What brings me to a song is not necessarily what a listener should take from a song. In my experience, music is no more “about” something than a person could be. To associate the images and sweat and life of “Crooked” with anything other than itself seems limiting. So, at the risk of “explaining it away,” can I tell you my crooked story?

A few months ago, an acupuncturist friend from Chicago, said to me, “I can’t watch you go through this anymore. I’m going to help you whether you like it or not.” What she was referring to was bipolar disorder. It’s true, I haven’t found much on planet earth to ease this condition which destroys bands, marriages and lives.

Music and movement help a little…lithium was amazing until its side effects prevented me from working. So I gave up the fight--I’m trapped in here--and my insides lived an up and down, back and forth, past and future, switch-flipping existence for years. I prayed that my outside could hide this world from those around me (it couldn’t).

When my friend met me in San Francisco and stuck needles all over me, I sighed, thinking, “You don’t understand. This isn’t subtle, it’s systemic; a world view, a personality, an everything. And nothing helps.”

Then the room started spinning, my heart started pounding, my brain time-tripping, a baseball-sized lump swelled up in my throat…it felt like race cars were driving my outline, but the outline wasn’t me. I had an unshakeable “phantom-body” syndrome that wasn’t inside my skin—the real me was next to the one made of skin and bones and muscles: a dark, crooked space body. So, I’m not trapped in here. I’m not in here at all.

This woman flew to New York to treat me on the road, then to New England to treat me at home. She moved the crooked body into my skin. She saved my life. Suffice it to say, acupuncture is as “not subtle” as bipolar disorder and it seems to be curing me of an illness for which western medicine has no cure. Songs still fly out unchecked, because the healthiest me is a songwriter. Knowing what it’s like to feel everything and nothing may help songs breathe; but it’s no way to live.

So that’s my “Crooked” story. Please take what this song offers as a scrim for you to view your own life pictures through and share them with me, if you’re moved to. A song shouldn’t function as a page from my diary, but as an offering for your soundtrack. That’s the highest honor afforded any musician.

Love,
Kristin

hold the flashlight under your chin
closer as the lights dim

you lonely doll
you lucky dog
you free fall
down to the living room
closer as the lights dim

spread the glitter on your pillow
count your blessings on your fingers
crawl your way back down the stairs
down to the living room
closer as the lights dim

glittering
in lazy boys and christmas lights
glittering
then found a dark body
to the right and crooked

--

credits:
"crooked" written and performed by kristin hersh
published by yes dear music, bmi
produced by kristin hersh
recorded & mixed by steve rizzo at stable sound studio portsmouth ri usa

“Sand” is a road song, I think. Having known pretty much nothing but the road, my catalogue is full of these (sorry about that). Many of my friends are also “tar kissers” who race around the country for music, too, learning to live without food, shelter, sleep, showers, etc., except when these “necessities” pop up as kindnesses from caring locals.

Road nature is a meadow behind a dumpster, road health is finding any food, road highs and hangovers are mixed up to the point where you are no longer in touch with the contents of your own bloodstream.

Like firefighters, musicians sit and wait and play cards and bullshit and stare out the window and listen to their own breathing and sit and wait some more until suddenly, the fire calls and adrenaline kicks them headfirst into it.

I am basically a chicken; a lousy firefighter. At show time, I am shaky, terrified, hyper-aware that there is no longer any time to breathe (“pull over and stop to breathe”).

This is, admittedly, a bipolar lifestyle (“you pick me up, I pull you down”), but eventually, you hit the Road Wall and that‘s a good, gentle, softening thing. That‘s when touring boot camp pays off ‘cause, “your brain unbuckled,” it forces you to peel off the civilized skin you‘ve worn your whole life and see that underneath, you‘re a clean organism that needs nothing but music to survive. This is a luxurious state of mind.

This song is basically a love song to the tar kissers, those clean organisms that have raced through the country with me, a desperate hope that someday we‘ll be able to catch our breath, and an even more desperate hope that the road trip never ends.

Love,
Kristin

race through the country
the perfect carnivore
pull over and stop to breathe
there's grape jelly on your sleeve

you pick me up
i pull you down
down to the ground

make the most of daylight
a sun-drenched meadow by the dumpster
i came back high and hungover
from your flickering light

i hope you find your way home

to the country
the perfect manifested heaven
and stop to breathe
there's an aching heart on your sleeve

you pick me up
i pull you down
down to the ground

your brain unbuckled:
luxurious
and softer than sand

--

credits:
"sand" written and performed by kristin hersh
published by yes dear music, bmi
produced by kristin hersh
recorded & mixed by steve rizzo at stable sound studio portsmouth ri usa

Coughing engines, hot coals, mid-air explosions and all the other alive, inanimate happenings that press into existence...plus a buttload of tambourine (Bob Mould: "When in doubt, tambourine!")

After the frenetic intro, the bass becomes the star of the show, settling the song into its long-winded pocket. "Coals" demanded an extremely standard treatment: build the verses at the midway point, chorus must be anthemic (of all things) and come at the usual time (of all things), beefed up by creepy old distorted bass organ and then, of course, allow a French film score from the sixties to guest star on the bridge, for some reason.

My favorite sound in the song, though, is the diminutive lead guitar. Crunchy yet sinewy, murmuring not unpleasantly throughout, then bursting into tiny song at the end...more a ramble than a rant, a sputtering little engine that could.

shrug off this wretched event
stoic, detached, you relent
you wonder why
we crash but don't land

how a purring engine sputters
like these coals that never cooled
why we crash but don't land

you heated even the mist
around this mossy existence
we never found
cold, gray, calm, dead

it's how a purring engine sputters
like these coals that never cooled
why we crash but don't land

a ramble, a rant
a ramble, a rant
a fairy tale
remorseless and serene

--

credits:
"coals" written and performed by kristin hersh
published by yes dear music, bmi
produced by kristin hersh
recorded & mixed by steve rizzo at stable sound studio portsmouth ri usa

I met Gin in Sydney; a two-parter, both casual and complex. Called Rizzo right away to book time, telling him to be prepared for a nocturnal me when I got home from down under. "Great!" he said. "Looking forward to it." Rizzo himself is a night creature, a gentle vampire.

Gin is also a night person, and a good way to begin the CASH year, I think. A New Year's Eve song containing an exceptional Bodhi quote: "Here's the plan: I don't go out of my backyard." Good plan. Great plan. A resolution to end all others.

Gin says that it isn't the shock, it's not even the aftershock, but the shock that follows that. I hear ya, sister. Aftershock shock shows up when the lights go out; when there's nothing else to look at. Which is okay, I guess.

Aftershock shock demands attention not 'cause it's bitchy, but because it's real. The point that gin makes, though, is not for you, but for others. Remember their midnights.

This was the first recording session for The Guitar that Love Built and it shone. Both percussive and melodic, depending on what I asked it to do, it played tame wildly and tamed wild...whoo-hoo! I was charmed, Rizzo impressed.

I would love to hear Throwing Muses play this song someday. Night people, they step in when they get the chance and compress hours of darkness into moments of clarity. Sometimes they have to stay up all night to make this work, but their midnights are valuable, worth sharing.

As Gin asks, "Are you completely numb?" and then answers, "mmm...probably not." In that case, playing for each other is the least we can do.

Love,
Kristin

tempting to finish this disaster under midnight sun
hope, gin
new year's eve again
i know it makes you swallow hard

here's the plan: don't go out of your backyard
finger in new fallen snow
a taste of what's to come

san bernardino
starlight bores your midnight son

you made it up howling
you made it up when real proved too rough
you're gentle
you're fragile

aftershock shock

so you're not lucky
you look a little thin
burdened

your courage wasted time
your courage and mine

lay down your arms
you were plenty strong

i've heard enough of your howling
say you succumb
are you completely numb?

your gentle aftershock shock
your fragile aftershock shock