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Kristin Hersh (born August 7, 1966) is a prolific American singer/songwriter who performs solo acoustic concerts; she also has performed as lead singer and guitarist for alternative rock group Throwing Muses and currently leads the hardcore punk-influenced power trio 50 Foot Wave. Her best-known songs are "Your Ghost" and "Bright Yellow Gun", which received national commercial airplay in the mid-1990s. Download high resolution version (1536x2048, 519 KB)Kristin Hersh at the Tractor Tavern February 27, 2004. ...
This article is about the state capital of Georgia. ...
A music genre is a category (or genre) of pieces of music that share a certain style or basic musical language (van der Merwe 1989, p. ...
Folk music, in the original sense of the term, is music by and for the common people. ...
Alternative rock (also called alternative music[1] or simply alternative) is a genre of rock music that emerged in the 1980s and became widely popular in the 1990s. ...
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August 7 is the 219th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (220th in leap years), with 146 days remaining. ...
1966 (MCMLXVI) was a common year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1966 calendar). ...
Alternative rock (also called alternative music[1] or simply alternative) is a genre of rock music that emerged in the 1980s and became widely popular in the 1990s. ...
An early band formation (left to right): Narcizo, Hersh, Donelly, and Langston. ...
Hardcore punk is a subgenre of punk rock which originated in the United States of America in the late 1970s. ...
The power trio is a rock and roll band format popularized in the 1960s (see 1960s in music). ...
50 Foot Wave: Ahlers, Georges, Hersh Photo: Steve Gullick 50 Foot Wave is an American alternative rock band, formed in 2003. ...
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Hersh's music is known for its creative chord chemistry, hypnotic sonic treatments, and a vocal style ranging from softly melodic singing to impassioned screaming. Some of her signature contributions to popular music include addressing the complexities of life through impressionistic, sometimes hallucinatory lyrics about everyday feelings and varying mental states. A few of her numerous songwriting subjects have included childbirth ("Hysterical Bending"), love ("Tar Kissers", "Lavender"), surreal vignettes ("Delicate Cutters", "Fish"), death ("Limbo"), emotional anguish ("The Letter"), loss of custody of her first son ("Candyland"), and the shedding of a relationship's angst or anxiety ("Snake Oil"). See also Impressionist (entertainment): A girl with a watering can by Renoir, 1876 Impressionism was a 19th century art movement, which began as a private association of Paris-based artists who exhibited publicly in 1874. ...
A hallucination is a sensory perception experienced in the absence of an external stimulus, as distinct from an illusion, which is a misperception of an external stimulus. ...
Indefinite Divisibility 1942 Surrealism[1] is a movement stating that the liberation of our mind, and subsequently the liberation of the individual self and society, can be achieved by exercising the imaginative faculties of the unconscious mind to the attainment of a dream-like state different from, or ultimately ‘truer...
Hersh has used images such as apples, water, diamonds, eyes, the sea, snow, ice, rain, fire, the sun, sand, and cowboys. On occasion she has used historical figures like anorexic suicide Ellen West as metaphors in depicting a state of mind. Eccentric characters encountered in her family's travels have made occasional appearances in songs such as "Ruthie's Knocking"; a 2005 live solo set list included a then-untitled song about a "parrot lady" character she happened upon while visiting Lake Michigan. For the symphonic black metal band, see Anorexia Nervosa (band) Anorexia nervosa is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes an eating disorder characterized by low body weight and body image distortion. ...
Suicide (from Latin sui caedere, to kill oneself) is the act of willfully ending ones own life. ...
Lake Michigan is one of the five Great Lakes of North America, and the only one in the group located entirely within the United States. ...
In the past, Hersh has listed among her early musical influences The Raincoats, Talking Heads, Violent Femmes, Meat Puppets, Dead Kennedys, Hüsker Dü, Velvet Underground, R.E.M., and X. She has said her parents' albums by Patti Smith, the Carter Family, Stevie Wonder, Robert Johnson, Talking Heads, The Clash, Steve Miller, Mary Margaret O'Hara[1], The Beatles, Philip Glass, and traditional music influenced her when she was growing up. The Raincoats were formed in 1977 by Ana da Silva (vocals, guitar) and Gina Birch (vocals, bass) while they were students at Hornsey College of Art, London, England. ...
Talking Heads was an American rock band existing between 1974 and 1991, composed of David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth, and Jerry Harrison. ...
This article is about the band. ...
The Meat Puppets are an American rock band formed in January 1980, in Paradise Valley, Arizona. ...
The Dead Kennedys (often known by their initials DK, as in decay) are a hardcore punk band from San Francisco, California. ...
Hüsker Dü was an influential rock music group from Minneapolis-St. ...
The Velvet Underground and Nico (from left to right: John Cale, Nico, Lou Reed, Sterling Morrison, and Maureen Tucker) The Velvet Underground (Affectionately known as The Velvets, or V.U. for short) was an American rock and roll band of the late 1960s. ...
R.E.M. is an American rock band formed in Athens, Georgia, in early 1980 by drummer Bill Berry, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills, and vocalist Michael Stipe. ...
X on the cover of their 1997 collection Beyond and Back: The X Anthology. ...
Patricia Lee (Patti) Smith (born December 30, 1946) is an American musician, singer, and poet. ...
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Stevie Wonder (born Stevland Hardaway Judkins on May 13, 1950, named later changed to Stevland Hardaway Morris), [1] is an African American singer, songwriter, record producer, musician, and social activist. ...
Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938) is among the most famous Delta Blues musicians and arguably the most influential. ...
Talking Heads was an American rock band existing between 1974 and 1991, composed of David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth, and Jerry Harrison. ...
The Clash were an English rock band active from 1976 to 1986. ...
Steve Miller (born October 5, 1943 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin) is an American blues and rock and roll guitarist and performer. ...
Mary Margaret OHara is a Canadian singer-songwriter, who has been hailed as one of the greatest cult heroines in rock music despite having released very few of her own recordings. ...
The Beatles were a highly influential English rock n roll band from Liverpool, Merseyside. ...
Philip Glass (born January 31, 1937) is an American composer. ...
Traditional Music is a quasi-synonym for folk music. ...
Hersh, who has four sons (Dylan, Ryder, Wyatt, and Bodhi), is married to one of her managers, Billy O'Connell. Her eldest son, Dylan Going, is a Providence, Rhode Island based musician with several current projects, including Happy Birthday L.A. and Going/Public, among others. Her father, W. James Hersh, is a philosophy professor at Salve Regina University specializing in the philosophy of the imagination and political philosophy.
Background and musical beginnings Born in Atlanta, she was raised in Newport, Rhode Island. Learning guitar at age nine from her father led her to start writing songs soon after. As a teenager, she formed Throwing Muses in the early 1980s with stepsister Tanya Donelly and other high school friends. This article is about the state capital of Georgia. ...
Newport as seen from the International Space Station. ...
Tanya Donelly, 2004 Photo: Reuben Cox Tanya Donelly (born July 14, 1966, in Newport, Rhode Island) is an American singer songwriter and guitarist based in New England who co-founded Throwing Muses with her stepsister Kristin Hersh. ...
Hersh began singing and writing most of Throwing Muses' songs in changing tempos, with Donelly also singing and writing some of the songs. The group was signed by the British 4AD Records label after a few years, and also were signed to Sire/Reprise Records by the second album. They began touring around the U.S. and Europe while recording critically-acclaimed rock albums, with Hersh writing most of the songs. The British indie rock record label 4AD Records was started in 1979 by Ivo Watts-Russell and Peter Kent, funded by Beggars Banquet Records. ...
Sire Records Company is an American record label, owned by Warner Music Group and distributed through Warner Bros. ...
Reprise Records is an American record label, owned by Warner Music Group, operated through Warner Bros. ...
World map showing Europe A satellite composite image of Europe Europe is one of the seven traditional continents of the Earth. ...
Some interviews have described Hersh's early drive to perform as due to hearing sounds in her mind so that her songs began to "write themselves", becoming at times their own separate presences in her life, inner voices haunting her. She has stated that hearing these "pieces of songs" clanging together in her mind compelled her to take the pieces apart and craft songs from them. "If I don't turn ideas into songs", she has said, "they can get stuck in me and make me sick".
"That's the way a song is," she said in a 1995 interview with AOL's Critics' Choice electronic music magazine. "That's the way a song hits you right here, right here [she motions to the heart and gut] instead of in your brain because the words themselves are all real sweaty, color, action words, so they just go bangbangbang. They're not supposed to make you think and try to figure out some puzzle. People think that I'm trying to trick them, that I have some thing I could write down and I haven't done it and I've just given them a bunch of poetry instead. I find it to be the clearest way to talk. It's like the way little kids talk because they have no filler words and no overriding thoughts to color your impression of what's happening in a song."
1990s: band and solo work; emerging reputation; songwriting approach Her Throwing Muses band project became a trio when Donelly left the group after 1991's The Real Ramona. In 1994, Hersh began an additional career on Sire/Reprise and 4AD as an acoustic solo performer, beginning with Hips and Makers, an album sparely arranged around her vocals, guitar, and a cellist, in contrast to the volatile, electric sound of her band work. Michael Stipe of R.E.M. made an appearance on this first solo album. Hips and Makers is the debut solo album by Kristin Hersh, best known as the primary singer and song-writer of the band Throwing Muses. ...
John Michael Stipe (born January 4, 1960 in Decatur, Georgia) is the lead singer of the American rock band R.E.M. Stipe has become well-known (and occasionally parodied) for the mumbling style of his early career and for his complex, surreal lyrics, as well as his social and...
R.E.M. is an American rock band formed in Athens, Georgia, in early 1980 by drummer Bill Berry, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills, and vocalist Michael Stipe. ...
Hersh's solo songwriting style focuses some of the relationship subject matter on her family. While Hersh's work reflects her personal experience, she has said that she writes from a point of view outside of her personality so that her lyrics are not literally autobiographical. Stating that "songwriting is about shutting up instead of talking", Hersh has said that songs that appeal to her are those that "say things that I don't know yet and tell stories I may not have lived yet", as opposed to diary entries expressing feelings. For music albums named Autobiography, see Greek eauton = self, bios = life and graphein = write) is a form of biography, the writing of a life story. ...
The New York Times pointed to Hersh's explorations of "rage, aggression and mental chaos" as evidence that there were at least a few female rock music artists by the early 1990s pushing against gender role boundaries to express "more than simply vulnerability or defiance" in their work. The New York Times is a newspaper published in New York City by Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. ...
A bagpiper in Scottish military clan-uniform. ...
Hersh, whose early publicity at times portrayed her as a tortured artist "channeling" her songs from her psyche, has mentioned that the "angry young woman" fascination of some writers in reviewing the work of female performers has at times led to cartoonish stereotypes, rather than three-dimensional portraits respecting their intelligence. By the mid-1990s, journalists acknowledged that the breadth of her "fierce, quirky, and imaginative" lyrical style included explorations of "emotional and physical love" combined with "elliptical puzzlement". The neutrality of this article is disputed. ...
This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...
After receiving some airplay and major media coverage for Throwing Muses University album in 1995, Hersh moved to Rykodisc for her 1996 Throwing Muses album, Limbo, and her 1998 solo album, Strange Angels. Manager O'Connell created the ThrowingMusic label in 1996 for co-releasing certain Hersh-related projects, eventually including an ongoing download subscription service called Works in Progress for releases available only through the label's ThrowingMusic website. Rykodisc Records is an American record label, and subsidiary of Warner Music Group. ...
Hersh is noted as a rock lyricist with an easy facility with words, even if she downplays their importance in a song. Playing with words as changeable, elastic things, as she often does, results in what writers have described as "elliptical" and "obscure" lyrics.
Sometimes her songs start out one way but end up differently as with "Hazing" in the album, "University," which begins ominously ["Strange time to be hazing me, breaking me . . . ."] but ends up romantically ["That's my cue, I'll spend another day dancing with you."]
Late 1990s: recording projects and songwriting inspirations Her parents' Lookout Mountain heritage influenced her to record a solo album of Appalachian gothic folk songs in 1998 — Murder, Misery and Then Goodnight. Performing traditional songs was a rare covers excursion for the prolific songwriter, although she was no stranger to these tunes, having heard some of them played by her father when she was a child. In fact on other solo releases, Hersh has cowritten with her father two songs, "Uncle June and Aunt Kiyoti" and "Houdini Blues", also recording a third that he wrote on his own, "Sinkhole". Lookout Mountain is a town located in Hamilton County, Tennessee. ...
The Appalachian Mountains are a system of North American mountains running from Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada to Alabama in the United States, although the northernmost mainland portion ends at the Gaspe Peninsula of Quebec. ...
Southern Gothic is a subgenre of the Gothic writing style, unique to American literature. ...
Folk music, in the original sense of the term, is music by and of the people. ...
Hersh and her family have moved every few years to live in a different locale. Her experiences in each location have sometimes influenced the emotional landscape of her songs. An example is how living for a period near Joshua Tree, California, impacted on some of the atmosphere and lyrical imagery of Sky Motel, a 1999 solo album on which she played most of the instruments. Time spent in the New Orleans area while recording Limbo in 1996 at Daniel Lanois's Kingsway Studio had similarly influenced songs like "Ruthie's Knocking", inspired by Ruthie the Duck Girl, an offbeat character well known to locals for her antics in the French Quarter. Joshua Tree is a census-designated place located in San Bernardino County, California. ...
New Orleans is the largest city in the state of Louisiana, United States of America. ...
Daniel Lanois (born September 19, 1951 in Hull, Québec) is a Canadian record producer and singer-songwriter. ...
French Quarter: upper Chartres street looking down towards Jackson Square and the spires of St. ...
Hersh has also said in an interview that she writes many of her songs as though "taking place in New Orleans or Rhode Island". She and her family additionally logged time in New Orleans when recording Throwing Muses' 1992 Firepile EPs, Throwing Muses' 1995 University album, and the Sky Motel solo album. University, Limbo, and Sky Motel were recorded by Grammy-winning engineer Trina Shoemaker, the latter album co-recorded by engineer Ethan Allen; Allen later worked on band tracks with Hersh in the 2000s. Hersh spent part of the 1990s in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, recording several solo albums and a few band tracks at Stable Sound studio with engineer Steve Rizzo. Grammy Award statuette The Grammy Awards, presented by the Recording Academy (an association of Americans professionally involved in the recorded music industry) for outstanding achievements in the recording industry, is one of four major music awards shows held annually in the United States (the Billboard Music Awards, the American Music...
Location of Portsmouth, Rhode Island Portsmouth is a town in Newport County, Rhode Island, United States. ...
In 1999, Hersh also participated in Throwing Muses drummer David Narcizo's Lakuna solo project album release, Castle of Crime. David Narcizo, born May 6, 1966, in Newport, Rhode Island, is primarily known for his work as the longtime drummer for Throwing Muses. ...
Lakuna was an electronic instrumental project begun by drummer David Narcizo after Throwing Muses first split up following their 1996 Limbo album. ...
The early 2000s: solo career, band reunions, and 50 Foot Wave In 2001, she released the Sunny Border Blue solo album, on which she again played nearly all instruments. She has described this album as having even more intensity than her previous works, as she continued her pursuit of songwriting as being in part a way to transform "ugly feelings" into art.
Hersh's recorded and live performances in recent years have occasionally included appearances with like-minded alternative artists like Vic Chesnutt, Willard Grant Conspiracy, Grant Lee Phillips, and John Doe. Vic Chesnutt (born 1964 in Jacksonville, Florida) is a singer-songwriter resident in Athens, Georgia. ...
Robert Fisher of Willard Grant Conspiracy Willard Grant Conspiracy are an alt country band currently based near Palmdale, California. ...
Grant-Lee Phillips (born September 1, 1963, Stockton, California) is an American singer-songwriter, previously a member of the band Grant Lee Buffalo. ...
John Doe, (born John Nommensen Duchac on February 25, 1954), is the founder of the seminal L.A. punk band X. His musical compositions and performances are varied, including country and folk music. ...
In 2003 she released The Grotto, an acoustic solo album of song sketches with personal lyrics set in Providence, Rhode Island, with Andrew Bird on violin and Howe Gelb on piano. On the same release date she also released a rhythmically complex, energetic self-titled album by her Throwing Muses group, the first release for the group since Limbo. Both were recorded at Rizzo's studio in Rhode Island. Nickname: Beehive of Industry, The Renaissance City Location in Rhode Island Coordinates: Country United States State Rhode Island County Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline (D) Area - City 20. ...
Andrew Bird Andrew Bird (born July 11, 1973) is an American musician, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. ...
Giant Sand, originally The Giant Sandworms, is an American rock band, based in Tucson, Arizona (although Los Angeles, California was its home for many years). ...
Also in 2003, she formed a power rock trio called 50 Foot Wave, when longtime Throwing Muses drummer David Narcizo was unable to tour on a full-time basis due to other commitments. Her touring appearances and recording efforts in 2004 and 2005 centered around both 50 Foot Wave and her solo career.
January 2007 will see Hersh release her first solo album in four years entitled Learn to Sing Like a Star.
Solo works discography - Live at Maxwell's — 1992 — (limited release, live solo bonus disc included only in the first UK edition printing run of Throwing Muses' Red Heaven release on 4AD label)
- Hips and Makers — 1994
- Your Ghost (EP) — 1994
- Strings (EP) — 1994
- The Holy Single (EP) — 1995
- Strange Angels — 1998
- Like You (EP) — 1998
- Murder, Misery and Then Goodnight — 1998
- Sky Motel — 1999
- Echo (EP) — 1999
- A Cleaner Light (EP) — 2000
- Sunny Border Blue — 2001
- Live at Noe Valley Ministry — 2001
- The Grotto — 2003
- Instant Live: Boston, MA 1/28/05 — 2005
- Learn to Sing Like a Star — 2007
Song samples
References - Aston, Martin (2003). "Kristin Hersh — Biography". Beggars Group website. Retrieved Dec. 2, 2004.
- Baehr, Mike (2004). "50 Foot Wave at the Tractor Tavern, Seattle WA, 2/27/04". Indie Rock Photo Gallery. Retrieved Dec. 21, 2004.
- Bowden, Marshall (March 10, 2003). "Kristin Hersh: The Grotto". Pop Matters. Retrieved Dec. 2, 2004.
- Brown, Glyn (January 23, 1998). "Strange Demons: Singer Kristin Hersh". The Independent. Retrieved Dec. 2, 2004.
- Chonin, Neva (November/December 1996). "Mommy! Mommy! — Kristin Hersh in a Family Way". Option.
- "Kristin Hersh Discography". Soundbug. Retrieved Dec. 2, 2004.
- Erlewine, Stephen Thomas (2003). "Kristin Hersh". All Music Guide. Retrieved Dec. 2, 2004.
- Evans, Liz (1994). Women, Sex and Rock 'N' Roll: In Their Own Words. Pandora. ISBN 0-04-440900-1.
- Freydkin, Donna (August 19, 1999). "Kristin Hersh Checks Into her 'Sky Motel'. CNN Interactive. Retrieved Dec. 2, 2004.
- "Gallery of Eccentrics: Ruthie the Duck Girl". Eccentric New Orleans. Retrieved Apr. 22, 2005.
- Gray, Louise (March 11, 2001). "Songs take ugly feelings and turn them into something else". The Independent. Retrieved Dec. 2, 2004.
- Hampton, Mark. "Throwing Muses Section". Markwarehouse.com. Retrieved Dec. 2, 2004.
- Hersh, Kristin (September 2001). "Kristin Hersh Online Q&A Session Number Two: Questions Posted to the ThrowingMusic Message Board". Bradley's Almanac website archives. Retrieved Apr. 17, 2005.
- Kirkcaldie, Matthew (1994). "Throwing Muses/Kristin Hersh discography, third edition". Retrieved Dec. 2, 2004.
- Lewis, Judith (March 12, 2004). "Faster, Harder, Louder". LA Weekly. Retrieved Apr. 10, 2005.
- Nichols, Natalie (July 17, 2003). "Tough Love: Kristin Hersh confronts and conquers old songs and older demons". Los Angeles City Beat. Retrieved Dec. 12, 2005.
- Pagliari, Sonia (April 2005). "More Strings Please ... It's Kristin Hersh". Joy. Retrieved Apr. 22, 2005.
- Post, Laura (1997). Backstage Pass: Interviews With Women in Music. New Victoria Publishers. ISBN 0-934678-84-7.
- Powers, Ann (August 31, 1999). "Kristin Hersh: Surreal Visions From a Poet of Terror and Revelation". New York Times.
- Reynolds, Simon (February 9, 1992). "Belting Out That Most Unfeminine Emotion". New York Times.
- Rykken, Rolf (1995). "May 1995 Live Review" and Sept. 1995 interview, AOL's "Critics' Choice.
- Shirley, David (November/December 1991). "Cracking Up Is Hard to Do: The Break-ups (and Breakdowns) of Throwing Muses". Option.
- Sylva, Kathryn and Lasser, Robin. "Ellen West". Eating Disorders in a Disordered Culture. Retrieved Apr. 22, 2005.
- Strauss, Neil (March 9, 1995). "My So-Called Double Life: Kristin Hersh of Throwing Muses Finds the Common Ground Between Motherhood and Rock & Roll". Rolling Stone.
- Swenson, Kyles (October 1999). "Songcraft: Kristin Hersh". Guitar Player.
- Tranquilla, Ryan (June 2001). "Kristin Hersh: Loose Timing". Splendid. Retrieved Dec. 2, 2004.
- Tripney, Natasha (November 22, 2005). "Kristin Hersh at The Scala, London". musicOMH.com. Retrieved Dec. 12, 2005.
- Wolmarans, Francois. "Counting Backwards". Retrieved Dec. 2, 2004.
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