Alt-rock pioneer returns with ‘A Memoir of Music and Motherhood’
It’s been my privilege to follow Kristin Hersh’s career over the decades, beginning with her work in the pioneering alt-rock troupe Throwing Muses and continuing through various solo projects and the band 50 Foot Wave.
During that time period, she’s delivered nothing short of some of the most powerful music I’ve heard in my life.
Hersh has also added successful author to her list of accomplishments, with her 2010 memoir “Rat Girl” receiving massive acclaim – including Rolling Stone magazine naming it one of the “25 greatest rock memoirs of all time.”
Her latest is a follow-up of sorts – dubbed “Seeing Sideways: A Memoir of Music and Motherhood” – which picks up a few years after “Rat Girl” ends and follows Hersh as she balances rock ‘n’ roll with raising four boys.
She’s supporting the new page-turner with a book tour that includes a virtual event for Green Apple Books in San Francisco. The free event takes place at 6 p.m. May 14 and features Hersh in conversation with Black Francis (aka Frank Black) of Pixies fame. Visit kristinhersh.com and greenapplebooks.com for more information.
I recently had a chance to catch up with Hersh and her writing career.
Q: You’ve been making music since you were a young teen. But at what point did you first believe that you would be an author as well?
A: You know? It’s really not that different. Rhythm, melody, color and texture, plus telling the truth. Not the whole truth; that’d be boring. Chipping away at the lump of clay that is memory until a story-sculpture peeks through. Songs and prose need your sweat equity and your fingerprint. They’re both memoir, meaning impressions, so they’re both impressionistic, which is like being tasked with invention. You have to earn them, in other words.
Q: What brought you to the point where you were ready to write “Rat Girl”?
A: “Rat Girl” was clever for two whole years and clever is the worst. I actually had a diary from which to work and I still couldn’t bring that book to life until I started working in the middle of the night. Well, 2 or 3 a.m., when it’s not day or night. Time tripping is like self-hypnosis then, which helps if some of your characters have passed on. Memory is so very full when now isn’t interfering.
Q: The book was very well received. What were your thoughts when you read all the positive reviews and feedback?
A: Stomach ache? I’m so private. I really don’t need anyone to know anything about my life. I just have this conviction that I should live stories if I’m going to tell them.
Q: “Rat Girl” was made its way to the stage – in a version adapted by Stuart Bousel and directed by Claire Rice – for a run at the Exit Theatre in San Francisco back in 2014. Did you happen to catch the show?
A: I didn’t see it, but my dad went and he’s in the book. They treated him like a king, so he loved it.
Q: Was there ever any talk of making “Rat Girl” into a movie? Because that’s one movie I’d definitely wait in line to see.
A: Before she died, the director Lynn Shelton and I discussed it for a few months. Some other people have been interested, but — it’s not my medium. Someone would really have to take that project by the reins.
Q: After “Rat Girl,” you’d turn your pen to Vic Chestnutt (who died in 2009 following an overdose on muscle relaxants). What was the experience of writing “Don’t Suck, Don’t Die: Giving Up Vic Chesnutt” like for you? I’m betting it was super hard, but perhaps also therapeutic.
A: It was wholly engrossing. We had an intense decade of touring that was mostly laughing, so the book is funny. But Vic was a dark dude and music was not gentle to either of us, so Don’t Suck, Don’t Die is kind of dizzying. I almost left out his death, in order to highlight his work, but he chose his own death, so I thought I should let him write the end of the book, too.
Q: Now, you’re back with another book. What led you to write “Seeing Sideways”?
A: My editor pitched it to me five years ago as a story about raising four boys on a bus. He said that if he timed it right, I’d be facing empty nest just as it was published. Sounded so mean, so I just stared at him, horrified, and he stared back and said, “You can do it.” He knew that as soon as I started time-tripping, I’d be addicted to the process.
Q: How do you see this in relation to “Rat Girl”? Does it feel like a completely new effort, or more like part 2 of the story?
A: This is the sequel for sure, but you’ll notice a change in the voice. It’s a rough story; very impressionistic and even dreamlike. The disorienting nature of my life is reflected in the prose. People tell me they feel like I must have then. Not sure if that’s what you want as a reader, but it’s how I tell the truth. Very similar to my songs, which, as you know, aren’t for everyone. And because I had thirty years to play with, I could leave out all the boring stuff. “Seeing Sideways” akes my life sound like a cliff dive. It’s exhausting.
Q: Talk to me about the title. How does “Seeing Sideways” relate to being a memoir about motherhood and music?
A: Points on a linear timeline don’t reflect the capacity of children to teach you the infinite in each moment. Mothers disengage with Newtonian physics on a regular basis. We’re thrust into an animal sensibility that makes more sense spiritually than it does mathematically, but it’s a kind of full-on nature and presence. You can’t look away from the teacher child, because you’re tasked with its survival.
Q: What was it like to go back and remember those early ’90s? Those must have been exciting times, as alt-rock became such a force on the charts and you were on a major label.
A: I never wanted to be a rock star or a pop star, or really to attract any attention at all. Especially since attention has been co-opted by marketing. You know, the spotlight is just an artificial cue to look and it’s bought and paid for. My value proposition is only musical focus. I thought it was very sad to see musicians who could have developed substantively try to dumb down their output and play product for money — choosing fashion over timelessness, style over substance, like over love. It’s an insult to the listener.
Q: I know that the Warner Bros saga didn’t end in great fashion for the Muses — as your debt to the label led to the band breaking up? In retrospect, what are thoughts on that period?
A: I told Warner Brothers I would never play that sexist game; would never turn my back on women or music, and I fought to be released from my contract, but they wouldn’t let me go. So we made “University” (1995) as a kind of “(expletive) you” and it became our top-selling record ever, even though they put no promotional money behind it, didn’t send our record to stores and actually pulled our single off the radio. I finally offered them my first solo record in exchange for our freedom and they accepted. I never made a penny from either record, but obviously, I’m not in it for the money.
Q: What were some of the most difficult things of balancing motherhood and making music over the decades?
A: I think — I don’t want to complain. I’ve had no greater honor than babies and songs.
Q: You are a songwriter. You are a singer. You are a guitarist. But, after three books, do you now feel comfortable with the title of author?
A: I do. I know how to step out of the way and let a book write itself. The way songs and children fill out their own fingerprints as long as you keep them safe and don’t interfere.
Q: The reviews I read of your books tend to mention your humor. You are pretty funny. Can you tell me a clean joke?
A: (Laughs) I’m doing BBC interviews every night this week in the middle of the freakin’ night and I’m so sleep deprived, I can’t remember any jokes. But you made me laugh!
Q: How have things been for you through the pandemic? Is that when you wrote most of this book?
A: I wrote this book over the last five years, so I finished it this year. And I’m halfway through a solo record and a new Fifty Foot Wave record. The Muses’ “Sun Racket” came out this year and did very well in spite of the no touring thing, but success to us is really just loving what we made. My bandmates and I don’t necessarily release or even record what we play…music is just an ongoing engagement, a kind of circular breathing to us. I can forget that anybody else hears what we do.
Q: Do you feel like you’ve gotten your due for all that you’ve accomplished — and for being such a rock pioneer?
A: I don’t need due, just sustainability. I’d love it if the work found listeners who need to hear it, but I don’t need to be associated with it in any way.
Q: What’s it like doing a reading from your books?
A: I time trip a bit. A lot of it is funny, so it cracks me up and that’s unprofessional. But so is crying and I’ve done that, too. Guess I’m a girl after all.
Q: Is it nice that you aren’t doing it alone? Given that you have Amy Ray, Frank Black and other cool friends helping you out.
A: It’s wonderful to have my friends along for the ride. And it doesn’t hurt that they’re all so brilliant.
Q: Is it harder to write a book or make an album?
A: Books are harder but cheaper.
Q: What’s more fulfilling?
A: I’ll always be a musician first. It’s the only language I speak fluently. I don’t always make sense when I speak English because lyrics taught me that words can be stretched and played with and molded into a living, active state that is really not conversational English. I love that books can benefit from this technique, but you do have to trust that ride. I have a ton of respect for readers and listeners.