a perfect snow was falling on Newbury Street, on the brownstones and the Christmas lights. Nobody said anything; we all just stood and watched.

Jan. 24

New York. The kids safely dumped on Billy’s family, we pick up our friend Gina and make our way to NPR (no beer!) for an interview and then more NPR (still no beer!) for a live session and then more NPR (help! I need beer!) for both. Too much coffee and nothing to eat makes my hands shake — shaky hands and live radio: a bad combination. Nobody notices but me, though.

I met a tiny, little 11 year old rocker girl. She has a band. She’s 11! I wanted to scream, No!!!! but I guess she’s having fun.

Music’s fun, right?

We visit our beloved “anti-publicists” at Sacks & Co. and then have sushi at Sakura, around the corner from Billy’s old West 11th street apartment where we courted. We’ve had many a bowl of heartbreak soup at Sakura. It fixes just about everything.

Jan. 25

Philadelphia. NPR (do I have to say it?). They’re always so professional, like at the BBC. No “deejays”, just “hosts”. And engineers that actually know how to work a board. They totally fall down on the beer front, though.

We showed the kids the Liberty Bell on the way to the Borders in-store and then got caught in a traffic loop and showed it to them 6 more times.

Jan. 26

Washington, DC. It is freezing here. Freezing! What happened to global warming? I want cherry blossoms!

Voice of America and AP first thing (oh my god, where’s my beer?). Voice of America goes out to 150,000,000 people. They also video tape it for some reason — the camera man is introduced to me as “the man who shot Reagan” (!!)

They place an enormous picture of me behind me and begin filming right away (beer?). We work with Gary, Mary and Larry to try and find a song on the record without swears in it that they can play on the air. We decide on Day Glo.

“Is it too hairy?” Billy asks Gary, Mary and Larry.
“Hairy?” ask Gary, Mary and Larry.
“Scary,” he says.

We go with Wild Vanilla. Billy coughs over “shit scared domestic god”.

The show begins. The host introduces me and asks me what it was like to be in the Pixies.

sigh…

More radio, some phoners and then an in-store. We finish the night ordering-in Thai with our dear friends Kevin and Marco who live in DC. They let our dogs hang, too. They have an enormous Golden Retriever named Flapjack that Kitty, Nimbus and Captain all take to immediately. Then Kitty eats an entire order of Pad Thai.

This could be a long night.

Love,
Kristin

This entry originally appeared in Powell’s Books blog and is reprinted by permission.

The year my oldest son (we call him Doonie) turned three was a difficult one. The term “custody dispute” in no way describes the agony of that time, a time colored by gutting loss. I was losing my son, my home, my grip. I spent most afternoons in a lawyer’s office, trying not to cry in front of anyone, and Doonie was forced into a day care program where his choice of friends was limited to, in his 3-year-old-kid words, “kids what would eat cheese for dinner” and “kids who used books as bricks.”

“You mean they build things with them?” I asked hopefully.

“No, Mom,” he smiled sadly. “These are bad kids.”

In the lawyer’s office, while I sat and listened to people I barely knew read lists of lies that had been told about me and wondered how I would ever pay the lawyer’s fees, my son moved between both of these social groups, defending the cheese eaters from the book throwers. I don’t believe he ever let himself cry in public, either.

Sometimes, after leaving the lawyer’s office, unable to face my empty apartment, I would visit him at the day care facility. I wasn’t allowed to go in, but if I timed it right, I could stand on the other side of a chain link fence during recess and talk to him through it.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Hi, sweetie. How’s it going?”

“It’s okay. That kid on the slide got scratched by her cat.”

“Oh yeah? Is that what the band aid’s all about?”

“I guess. I think she might be faking it.”

“Weird.”

“Yeah.”

Then an aid would see me and call Doonie away. He’d stand at her side and wave goodbye with a very serious look on his face and I’d wave back with a fake smile, as if I’d just been out taking a walk and was now going on my merry way.

Weekends were wonderful, though. Fridays at five to five, I would be waiting in the fluorescent light of the kids’ coat room for my baby to come tearing out the door and jump into my arms. My future husband would take the train in from New York and the three of us would fill two whole days with pie baking and sand castles. Only sweetness, to shake off the bitter.

The pie baking always meant a visit from “Cooking Man,” the only super hero who carries a whisk. Who wouldn’t marry a man who so willingly shamed himself for our pleasure? Who wore only dark-colored long-johns, swimming goggles on his face, and a towel-cape around his neck, a handprint of flour on his chest? It was a beautiful thing and it filled my apartment with the greatest sound in the world: a toddler’s giggle.

Then we’d head for the beach, no matter what the weather, and build cities out of sand until our faces stung. These cities were always places we wanted to go. Anywhere but here, I’d think. Imaginary, but even more compelling in that, because they were created by the funny little broken family we were back then.

I could even eat on the weekends, so we’d all cook dinner together and then rent psychotic old Disney movies: The Cat from Outer Space, The Shaggy D.A. — two days of heaven every week.

Sunday afternoons, Cooking Man would take the train back to the city and Doonie and I would go home to a dinner neither of us could face. I only ever wanted vodka, he only wanted chocolate. Even then I could only manage a sip or two and he would feel sick after a few bites, so I’d gather him up and we’d sit in the red rocking chair, staring into the fish tank until we both fell asleep.

•••

Doonie is now twenty years old, six feet tall, still very articulate yet soft spoken. He calls and writes, just like a good boy should. He’s no longer forced to hang with kids he doesn’t like, but he graciously credits the day care crowd with having taught him valuable social skills.

Last week, my husband and I dropped him off at the airport after a quick visit with his three younger brothers. He carried a bag of chocolate onto the plane and I went home to a shot of vodka, but we didn’t cry in front of anyone. In fact, I don’t believe we cried at all. It wasn’t sad enough. I was just so proud.

I do miss him. And I grieve the loss of the baby he was every day; I wear it like a lead apron over my heart. But I look at the person he is and I think — we’re not losing anymore. We may even have won.

This entry originally appeared in Powell’s Books blog and is reprinted by permission.

It’s 2 a.m. and the rain is so loud and the moon is so bright that I’m lying on the closet floor, trying to get some sleep. It’s hard. I mean, the floor is hard and it’s hard to sleep on it.

You’re supposed to empty your mind of all thought, in order to fall asleep, right? Or is that meditation? Either way. I believe the brain’s first order of business is to lie to you, so I like to shut that organ down every chance I get.

Tonight, though, when I try to shut it up, it keeps asking this question: why do people think I’m foreign? My brain raises a good point. I’ve never been sure why people tend to guess I’m foreign. ‘Cause they do. Often. They ask me “what part of the world” I’m from. And it bugs me. What does “foreign” even mean in a melting pot? I mean, I speak English.

“You speak it…weird, though,” says my husband, Billy. “And you like to dress like a refugee.”

“Weird? What do you mean, ‘weird’? And good like a refugee or bad like a refugee?”

“Oh…good,” he says. “Like you were the first girl to the bale.”

I’ve seen Billy asked for directions in Milan, Boise, Barcelona, New York and Dublin. Clearly he has no trouble fitting in, wherever he is. In most of these places, he is foreign.

I’m not asked for directions anywhere, not even in my hometown where I should look like I know where I’m going.

Today, walking down NW 23rd, here in Portland, I saw no less than six different ladies wearing the exact same shoes. Shoes that were being sold in several places on that very street. I guessed that those ladies weren’t foreign — they certainly looked like they belonged.

I began to wonder if besides wearing the same shoes, maybe they all listened to the same music, too. As a musician, I wonder this a lot. Marketing is very effective when it comes to shoes and music.

I looked down at my sturdy refugee shoes and thought, “Fashion. Again.” In music it often seems to come down to that tiny bit of evil: style over substance, ephemeral over timeless.

Recently, a music journalist told me that he hadn’t kept up with my career for the past few years, because I had “fallen off [his] radar.” The last record of mine that he’d heard was the subject of a well funded major label marketing campaign; I was on the radio and in most music publications as well as some of the magazines one might read at, say, the dentist’s office.

It hadn’t occurred to this man, who works in the music business, that what he thinks of as his “radar” might just be the result of marketing dollars spent by a corporation whose job it is to create popular culture by creating the impression of popular culture in order to… Make Money.

I was amazed. How could this be? I thought. How can this process be invisible even to a person who plays a role in it? Well, I guess the answer is in the shoes. Belonging at the expense of individuality. No one seems to want to give it up. We like matching feet and reliable coffee and using the same perfume as rich and famous people.

Our American cities are disappearing under the weight of corporate giants who drive out competition while peddling sameness. Once the rents go up, no store other than a chain can afford to pursue the all-important Coed Consumer Monster, waving Daddy’s credit card.

Over twenty years of touring the states, I’ve watched local accents and local music slip away from cities like Austin, Texas, Athens, Georgia and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. So sad! There used to be places to go in this country, pictures to take, people to meet. Now they look the same and sound the same. We even eat the same food! Do you remember regional cuisine? Can you really find any? It’s even happening in foreign places like Europe, Asia, Australia, even my beloved New Zealand!

I’m done. I’m going back to sleep now. My sturdy shoes are right next to my face, but I don’t mind. I like them now. They’re on my radar. I love being an American, but I don’t feel like I have to look like one. And I listen to all kinds of music, from lots of different places and eras; not because some giant sold it to me, but because it never sucked.

I think I might just keep talking funny, too.