throwingmusic

Moan

2008-06-25T15:15:00.004-04:00

The last CASH track, "Static", was light shining through a crack in the door. "Moan" flung the door wide open.

This jazz-miked drum kit, warm bass and overheated tubes guitar sound set the stage for a flood of songs in keeping with this recording technique. I don't quite understand the process, but it seems as if songs needing a certain treatment wait in the wings until I'm well-versed in that treatment. Then they come crashing into the room, bumping into me and each other...taking up space and demanding attention.

"Moan" brought to life a fistful of Throwing Muses songs. I honestly didn't think I would ever write another Throwing Muses song. For some reason, I assumed my guitars were only capable of bringing about convenient music. Of course, music is hardly ever convenient. It imagines you have nothing better to do than serve it. It not-so-gently suggests that you refrain from eating and sleeping and paying the rent until you've given it everything it asks for.

Which is fair, 'cause it only asks for physicality and sociability. It needs a body (no matter how long it takes, how much it costs and how many people it takes to get that barn up off the ground!) and then it needs to walk out into the world, wearing its new clothes, so that it can start living its new life. It pays us back in dividends by telling us what it learned out there in the ether, before we met it.

And by letting us play. The other Muses are ready to work. Which is maybe a past life re-visited, but it's also a dream come true. Songs don't know the word "past", anyway. Songs are forever now.

CASH and Kristin Podcasts are now available as RSS feeds and through the iTunes store. Sure, having a Kristin-only Podcast would be nice, but why limit yourself when you can have all the stuff that CASH posts in one nice, neat package?

Kristin's Feed
the CASH Feed
CASH Podcast at iTunes

Also - Check out the brand-spankin' new KristinHersh.com -- where there's a list of upcoming live appearances and lots more coming soon.

Static

2008-05-27T12:46:00.001-04:00

Rizzo and I hit on interesting sonic vocabulary with this one. Somehow, playing this song by myself, I was sounding like a jazz combo. So we played that up with sharp guitar and "room". Room plays loudly on this track.

Which tends to make a song sound like it was recorded live, in a club. This usually helps the listener hear heaviness and sweat and import in the performance.

I find that it's best to leave the track alone at this point, so that nobody begins picturing the fifteen musicians that'd have to be on stage in order to make all this production possible. In other words, once you begin erasing overdubs, you know you got the core presentation right and should just walk away.

Billy thinks Static is about my friend Mark who died last year. I don't know, really, but Billy's usually right. Mark will never seem dead to me, just...gone. I like to think of him tearing down roads in the sun and rain, still having bones and hope.

Love,
Kristin

Krait

2008-04-24T20:32:00.002-04:00

Rizzo says this songs is "big". I agree, as it uses big imagery: Garden of Eden, primordial ooze stuff. It goes humanist biblical on your ass, with a little Raising Arizona thrown in.

Which life tends to do too, sometimes. Not a bad way to be here on this planet, really, if you can stay wide-eyed. So far, my eyes are still wi-i-i-de open.

Krait's a happy song, I think, calling children, "the crawling milk-fed", "ids", and asserting their need to be strong in the face of "wasted time" and "naked shame".

The production technique is small-to-big and the sonic vocabulary unrelated to the natural world. A lot of distorted and backwards and run through this or that. But the feel stays organic, which is part of Rizzo's genius.

Love,
Kristin

Speedbath

2008-03-23T12:21:00.005-04:00

I love to watch musical passages in a song diverge. When the down beat of a melodic phrase falls on a different chord each time it comes around or when listening to the drum pattern and guitar part together feels like doing
two math problems in your head at once.

This song is all about half steps and rhythmic skips. It was crazy/exhilarating to play and is crazy/exhilarating to listen to -- at least for me. It's a nice little "yay!" and "f*ck you!" when music shouldn't work but does anyway.

"Speedbath" is the title of one of my son Wyatt's comics. It seemed to fit this song, which has the word "speed" in it (that counts, right?). Both Wyatt and the song are equally wacky, anyway.

Love,
Kristin

Morning Birds

2008-02-26T16:16:00.007-05:00

We stopped somewhere in the south on the last tour to put my band in a motel and park our tour bus outside of it. On tour, Billy and I sleep with the dumpsters and the parking lot animals.

I like dumpsters; you can throw garbage in them. And I like parking lot animals 'cause they have a hard time but they make the best of it. They're also fun to watch in the morning while I drink my tea and wait for the band to wake up and bring me oranges and little boxes of cereal from the breakfast bar.

Sometimes parking lot animals are excellent: giant roaches, squirrels, peregrine falcons, snakes. Sometimes, they're just fine, like the morning birds that wake all southerners at dawn. Morning birds (there are many different kinds -- all they gotta do is wake up and start singing in order to fall into this category) remind me of my childhood in Georgia. I love lying on my bus bed and listening to them, wondering where the hell I am.

Except the birds that sang to us this particular morning began singing at a time that was only technically morning, like three minutes past midnight or something. And they sounded awfully...agitated. We spent a restless night hoping they were okay and wishing they'd shut up even if they weren't.

Somehow, they made it into a song.

I especially like the hypnotic repetition in the first part of this track. Each instrument is playing its own loop; only the rhythm guitar and bass are playing together. The resultant cacophony is not as unsettling as you might think, given that your ear learns a bit more of each part as it goes by.

The quiet part, I couldn't make quiet enough. I just pulled instruments out, then pulled out more until I had only sweet/sad left. Something about a "purifying sin" demands a certain amount of respect and, for a musician, that usually means get out of the way.

Morning Birds is here.

Are You Sure You Can Sell This?

2008-01-24T14:22:00.000-05:00

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 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.

"Are You Shore You Can Sell This?" - Illustration by Wyatt True O'Connell (at age 3)

Torque

2007-12-28T21:37:00.000-05:00

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.

Torque is here.

CASH Music is Now

2007-11-26T18:15:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the sparkly-new CASH Music.

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

Just in case you missed it, "Slippershell" is here.

Tour Diary - part 12 - New Zealand

2007-11-18T15:18:00.000-05:00

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)

Tour Diary - part 11 - Australia

2007-10-27T11:39:00.000-04:00

Melbourne - Billy, Bodhi and I fly from Boston to L.A., touching down briefly in the state of California just as it catches fire. Our next flight will take us to Melbourne, Australia, quite possibly the best city on earth. Australia, aka "England, Outside" or "Clean California" does most things better than the rest of us. Just so you know. When you aren't there, you should probably feel bad about it. We do.

Bodhi has packed his wet-suit, flippers, mask and snorkel, roughly 4 million marine biology books and about 5 million toy sharks. He brings only one pair of shoes. "I wasn't planning on wearing shoes," he says.

Mirko, our new tour manager, picks us up at the airport. Mirko is German, raised in Australia. He has an interesting accent: he talks like a pirate like all Australians, but his speech is clipped and precise. He claims the combination of German and Australian is perfect for tour managing, "Efficient and lazy!" he grins. I never do catch him being lazy, but he is calm. And efficient to the extent that everything somehow gets done without you seeing him do it. I now know I can relax on this tour.

Mirko brings us to our hotel (next door to "The Sisters of Divine Zeal") and while he is checking us in, it begins to rain. I look down at Bodhi and grab his hand "Wanna go outside and smell the rain?" He nods and we run out the door.

Billy then carries our suitcase into the lobby and asks Mirko where we've gone. "They've gone outside to smell the rain," he says, deadpan. Billy meets us in the courtyard, smiling.

"I think I like Mirko," he says.

•••

This is a day off, so we go out looking for apples and snakes. The apples we find are expensive and disappointing; I keep thinking it's fall because I left that season behind in New England. It is, of course, spring here in Upside Down Under, dewy and green. We switch to more seasonal produce.

Then the three of us look under stones, in tree branches and in people's yards for snakes but, embarrassingly, the only snakes we find are in a pet shop. Of course, this pet shop is fantastic (Australians doing stuff better than us again). We talk to the reptile handler for a good twenty minutes, admiring a 7 foot python. There is also a nice selection of fish for Bodhi. "An epaulet shark!" he squeals. Then he races around the store, pointing into various fish tanks. "Neon tetras! Yellow tangs! A pipe fish! A long-nosed gar! Axolotls!"

Melbourne looks to us like someone laid New Orleans over Tucson. With maybe a little Reykjavik thrown in. It is wet and chilly. I pray that the fish don't remind Bodhi of his wet-suit; it's so cold. We walk through beautiful neighborhoods and parks until we're tired enough to fall asleep.

•••

The next day is a show day, with press in the afternoon. The cab to the radio station doesn't show up, though, and I am very late for a live session. The publicist finally drives me there herself and we listen to the station on the way. The dj keeps hyping my interview. "She's so trusting," I say. "I'm four hours late!"

When we race into the studio, she smiles, "Thank you so much for coming!" No mention of the time or the fact that she's almost off the air. They're so kind here -- (Australia = better).

I am then late for sound check, which is nerve-wracking, as it's the first one. I have brought no band mates with me this time, which means I must make all the sounds myself and they should be good ones. Of course, there are buzzes and power issues, the amp is a rental and seems excessively bright, one of the delay pedals is acting weird, song to song, my distortion pedal sounds completely different, the mike feeds, etc. Eventually, Mirko and Billy sort out the sound in the room and I sort out the sound for myself on stage. Then we go back to the hotel so I can sign t-shirts.

We couldn't afford to bring printed shirts into this country to sell, so Billy bought blank t-shirts ahead of time and had Mirko pick them up and bring them to the hotel for me to write my name on. The names of the colors are entertaining: "Ocean" for men, "Merlot" for women. Interestingly, "Ocean" is not the color of the ocean and "Merlot" is not the color of Merlot. Also, it's really hard to draw on a t-shirt. I try a Sharpie, a paint pen and an industrial marker. They all catch on the fabric and make me write my name retarded. Then I feel guilty about trying to sell this to someone and draw them a sad little picture: a guitar, a tree, a spiral.

"I'm really bad at this," I tell Billy.

"Shut up and do it," he offers helpfully.

I eventually get 36 shirts done: 18 men's and 18 women's. Then Billy writes numbers on them all. We'll have a drawing at the end of the tour and the lucky winner will receive a guitar. Hopefully not a crappy one.

Tonight's show is a blur, but I am reminded of why I've always loved to play here: people care. They are just enough out of the fray to be able to. They aren't as relentlessly subjected to trendiness as Americans, they just want you to know your shit. Which I sort of do.

Bodhi sleeps on the couch throughout my set. Afterwards, I bundle him in a blanket I swiped from the airplane and carry him outside, where it's still cool and rainy. It's strange for Australia to be so cold. I like cold, I just have no sense memories of this place cold. Usually it feels like a carnival here. And Bodhi so wanted to snorkel in that ocean. I put him inside my coat to keep the rain off and take him back to bed.

•••

Hepburn Springs - Before heading out to the next show, we all feel so bad for the 4 year old marine biologist that we take him to the Melbourne Aquarium. It is a peak experience for Bodhi, who can name every single shark and ray there. I am mystified as to how he does this; they all look pretty similar to me. He says there are subtle variations in fin and tail shape and number of gills, eye placement, etc., that differentiate one shark from another. And the rays are different sizes with distinctive stingers. I don't know. I try to keep up, but Billy's the fish guy. I don't even really like fish.

"If you want to know anything about reptiles, just ask," I say to Bodhi. "Like sea kraits or something." No response. "Marine iguanas…" Nothing. He's busy staring at something so well camouflaged I can't even see it. "Did you want to know anything about reptiles?"

"Not really," Bodhi answers, touching the glass wall behind which a shark glides past. "Look, Dad, a white tipped reef shark!"

I wander off and buy a cup of tea with a pocketful of beautiful change (their money's pretty, too). Eventually, Bodhi is cajoled into leaving (we have to buy him a Melbourne Aquarium baseball cap to get him out of there) and we drive to Hepburn Springs.

On the way, Mirko makes sure that we all wear seat belts because we're driving out in the country, where it's not unusual to "wang a roo" or two.

"Jesus, your roadkill must be spectacular," says Billy.

"Yes. And interestingly, if you kill a kangaroo, it can kill you too," says Mirko thoughtfully. From this point on, we no longer use the verb, to drive; driving is now known as "wangaroo-ing".

Our hotel is next door to the club tonight. It is my favorite kind of hotel: 70's + brown + a shower cap in the bathroom. There's a party atmosphere here, too, as many people from the Melbourne show have come to tonight's show as well and are staying in the same place. Our room is freezing. Like it's haunted. In fact, Hepburn Springs is freezing. They light fires in fire pits on the sidewalk. It's strange and very beautiful. This town reminds us of Santa Fe, but without the tourists. Really lovely.

While Billy and Mirko set up my equipment, Bodhi naps on a beautiful velvet chaise in the club and I do phone interviews staring out the window of my hotel room into the neighbors' yard. It is full of cockatoos and a kind of wild parrot called a rosella. There are no kookaburras, 'cause they only show up in the morning(!). I can't get over this. How can a place that feels so comfortable also be so exotic?

I make another 36 t-shirts and then skip dinner in order to sleep for a few hours before the show. This makes me a little fuzzy, but I figure it's better than sleeping during my set. After the show, I mention my nap to a couple who brought CD's for me to sign; I'm feeling a little slow and figure this is a good excuse.

"We know you took a nap before the show," they answer, smiling. "We peeked in your window on our way to the club!"

•••

Walking back to the hotel, we hear what sounds like Flipper on the roof. An Australian friend says, "That could be a koala…" and walks up to investigate. I'm glad Bodhi is already asleep because he's afraid of koalas ("They can be nasty!") -- sharks, yes, koalas, no. Billy and I are thrilled, however. We're getting our phones ready to take pictures for the kids who aren't with us when our friend says, "Naw, it's just a possum."

"Aw, crap," says Billy. Then we see the possum. It is stunning. Like a huge masked bush baby, smooth and elegant with vivid markings. "That's what you guys call a possum?!"

"Well, what do you call it?" asks our friend.

"Our possums are like…big, dumb rats!"

"Oh. Sorry, " he says. Australians are better than us and so are their possums. I should've guessed.

•••

In the morning, we have an early flight to New Zealand, but we are told that we can't leave town without first going to the Red Star Café. This is true, as it turns out. Each morning, we find a breakfast place so amazing that it becomes our new favorite restaurant and beats out the one before it. The Red Star is now our new favorite place. The wait-staff all appear to have been to the show (Hepburn Springs is a small town) and are extra nice to me. We leave healthier and happier and head out to the airport, Mirko and Billy still studying Hepburn Springs real estate listings.

Land of Oz indeed.

Beautiful Old Betty

2007-09-27T08:57:00.000-04:00

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

My best friend in college was the movie actress Betty Hutton. She was too old to be in college and I was too young; this was all we really had in common, if you can call it that. Though she did like the fact that I was in a band.

"C'mon, Krissy," she'd say, patting the seat next to her in the student lounge, "sit down! Let's talk show biz!"

I had never heard of Betty Hutton, never seen any of her movies, and, frankly wondered if her Hollywood star persona wasn't invented. She was awfully... eccentric, to say the least. A gigantic woman who made herself seem even bigger by wearing rhinestone-studded turquoise cowboy boots and combing her white hair straight up, she smoked menthol cigarettes.

"Minty," I commented one afternoon.

"I don't like minty cigarettes," she said, "but I'm trying to quit chewing gum."

Betty did live in a bona fide mansion, though. Right on the ocean and decorated entirely in white: white furniture, walls, carpet, dog, piano. She'd sit at the piano with her gay friends, singing show tunes. Really. I mean, I assumed they were show tunes. When the singing was over, she'd wipe tears away and hug whoever had been accompanying her.

Then, glistening, she'd call me over and say to her friend, "Krissy's in a band. A band called 'Throw-ing Mu-ses'. Krissy's gonna be the new me." So sad. That she couldn't find anyone better than me to groom as her "show biz" replacement. All of that old school Hollywood wisdom to impart and no little tap dancing vessel in which to put it. Al Jolson once told Betty that when she left the stage, she should peek out of the wings and ask the audience with her eyes, "Do you want some more?". Betty tried desperately to get me to do this.

"Look, Krissy," (she always called me Krissy, she was the only person who ever did — I called her "Bob" for "Beautiful Old Betty") "it's not that hard. You have to play with them, flirt with them, string them along. Be the cat and the mouse, you know what I mean?"

"Sorta."

"Well you aren't actually doing it." Then she'd smile sweetly. "I know you're trying."

"I'm not really trying."

"No, you're not," and she'd laugh. Hard. I couldn't fake her out because she actually came to Throwing Muses shows. She always brought her priest, though she never explained why, and she and this priest would stand in the back of the room and look encouraging while we played. Betty would make her eyes real big at me, I guess telling me to ask the mosh pit if they "wanted some more". The thing was, my eyes were spirals while I played; I was so far from flirting with anyone. Lost in a swirl of sound, I never even knew where I was.

It was hard for me to explain this to Betty. "Why do we entertain?" she would ask — and then answer herself — "to make people happy!" She said this all the time. I didn't think I made anyone very happy by playing and I told her that. "Well, you do scream a great deal don't you? Which isn't very nice. But that's the style these days. And they jump around when you play. I think that means they're happy. So you gotta show them that you love them back. You gotta earn their love."

I couldn't tell her that I wasn't trying to earn love, that I was trying to own violence. I couldn't tell her this because it would have sounded as pretentious then as it does now. So I said, "I play to make the math work".

"Oh! Like tap dancing!" Betty was so beautiful.

Leaving a psychology class one afternoon, she squealed, "That Sigmund! What a comedian! It's bad enough he wanted to fuck his own mother — he's gotta write it in a book and get it published! A book people are still reading! That poor man...he's probably up in heaven right now, with his face in his hands..."

She gave me quarters for the vending machine, still laughing. "I need an oral fix for my oral fixation!" I brought her some crackers and a soda. "What is this?" she asked, holding the crackers at arm's length. "I can't read the package."

"It's cheese and crackers."

"But, honey, I'm not lactose tolerant."

"I don't think there's any actual cheese in them."

"Okay, look," she said, tearing into the package. "There's something I've been wanting to talk to you about. It's this: don't ever let them feed you pills."

"What? Who?"

"Whoever tries to do it! They'll want to wake you up and knock you out because they make more money when they can control you physically and emotionally. Judy Garland and I had a good, long talk about this once she forgave me."

"Judy Garland-Judy Garland? From The Wizard of Oz? Was mad at you?"

"For stealing the role of a lifetime right out from under her. I don't blame her. But now she's dead."

"Yeah, she is. I really don't think they do the pill thing any more."

"Stay clean, Krissy. And then you won't end up like Judy Garland."

Years later, in a London hotel room, I was to reflect on this conversation while staring into the palm of a tour manager who offered me a fistful of pills. The yellow ones were for waking me up, the blue ones for knocking me out.

Betty died earlier this year. I hadn't seen her since I was a teenager. In 2002, we lived a few miles from each other in Palm Springs and never knew, so I didn't ever see the beautiful very old Betty.

To mark her passing, I rented one of her movies, though. In it, astonishingly, she plays an un-wed mother. She is lovely and girlish and completely over the top, just like I remember her. I can see her working to earn love, asking stuff with her eyes. I don't see the deep well of sadness that once moved her to perform, as her final thesis, a soft shoe of "Me and My Shadow" in a college classroom, tears running down her face. What I do see in that gorgeous face is the wide-eyed openness of a lady who could think that Sigmund Freud was a comedian and that I was an entertainer.

Thoughts On Sustainability

2007-08-30T14:20:00.000-04:00

• I often feel there is an inverse relationship between quality of output and material success in the music business. This is distressing, but not out of line with what I've come to expect. Throwing Muses would wander the halls of Warner Brothers back in the day, muttering, "You don't have to suck in order to work here, but it helps."

• Now, however, the financial climate and current upheaval in the music business mean that musicians like me are genuinely poor investments for the traditional powers that be. We do not engage in lowest common denominator trendiness, and so don't warrant the expenses of marketing dollars and company overhead.

• Okay, I get that; this is a business. However, I believe that when you sell toothpaste, you should be selling a goo that helps prevent cavities and when you sell music, you should be selling sound that enriches the listener's inner life. There is today a twisted kind of natural selection in the entertainment industry -- a sort of "survival of the blandest" -- the result, I imagine, of mind-fucking marketing techniques, bandwagon appeal, hype. To me this stuff is ugly, not beautiful.

• Given this, I can only assume that record labels are not for me. I've said it before -- I will always play music -- but in the past, it was a record company's job to make sure you heard that music. They sold their product; they had funded it, it was theirs to sell. How to sell music without them? I liken our situation to that of the family farmer's -- how can we keep from going under without going corporate?

• This is what I think: we specialize -- we offer an organic product. It is lumpy and expensive and made with love and it can save you. It's the right thing to do. It isn't shiny or poisonous, which can be disconcerting to people who've been raised on shiny poison, but it's natural, it's high-end and we want you to eat it.

• To that end, I think I need to engage in a grassroots kind of capitalism, choosing principles over profits, values over image, ideals over marketing. I have to create a permeable membrane between artist and listener -- I'm a craftsperson, after all. The church of the rock star that the music industry televangelists hawk has always been anathema to me anyway. This is about songs and sounds, nothing else.

• Music is a tenuous profession in good times, hard times mean some of us disappear. I'm not looking for pity, but collaboration. Coming to you is the best way I can think of to continue being a musician.

• The model is not new, it's akin to public radio's listener supported programming and Community Supported Agriculture's subscriptions to underwrite crops. In other words, music grows on trees, but money doesn't and I'm unwilling to suck in order to work here. Therein lies the value proposition. This little business will be interactive and intelligent; you will not be lied to, no shiny poison, no middle man.

• The idea of relying on listeners, treating music as a cooperative, is humbling, yet interesting to me. This is a bit of a manifesto, I'm sorry, and now I'll shut up, but I wonder if we might be able to do this together.

More soon...

Love,
Kristin

Tour Diary - part 10 - U.S.

2007-08-17T16:30:00.000-04:00

Best signage in the Northwest: “Free Beef with Tire Purchase” and
“Non-Emotional Caskets”

We have four days to make Minneapolis. An easy schedule to keep with Super Billy at the wheel unless, of course, the universe tilts on its axis and everything goes all haywire and the Family Bus blows up. Which it does.

We’ve broken down before. In fact, we break down a lot. Our bus is a sensitive dullard of a machine. A princess who feels every pea and can’t begin to figure out how to overcome even one of those peas. But never before have we ridden the professional and financial line so hard. This tour is barely breaking even and may lose money. I worry that I won’t be able to pay the other musicians and that my attendances and therefore guarantees are falling to the point where I can no longer afford to tour.

Every date is a question mark, a potential indicator of my future. I say I don’t believe in the music business because I hate what it celebrates and yet…I have no other business. Like it or not, I rely on the same construct I always did, the same Handicapper General that trades in some of the most offensive marketing on this planet; the same business that turns music – which is my religion – into nothing more holy than Fritos. I have to care if no one buys my record, I have to care if no one comes to my shows.

I have to care, because soon, there may be no place for the next song to go. I think I’ll always play music. I think I have to. I’ll play in my bedroom, in my car, in my garage…but without an audience, without money, I won’t be on the road and I won’t be in the studio. And like it or not, music is a social endeavor. I wish it wasn’t, but it is and as such, it’s impact is stunted when it’s invisible. Music isn’t supposed to stay in the bedroom, the car, or the garage. It’s supposed to be given away, to become other people’s soundtrack.

So what happens is, we’re driving through the mountains and I’m stumbling around the bus, listening to music, making sandwiches for the kids and laughing with Bernie as we barrel down the highway like we have so many times before. I had just stepped over a dog to hand Wyatt a cup of milk when Ryder yelled, “Fire!” from the back bedroom.

Instantly, the bus filled with smoke. I grabbed the baby off of his stool and handed him to Rob who was sitting on the couch. Bodhi’s eyes were huge as Rob wrapped his arms around him. Then Bernie found a fire extinguisher and ran into the smoke; I ran after him as the bus careened across lanes of traffic, Billy trying to pull off the road and yelling, “Don’t go back there! Don’t go back there!” I found Ryder in the back and pushed him into the kitchen, then I grabbed Wyatt and put him on my lap. We fell onto the couch next to Martin and Kim and that’s when everything slowed down.

The smoke billowed, Bernie appeared through it, people were yelling, Billy worked to keep the bus on a twisting mountain road without power steering or brakes…and all I really saw was music going away. Up in smoke, as it were. The last piece of the mother/musician conundrum falling out of play.

We lived, of course. But the impression of life being in slow motion persisted through what came to be three days of being stranded in Idaho without cell service or hotels. I don’t remember much about this time. I remember Billy somehow finding “s’mores” ingredients for the boys: from Super Billy to Super Dad. I remember making a fishing rod for Bodhi out of a stick and some dental floss. I remember cutting my hair in the dark, just to get it out of my face. I remember a band meeting where four exhausted, hungry and unwashed musicians all voted unequivocally to stay on the road and not fly home. “Anything to keep playing,” they all said, “we’ll do whatever it takes” and I had to leave the room because I’m not a girl and I don’t cry.

I remember the children packing their lives up as we left the bus, their only consistent home for the last 7 years -- and at the time -- their only home. Wyatt was in tears because he might never see it again. We all knew we probably couldn’t afford to fix it.

I remember waiting for Billy, Rob and Bernie to arrive with a truck and a van so that we might at least make Chicago and limp through the rest of the tour. The little boys blew dandelion seeds into the air while we waited. I sat in the grass and watched them through a haze of grief, knowing that since touring costs money and recording costs money, I could no longer work. I wondered if there was such a thing as life after music, wondered if I could live such a life, wondered if children ever forgave mothers who couldn’t live life. I was pretty low.

Bodhi approached with a dandelion and blew the seeds into my face gravely. “What’d you wish for?” I asked him.

“To live all the way to the very last day of my whole life.”

No, then. Mothers aren’t allowed to go anywhere. I’ll have to work it out somehow. Christ, the things they say sometimes.

And we do work it out. For the time being, anyway. Bernie and Rob drive the equipment truck while the three boys and Martin and Kim and the three dogs all ride in the back of a mini van. Billy and I ride up front like the Mom and Dad we’re supposed to be and pretend to yell at our passengers, slapping blindly into the back seat and threatening to “turn this van around and take everybody back to Idaho”.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!” they all scream. Martin and Kim get very good at passing snacks, books and Kleenex into the back seat and then books, garbage and used Kleenex into the front. We discuss the idea that God has it in for us, a long-held theory of my brother’s. “Look at the facts!” he has said, “Everywhere you guys go there’s a natural disaster. In fact, all you have to do is think about going somewhere and awful things happen there. Do me a favor and don’t ever move to my neighborhood.”

He has a point. We have suffered damage of biblical proportions in the last several years. Earthquakes, floods, conflagrations and tidal waves seem to track our movements across the globe. “Maybe the universe is trying to tell us something,” Billy suggests.

“It wants me to quit? Why?”

“Who knows? Maybe you have more important things to do.”

“Like what?” I ask. “I can’t do anything but music.”

“That might actually be true.”

The Minneapolis show is canceled, but we make Chicago in time for soundcheck. A friendly restaurant owner in town has read about our plight at the website and brings a beautiful Italian dinner for our entire touring party to the Lakeshore Theater. During the set, my children dance around the dressing room singing, “Polenta! Polenta! Ya-ay, polenta!”

Most of the audience seems to be aware of our recent struggles, as they line up to buy five or six CD’s at a time after the set. “I already have this, but, you know…Christmas is coming,” says a woman in a red blouse. As I sign four copies of Learn to Sing for her, I remind her that it’s May. She smiles. “Well, Christmas is coming eventually,” she says.

By the time we reach Indianapolis, I’ve learned that the amount of money in the tip jar at throwingmusic.com has increased along with our bad luck. “The tip jar is overflowing!” says Tine, our webmistress, “and more is coming in as we speak. I’m watching it grow before my eyes!”

I have wildly mixed feelings about this. I am amazed and grateful, of course, but also heartsick. I’d feel okay taking some sugar daddy’s money, some record company or wealthy patron or…well anything but money from these people who’ve already given so much of their time and support over the years. But because of this swollen tip jar, it looks like the tour will break even: the bus will be fixed, the musicians paid, their flights home bought. Absolutely incredible. I'm proud that this “tribe” that music created solved the problem for itself, without the help of Corporate America – or anyone else.

At The Ark in Ann Arbor, a man holds up his copy of Sunny Border Blue and tells me, “If you ever stopped, I think I would, too.”

After the show at the Crystal Ballroom in Cleveland, a woman hands me a wide, flat cardboard box. I am so hungry, I think she’s given me a sheet cake. “Is that a cake?” I ask her.

“Did you want a cake?”

“Well…is it one?”

“No, it’s a picture, but I could get you a cake…”

“No, I don’t need a cake-”

Then Kim hops up onto the stage. “Yum! Cake!” she says.

The woman looks sad, “No, it’s just a picture…”

Billy leans in to pack up my stomp boxes, “Wow! Is that a cake?” he asks, grinning.

Now the woman looks distraught. “I’m sorry…” she says.

In Pittsburgh, Vicky and Slim Cessna smuggle their children into the venue to watch the set from the back of the room. During the show, Slim, a man of very few words, leans over to Billy and says, “I know it’s been hard lately, but this is important.”

We meet Orrin at Hi-n-Dry in Cambridge to shoot a DVD of the last night of the tour. This place was the late Mark Sandman of Morphine’s loft, back in the day. Now it’s a full service studio/performance space and it’s beautiful. With its funky oriental rugs and easy hominess, it so reminds us of Kingsway Studio in New Orleans that it’s eerie. There are even Boston versions of our New Orleans friends there. So strange, yet so comfortable. “Welcome home,” someone says to me when I walk in.

I am, at this point, physically and emotionally spent by the tour, yet terrified by the idea that in the morning it will all be over. Five months is not a terribly long time, but we sure packed in a lot since January. Goofiness and trauma, gourmet dinners and starvation, sleet and sun, boats and buses, mountains and deserts, days spent asleep, nights spent awake…Jesus, we’re like a bad movie.

The thing is, there was always playing. Every day had a point and that point was songs. Whatever happens next, I’ve been so blessed.

--

Painting: "Stranded - In Beautiful Mountains" by Victoria Cessna

Tour Diary — part 9 — U.S.

2007-07-25T11:43:00.000-04:00

Best signage on the way to LA: Space Is Limited

Orrin shows up at the El Rey theater with a new joke template. It is addictive. It gets stuck in your head like a melody ‘til you can’t think about anything without trying to fit it into the template. It goes something like this:

“I used to work in (blank), but I was (blank), so they (blanked) me.”

For example: “I used to work in ceramics, but I was always getting baked, so they fired me.” Or: “I used to work in lingerie, but I was barely there, so they gave me the pink slip.” Or Wyatt’s: “I used to be an ice cream man’s apprentice, but I was tired of playing second banana, so I split.”

This goes on all afternoon.

During the McCarricks’ set, Jonathan and Dav Dolorean and I get stuck backstage, unable to get to the dressing rooms (to the beer) without crossing the stage. We play out various scenarios in which we are able to sneak past the musicians and the projector and the screen and the equipment, while remaining invisible to the audience, but Jonathan is jumpy, having just the night before, leapt onto the stage during Martin and Kim’s set and spilled Jack Daniels all over the cello.

At one point, he hisses, “Cover me!” and crawls on stage between the screen and the projector, shimmying past amps and drums, only to come back dejected a minute later. “It’s no use,” he pants, “the projector is blocking the stairs to both dressing rooms.” This information sobers us in more ways than one. Dav escapes to the bar, but I’m afraid of being talked to out there and Jonathan is too nice to leave me alone.

So we sit. And hum the word “beer”. He tells me that his girlfriend is Kaitlyn from the High Violets, not only a superior Portland person and great musician, but one of the best ladies ever. This makes me so happy, I give him a big hug. A good couple makes a great person.

Tonight’s show is intense. We play hard, like 50FootWave covering KH material. I guess we’re nervous; this is a hometown show for us (one of our hometowns, anyway). Afterward, we load out with the El Rey staff who are so lovey-dovey that we get hugs at the end of the night. Honestly, New York and LA are the warmest, fuzziest cities.

The next day, Billy gets prickly as we enter Monterey. “This is a good place,” he says. “I can feel it.”

It is extraordinarily beautiful. Mountain air, misty beaches and Dr. Suess trees. We park on a lovely little side street around the corner from the club. The Family Bus is so tacky next to these quaint homes, though, that it looks seriously incongruous—embarrassed, even. Poor old dumpy bus in fancy-ass Monterey. It’s like taking your children to a rich kid’s birthday party.

After the show, the bus refuses to start. It won’t leave Monterey. It won’t even go back to the club for the equipment, so we have to leave our stuff there overnight (so embarrassing). Billy actually dons grease monkey coveralls (Bernie: “You look pretty cute in those”) and works into the night. After standing around and handing him tools helpfully, we begin to fade and hand him tools lamely, then I send the band to a hotel in a cab and watch Billy work in the cold (he does look cute in the coveralls). Then Ryder takes over and the little kids and I crash on the couch.

With the help of our LA friend Colin on the cell phone (he speaks engine and doesn’t go to bed ‘til 3 in the morning), Billy convinces the bus to cooperate and it begins coughing back to life. When it sounds almost normal, we sneak out of town, drive to the nicest RV park in the world and wake up to sunshine and horny toads.

Santa Cruz...hippies, hippies and more hippies....sigh. But hippies don't come to the show. Hippies don't like me.

We play food frisbee backstage until people start showing up, then we sneak out with dip on our clothes. The Attic is a great club; 50FootWave played here when it first opened. It's a nice, grown up room, but it doesn't feel cold.

After the show, Bernie gets stuck in the elevator with a bunch of gear. It's not between floors or anything, it just won't open, so we stare at him through the window and he stares back. Eventually, we pry the door open, but he refuses to get back in, so Martin gets in with the next load. Then he gets stuck. We pry the door open again and I take the cello from him but let the door go. It locks and the elevator goes away with Martin on it. He smashes his face against the window as he disappears.

Mothers Day in San Francisco. I am treated like royalty. We're invited to a friend's ranch in Carmel for brunch; the boys are on their best behavior. Doony, the boy who isn't here, calls during soundcheck. I'm sitting on the stage at the Great American Music Hall, taking a screwdriver to my guitar, when B carries my cell phone over, "It's the big baby," he says.

I grab the phone. "Doony?"

"Happy Mothers Day. I was gonna send you flowers, but then I didn't."

"Flowers are boring."

"That's why I didn't."

Such a good boy.

Jim Brunberg of Mississippi Studios fame, records the Portland show, at the Aladdin Theater. He hovers behind us with his headphones on all night; whenever I turn around, I get a big thumbs-up from Super Jim. This is such a nice boost, I consider taking him on the road as a permanent member of the bus family.

Portland loved ones fill the dressing room, bring us Thai food and road coffee, Virtuous news, baby pictures, music, homemade cookies...then we gotta say goodbye again. Seems like we're always saying goodbye. Ryder and his girlfriend get one evening together before we take off for who knows how long; many tears on the family bus tonight.

We are all itching to play when we get to Seattle. After soundcheck, Bernie and Rob and I are still itchy, so we do a handful of 50Foot songs, but it isn't enough. Dolorean feels the same way.

We have to say goodbye to them tonight; this is their last show of the tour. They have turned out to be brilliant, special, hilarious and kind; I haven't had this much fun on a tour in a long time. All four Doloreans hang out on the bus before the show to pass around a bottle of champagne and be happy and sad with us. They talk about the day jobs they’re going back to and they have gifts for my children: beautiful books, thoughtfully chosen with each child's interests in mind. We’re going to miss them.

I put another bottle of champagne on the stage during their set and this proves to be Al's undoing. As our champagne buzz wears off, he stays happy and sad, then gets very happy and very sad (and very unsteady) and ends the night passed out in the dressing room on my little pink sweater. I try to pull it out from under him without waking him up (Barton: "I don't think waking him up is what you should be worried about"), but then I feel bad and give up. He looks like a little drunk angel.

Al does wake up during load out--he sways down the ramp and pukes behind a dumpster, comes out triumphant, with his fists in the air. People cheer and blow kisses but nobody wants to touch him.

Everybody’s laughing; even Al’s laughing, but I just can’t. We all do our own version of dumpster puking when music stops. I walk back to the dressing room to retrieve my sweater.

Tour Diary - part 8 - U.S.

2007-07-14T14:44:00.000-04:00

On the way to Austin, we get the band rooms in a Day’s Inn on the highway and park the bus in the empty lot behind it. That night we are all too tired to notice much about the place other than the fact that they have two empty rooms and they’ll give them to us for less than $50. In the morning, though, I look out the bus window and see that the swimming pool is full of mud, the parking lot is full of garbage and our bus is surrounded by the rotting carcasses of former vehicles. Pieces of dead cars, trucks and buses are stacked all around us; the effect is creepy. “What’s the matter?” Billy calls from the back bedroom, seeing me peering out the window suspiciously.

“This place looks stab-stab.” A stab-stab motel is one you’ll probably die in. We’ve stayed in lots of them, but we like to think we’ve outgrown them.

“Is there a body floating in the pool?” he asks.

“No.”

“Then it’s just shitty.”

“There could be a body in the pool; I just don’t think anything would float in there.”

Billy sighs. “Why don’t you go out and look for snakes?”

I do this because it does look like good snake hunting and, it being the south, I have high hopes for pretty ones, but all I see are some robins poking around in the dirt and my dogs scare those away. I wander back to the bus to make coffee and see Martin and Kim walking out of the hotel carrying pillows. They are both walking crooked, their heads tilted to one side.

“We have stiff necks,” Martin declares, stepping onto the bus and tossing a pillow on the couch. “We didn’t sleep. Good night.” He lies down and folds his arms across his chest. Kim does the same on the opposite couch.

“You want some coffee?” I ask, but neither one answers. Then Bernie and Rob appear, armed with cell phone pictures of their room. “Evidence,” Rob calls it. There is a shot of crumbling plaster, half a bathtub (“Where’s the other half?” “We don’t know!”) and best of all -- the bloodstained carpet. “Ew!” I squeal appreciatively.

“Yeah!” says Rob, “That was cool.”

Bernie looks angry. “I couldn’t sleep, there were so many bugs walking around.”

“You can’t hear bugs walking.”

“I can.”

Billy takes the evidence to Roy and Dale at the front desk and tells them he was “disappointed” because, as a business traveler, half a bathtub isn’t what he’s come to expect from Day’s Inn. This approach never fails. Roy and Dale begin writhing in professional hara-kiri. They will do anything to make good on this deal, but all Billy asks is that they not disappoint him again. Oh and also comp him the rooms. His will is done (as usual) and he somehow makes friends in the process (as usual). Martin and Kim wake up just long enough to cheer as we pull out of the parking lot.

We meet up with Dolorean again in Austin where a beautiful, beautiful rain is dumping. Hippie chicks dance in the fountain outside the Cactus Café, but the rest of us just stand under the eaves and watch. Then the club bartendress makes me my first Texas margarita in a year. I decide I never want to leave Austin.

The stage is picturesque: small and well-lit. The Dolorean guys look great, like they’re shooting a video. Of course, my band barely fits on the stage. Bernie isn’t even technically on the stage. Before the first song, I lean over to ask Martin how he’s doing. The McCarricks are squished into the corner, Martin’s cello shoved up under his chin. “I feel like a peanut,” says Martin.

“What the hell does that mean?” I ask Kim. She shrugs and smiles, her violin crushed against her chest, her tiny feet jammed under my amp.

Best signage on the way to Albuquerque: "Jesus Is Gay".

Neil, the Albuquerque promoter, just bought a house and inherited an apiary with it. This interests me -- I’ve wanted to be a Bee Guy ever since our New Orleans Bee Guy showed up to deliver honey and bee pollen in the full suit (the mask was under his arm, but he modeled it for me), so I pummel poor Neil with questions about bee care. He is somewhat taken aback though, and doesn’t seem to really know anything about bees. “The guy I bought my house from just left them behind the garage and they won’t leave. I was scared to go back there, ‘cause, well, it’s full of bees.”

“You’re not a Bee Guy?” I ask, disappointed.

“Well, I am now…I’ve got bees.”

“But you got honey from ‘em, right? Did you buy a bee suit?”

“No, I just wore long sleeves. They got really mad and stung me. I’m gonna have to get a hockey mask or something.”

“Wow. They stung your face?”

“Oh yeah. They’re not pet bees, they’re just regular bees.”

Then he thrusts 3 honey bears into my hands to take back to the kids. Bernie walks up as he’s doing this. “Look at this!” I say, showing Bernie the bears. “Neil’s a Bee Guy!” Bernie spins on his heels and leaves the room. He had a bad experience with bee pollen once in New Orleans. In fact, I almost killed him by giving him a few grains as he was heading out for a run. I was living on the stuff and loving it, but it made Bernie’s head blow up. So he keeps his distance from Neil for the rest of the night, waving politely from across the room, and retreating when approached. Nothing scares Bernie more than bee pollen.

There is a dusting of snow on the way to Phoenix. This whole tour’s been hot, so we all get out of the bus and run around with the dogs and kids by the side of the highway, taking pictures of snow on cactus. I used to love waking up to snow in Pioneertown -- silver rock piles and frozen cactus flowers. This is similar, but flatter. Scrub desert. The dogs run and run, we run and run. We play for so long that we’re all frozen by the time we get back on the bus.

The show tonight is at Modified, an art space rather than a club. It feels clean and civilized. The promoter is a woman named Kimber who teaches a music business class to young adults. In this class, she plays hit songs from the 60’s and 70’s and shows the students pictures of the artists who performed them. She then plays music from this year’s Billboard Top 40 charts and shows the class pictures of the people who made that music. Apparently, it’s obvious to even the most brain washed junior high schooler that what is being marketed today in the music business is bimbo bodies, not music.

I tend to think this has always been true, but the music they sell these days *is* decidedly awful, the bimbo bodies awfully offensive. It’s about time somebody thought to point this out to the people who are being marketed to. By the time we leave Phoenix, Kimber is our new hero.

Tucson! I love Tucson. Our beloved Howe Gelb is away on tour, but his family takes us in. We park our fat-ass bus outside their house and play and eat and drink amazing coffee for 2 days. It feels like the old Kingsway studio in New Orleans, only here it cools off at night. Sophie Gelb even supplies my children and me with hand-me-downs. She knows it’s been a tough year for our family, but there’s no pity in the offering, only kindness.

It’s hard to leave for San Diego after all this coffee and love. We promise to come back again when Howe’s around, then we check out the Tucson night sky one last time and take off. Bodhi waves goodbye to his friend Tallulah out the bus window, then turns to me and asks, "Why do we live on a bus that always drives away?"

Tour Diary - part 7 - U.S.

2007-07-07T15:41:00.000-04:00

Week Two - In Philly -- is saying "Philly" as lame as saying "'Frisco"? -- in Phillydelphia, we play World Café Live, a European style multi-purpose facility that includes a radio station, 2 venues and a restaurant. After sound check, I take Bernie and Rob to the radio station to show them the lovely studio space where I recorded an interview and session earlier this year.

They study a "collage de rock" on the wall at the entrance which includes a picture of me looking particularly goofy. "Not goofy, just friendly," says Rob.

"Friendly and goofy," says Bernie helpfully.

I take a cell phone picture of the two of them, secretly hoping it turns out goofy. It doesn't. It turns out dark. They do look friendly, though.

For some reason there's a huge barrel of ice water in the dressing room. We challenge each other to submerge various body parts in the ice water for as long as possible. Some Doloreans play, too, as their dressing room only holds two people at a time and they were bored anyway. Billy and Bernie win (they win everything) in a dramatic test of endurance, the rest of us hooting, cheering and writhing. Their skin turns upsettingly wacky colors afterwards.

We then play another show without the McCarricks, wondering how it sounds. People claim not to miss them, but, really, what are they gonna say? Sure wish you guys sounded better? Rob thinks we sound like an adorable indie band. I agree. The music sounds smaller and sweeter, maybe even more stylized, but without the string parts, the songs lack drama.

Success! The McCarricks get the call they were waiting for -- from the USA of America! Fuckin' A! -- and race to the airport. They will actually make the New York show.

The next morning, we pick Martin and Kim up at an airport hotel in our Family Bus. They've never seen the Family Bus before, even though they're in the Bus Family. They ooh and aah over our luscious faux maple paneling, stained carpets and torn seat covers. "It's a comfortable bus," they decide.

Martin is carefully led around all the parts of the Family Bus that might fall on him or break if he breaks them. Kim says over and over again, "Just let me do that for you, Martin."

It rains during load-in at the Bowery Ballroom and my wet hands and face lead to a couple of pretty bad shocks during sound check. At one point, I'm thrown back from the mic and -- I'm pretty sure -- my lips fly across the stage. It felt like that happened, anyway. I'm the only person who laughs. The sound man (the same sweetheart guy who did the 50Foot/Muses show here last year) looks ill. "Did you want a towel?" he asks.

The show feels great. No better audience than a jam packed and hungry New York one. People sing along with the new songs! And Martin plays that goddamn cello like a rock star…so nice to have the strings back.

Our D.C. play is Iota in Arlington, VA. They have amazing food there; Bernie and I begin rhapsodizing over the grilled salmon salad long before we pull into town. By the time we get there, we're starved. Unfortunately, they do still have amazing food, but only for real people. Now, one of the menu items is "Band Pasta", which means if you're in the band, they order for you and it's pasta. This happens a lot. I never really understood why clubs had to feed musicians in the first place, but Band Pasta always makes me sad anyway.

Bernie walks out for something better and I go on a protein hunt for the kids, looking for a Vietnamese place where Ian McKaye took Vic Chesnutt and me once but I can't find it. So I end up at Whole Foods, which I can't afford, but I figure it'll keep the kids from getting sick, which I also can't afford, and sick hurts them.

Rob gets Band Pasta. "What's wrong with it?" he asks, his fork in the air.

On the way to Chapel Hill, we put the band up in a (bizarre) hotel while my family sleeps on the bus, outside. The hotel looks like it was planned as a vacation getaway but then no one showed up. There are party patios and miniature golf courses and barbecue pits, theme rooms and tiki bars and jungle gyms. But it all looks empty and post-apocalyptic in the morning drizzle.

I do an interview on my cell phone for the Tucson show while the kids watch cops get driving lessons in Starsky and Hutch tactics. This is so wonderful to watch. The cop cars race through a huge, empty parking lot, screech their tires, skid across the wet pavement and spin around and around, then do it again. My children cheer. So do I. I keep interrupting the journalist to yell, "Yes!" and "Holy shit!".

The best is when the cop loses his or her nerve, though, and just stops and sits while the driving instructor watches from afar. Sad cops.

The morning of the Chapel Hill show, Bodhi gets his first ever earache. My kids don't get sick very often, so I don't have the purse full of painkillers, fever reducers and kleenex I've seen so many other mothers carry. To be honest, I don't even have a purse. And I'm not good in a crisis -- not when the crisis concerns one of the kids. If they cry, I usually cry, too. This time, I panic.

So does Billy. We put Ryder in charge of the two little boys and Billy races off in one direction, looking for a drug store, while I race off in another. We run and run in the North Carolina heat.

When I finally find a drug store, I am at a loss as to which pills to buy. I don't want to put any pills in perfect Bodhi, but then I remember him holding his ear and crying and begin to read labels. I don't like the idea of reducing a fever; I think fevers play an important role in healing, but I can't find a pain killer that isn't also a fever reducer. And they all have saccharin in them, and dyes…I grab a fistful of brightly-colored, brightly-flavored candy drugs and hope Billy found something herbal.

Then I race past Bernie on the sidewalk, holding up the pill boxes in triumph. He cheers. Billy is already back at the bus with his boxes of candy drugs when I get there. Bodhi is pain free, happily chatting and laughing with his brothers. "Wow, that's amazing," I say. "What did you give him?"

"Nothing," Billy says.

I get my first mosquito bite of the year in Atlanta. By a dumpster behind the club. It's an ankle bite and it gets angry, red and swollen and looks very pretty. I think I was blabbing about being oh so southern and the evocative thickness in the air and the heartache of spanish moss, etc…In other words, I deserved it. I decide to embrace it anyway. Mosquito bites are a part of summer, it's practically summer now and I am oh so southern.

"Hey, Gomer, " Billy yells, "quit scratching and git yer ass on stage!"

During sound check, Barton, who is also from the south, tells me about the first time he ever swore in front of his mother. She told him that he wasn't allowed to use grown up words, but that he was free to make up his own swears and use them freely. This just kills me. I laugh forever. "Razzmafrazz!" he says, grinning.

The show is hot and loud tonight, the audience is hot and loud, too. At the end of the night though, as we drive away, headed for Louisiana, we are hot and quiet. We listen to crickets, we watch the moon and the spanish moss go by, everyone but Billy falls asleep.

Tour Diary - part 6 - U.S.

2007-06-23T21:49:00.000-04:00

Week One - The McCarricks are still in London, waiting by the phone for permission to enter our fabulous country. Apparently, they haven't impressed Bush quite enough to be allowed in. They were told to present U.S. immigration officials with press clippings and gold records in order to validate their status as musicians, but it isn't working.

Maybe they're terrorists.

So the tour begins without them. And it's a good thing, too, 'cause they wouldn't have fit on the first stage. This show is what our agent, Mike, refers to (euphemistically) as a "warm-up gig", meaning, it will suck and no one will come.

Poor Delorean! They drive their asses all the way to New Haven from Portland, Oregon and the stage is too small to hold their equipment. They probably wanted to do this tour, too. They probably said "yes" when they were asked.

All that's missing tonight is chicken wire for the audience to throw beer bottles at. I was standing in the club, looking at the stage and thinking this when Delorean's guitar player, Barton, walked by and said that very thing, much to my delight. "Whaddya call this place?", he muttered, "A honkey-tonk? In Connecticut?" It didn't suck though -- and people did come and didn't throw beer bottles.

Our Providence show is actually in Fall River, Massachusetts, at a place called the Narrows Center. The club is a beautiful loft in an old factory building, so gear must be loaded in on a freight elevator. This all goes smoothly, but then Billy gets locked out of the room and bangs on a door a few feet away from where I'm reading a book I might have stolen (Bernie claims I stole it, I disagree). It's an engaging book, so I don't really notice the banging, though it goes on for a long time. Then he starts yelling (or so he says -- I was reading).

Eventually, someone lets him in. I look up, smiling, "Oh, it's you".

"Ladies and gentlemen -- my wife!" he announces to the room and then to me, "It'd be nice if you weren't completely oblivious."

A bunch of hometown friends show up that night, including Rizzo and Dave Narcizo. Rob moans, "I gotta play Dave's parts".

"But you always play Dave's parts," I say.

"Not in front of Dave!" Of course, he plays Dave's parts like only Rob can. Hard and clear, with muscle and flourish. Dave is thrilled. "I didn't know I was that good!" he says. Drummers.

I do an insane tap dance throughout the show, trying to stomp on all kinds of effects pedals at once. I'm frustrated with my American equipment and miss the rentals I'd gotten used to on the European leg, but in trying to get more out of these stomp boxes, I end up looking like a total spaz.

The next night in Northampton, I find the distortion pedal of my dreams in the music store next door to the club. I love Electro-Harmonix pedals anyway, but this pedal I found combines a beautiful humming tube sound with that funny fucked-up-ness that Electro-Harmonix is so good at. Plus, it looks beautiful -- chunky and metallic -- I wanna wear it -- or drive it.

Our beloved friend/musician/super hero, Skeggy, lives in Northampton and offers us a place to stay. "I live in the old mill house," he says, "ye old-ey mill-ey hous-ey. There are plenty of couches, plus french fries, vinyl, fishing and I'll make breakfast."

We're sold on "plenty of couches" but an hour after the show, in the middle of the night, there are indeed french fries, made by Skeggy's wife, Connie, the very definition of a perfect woman: one who will make you and your drunk friends french fries at 2 in the morning. Rob plays jazz piano for -- and with -- whomever is around. And after a vinyl listening party at 3 there's a little bit of sleep.

By the time I'm up and walking the dogs, Skeggy is making breakfast. "You can't spell Skeggs without eggs!" he cries gleefully, already on his second gin and tonic.

After an extended morning jam session in the living room (3 hours long, with rotating members) during which Skeggy teaches my children to fish in his river, we reluctantly pile back onto the bus and declare this the high point of the tour, all of us quietly concerned that this might actually turn out to be true.

Saturday night is the Regent theater in Boston. Good ol' Boston. Everyone's so...Boston there. I take my dogs for a walk to try and drum up some memories, but no specific ones come to mind. Just a montage of crooked streets, dirty snow, hot shows and kamikaze drivers. The kamikaze drivers are still there, actually. I risk my life trying to get back in time for sound check.

That night we have dinner at a Thai place with Echo and his sister, the motorcycle saleswoman (she can identify the make and model of a motorcycle by sound alone). Echo tries to pay. He always tries to pay. He bought us kangaroo meat in Iceland once. We don't let him buy dinner anymore.

Then we drive to the Jersey shore and sleep Sunday morning away in an empty beach house that has been graciously offered us. When we wake up, we plan a barbecue for our night off. We take this barbecue very seriously, writing shopping lists and buying ingredients...chopping, marinating, grilling, drinking.

Afterwards, we're pretty proud of ourselves, though we decide that it's only a good barbecue, not a great one. "Next one'll be great," we agree.

Of course there is no next one. In the morning, we're on the bus for good.