Kristin Hersh

Kristin Hersh - Quick Facts

Profile Overview of Kristin Hersh

Martha Kristin Hersh (born August 7, 1966) is an American singer, guitarist, and songwriter known for her solo work and with her rock bands Throwing Muses and 50FootWave. She has released eleven solo albums. Her guitar work and composition style ranges from jaggedly dissonant to traditional folk. Hersh's lyrics have a stream-of-consciousness style, reflecting her personal experiences.

This profile of Kristin Hersh covers Early Life and Family Background, Throwing Muses and early solo work, 2000 to present, Themes and style and Legacy and Influence.

Early Life and Family Background of Kristin Hersh

Hersh was born in Atlanta. She moved to Newport, Rhode Island with her family, when she was six years old. Her father was a professor at Salve Regina University and her mother was a special educational needs teacher. Kristin was interested in music at an early age; her father gave her a guitar when she was nine. Kristin's parents separated when Hersh was 11, and her mother married the father of her best friend Tanya Donelly. Hersh talked Donelly into starting a band, then called The Muses, when they were 14.

Throwing Muses and early solo work of Kristin Hersh

Throwing Muses was formed in 1981 when Hersh and Donelly were freshmen in high school. Friends from school, including Elaine Adamedes, Becca Blumen, Leslie Langston and David Narcizo, were part of the group with Narcizo (and in the beginning, Langston) becoming a long-term member. Hersh initially wrote and sang most of Throwing Muses' songs, often in changing tempos. Donelly contributed songs and lead vocals.

Hersh attended Salve Regina University in Newport, majoring in archetypal psychology and philosophy, but dropped out shortly before graduating to establish the band in Boston where they had been playing on weekends. While at Salve Regina, Hersh befriended film actress Betty Hutton, who was attending the school in her 60s; Hutton also attended several early Throwing Muses shows in Newport. The Throwing Muses were signed to 4AD, the first American group to be signed on the British label, and released the EP Chains Changed in 1987. Two releases followed, the mini-LP The Fat Skier and the album House Tornado. The 4AD Throwing Muses biography describes its sound at the time as "joining the dots between elliptical post-punk, harmonious folk jangle and rockabilly thunder without ever settling into standard genre patterns." For the Throwing Muses 1986 UK tour, the Boston-based Pixies, embarking on their first European tour, was the opening band.

The band signed a U.S. Deal with Sire/Reprise Records in 1987 and began touring the U.S. And Europe while recording albums, with Hersh writing most of the songs. The band became a trio when Donelly left the group after 1991's The Real Ramona. In 1994, Hersh began a solo career on Sire/Reprise and 4AD as an acoustic performer, beginning with Hips and Makers, an album sparsely 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. After receiving some airplay and major media coverage for the Throwing Muses album University in 1995, Hersh moved to Rykodisc for the band's 1996 album, Limbo, and released her solo album, Strange Angels, in 1998.

To better control her career and the distribution of her recorded material, she created the ThrowingMusic label with then-husband and manager Billy O'Connell in 1996. That enabled her to co-release some of her projects, including an ongoing download-subscription service called Works in Progress (WIP) for releases available through the label's website. Hersh continued to offer her solo releases online, releasing Sky Motel in 1999. Throwing Muses functions as a noncommercial musical enterprise, focusing on touring over record sales and airplay. In a 2014 interview, Hersh said, "As far as I'm concerned, music is not a commodity. It's something that people have earned by being human. They have a right to hear it, and a right to share it, as they always have in churches and parties. That's how music happens."

2000 to present

In 2001, Hersh released the Sunny Border Blue solo album, on which she again played nearly all instruments. She described the 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. She also collaborated further with like-minded alternative artists like Vic Chesnutt, Willard Grant Conspiracy, Grant-Lee Phillips, and John Doe. 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 date a self-titled album by Throwing Muses was also released, the first since Limbo. Both were recorded at Steve Rizzo's studio in Rhode Island. When Narcizo was unable to tour on a full-time basis due to other commitments, Hersh formed her power rock trio 50FootWave. Her touring appearances and recording efforts in 2004 and 2005 centered around both 50 Foot Wave and her solo career.

In 2007, Hersh released her first solo album in four years, entitled Learn to Sing Like a Star. NPR described Hersh's "emotional and raw" pop songs as both "accessible and off-kilter." Concurrently she launched CASH Music, a subscription-based, direct-to-consumer website, that was formed along with fellow musician Donita Sparks. Fans can become "Strange Angels" and subscribe to her output to receive albums and print releases, downloadable content, and guest spots for live shows–packages ranging from $30 per quarter to $5,000 (executive producer credit on her next album) 50FootWave's EP Power+Light was released on CASH in 2009 and Hersh was involved in several projects—a second collection of Appalachian folksongs, The Shady Circle and a series of new free tracks. The album Crooked was released as a downloadable album and hardback book containing essays about each track.

Throwing Muses reformed in 2013 and released Purgatory/Paradise, a 32-track album accompanied by a book designed by Narcizo, who works as a graphic designer. The book features photos, artwork and lyrics by Hersh. It was the band's first release in ten years.

Source: adapted from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristin_Hersh), text available under CC BY-SA 4.0.