Kristin is one of the most thoughtful and engaging women I've had
the pleasure to interview. Her new record, Sky Motel is a
fabulous collection of songs and sounds. Here's what Kristin has
to say about independent music, women, death, plumbing and evil…
BRENDA:
I'd like to tell you a bit about WOMANROCK.com. It's is a website
dedicated to independent women in the arts. We focus on women who
are working, doing their art on all different levels. People who
are just starting out to people who are quite established to create
a media source that people can find out more about the artists they
love as well as for artists to learn more about what their doing.
KRISTIN:
That's great because the only influence they [artists] get is pop
culture which is really focused on attracting pre teen dollars and
not people who have something to say.
BRENDA:
Yeah, I was listening to K-ROCK [radio] this morning, and I noticed
the music isn't really for people in their twenties - it was more
angsty young teenager age…it seemed a bit soulless in a way.
KRISTIN:
Well I don't mind what the market is, but why is it vapid, if they're
such a bunch of idiots then why don't you show them good music instead
of bad music cause they're not going to know the difference, they'll
eat whatever you give them, and that's where their dollars will
go.
BRENDA:
It seems more about keeping their jobs and not about promoting great
music.
KRISTIN:
I found when I was in Throwing Muses it was never worth the risk
to them. They were good people good music lovers who listened to
good music in their offices and at home but what they sold, what
they worked on all day was candy bars … which would not be such
a big problem, I don't think that candy bars are killing people
but if you try to live on them then they will kill you eventually.
Which is what happened to popular music, which is cool, I mean it
makes for really good underground music if popular music sucks so
bad like it does right now. Then it means that the underground gets
really strong like when Nirvana was selling records they dangled
this carrot in front of underground bands' noses saying well you
can be good and a millionaire. Suddenly people were trying
BRENDA:
Aspiring to good song writing…
KRISTIN:
Right, and it attracted people with big egos who wanted to be rich
people which is an odd kind of person and I don't think is as common
as people believe. So now everyone knows they [underground acts]
don't have a chance of getting played on the radio or selling a
million records.
BRENDA:
That's the market we're trying to give a forum to [the underground].
That's what MP3 is all about…
KRISTIN:
MP3's are perfect.
BRENDA:
That's one of the things I want to talk with you about. Your project
of MP3 downloads of works in progress. How is that working?
KRISTIN:
It's great. That's my dream job. To be able to mail songs out to
people who want to hear them. Paste my face on them and not travel
all over the world trying to sell them. That's the only thing in
the long run that will give you a career and a body of work that
you can be proud of, you can stand behind and feel your work meant
something.
BRENDA:
To market right to the people who care?
KRISTIN:
Yes exactly. Just like a plumber would come to your house, fix a
pipe, and you give him twenty bucks and he goes away…thank you very
much…
BRENDA:
This was a very good transaction, I feel fulfilled…
KRISTIN:
Yeah, and not with any ego involvement or even any personal involvement
except the music itself. It would be nice if these [CDs] were pipes
that nobody could turn into anything else. You couldn't trick people
by saying, "this pipe is a really good one…" No pipe Grammies.
BRENDA: (laughing)
"The best pipe since canned beer."
KRISTIN: (laughing)
Look how nicely I'm dressed while I'm giving you this pipe.
BRENDA:
Will you pay me a million dollars for this pipe… it runs water though
your sink…
KRISTIN:
I'm not a plumber anymore, I'm an artist…
BRENDA:
You know all your friends have this pipe…
KRISTIN:
Or they will soon… (serious again) The only thing I've found that
comes close to that is MP3's and the online-only release that I
did about six months ago of Appalachian Folk songs of all things.
BRENDA:
Were these the children songs that you released?
KRISTIN:
They're not particularly for children…
BRENDA:
Yeah, they're harsh, I got the idea. I really loved what you said
on your website about them…that they're evil and all…
KRISTIN:
And yet the kids got it. Somebody scared me into talking to my oldest
son when he was little about violence on TV, he was watching Looney
Tunes and I was counting the number of times people laid into each
other and fell off cliffs and I said, "You know, you can't just
fall of a cliff and get up and walk away, and if you hit somebody
in the head with a frying pan they might die" and he looked at me
like I was an idiot and said, "It's just a cartoon, Mom."
BRENDA: (laughing)
You're like, "Ok You're good…"
KRISTIN:
You need to have a good grasp of evil in a song as opposed to evil
in the world.
BRENDA:
Well I think evil exists and it's not a bad thing to bring up. There's
a similar attitude in America toward death and age, Americans tend
to suck it down like it's not going to happen, and then when it
does it's so tragic…I feel death and age are a really huge part
of life.
KRISTIN:
We need a day of the dead. That's a perfect celebration, and the
fact that it is a celebration is perfect and they also say, 'Great,
now you don't have stupid skin on your body…'
BRENDA:
Whatever you believe it's the one thing that's going to happen to
everybody. It's a very bonding element of human existence. And that
gets back what we're trying to do on the site, this thing where
women in their forties and fifties who ostensibly get better as
they get older, I mean music is a craft, we've created this construct
where after the age of forty you're a total loser if you want to
keep playing music. I don't understand that and I would like to
be able to first of all continue doing what I do best and also learn
from people who have done it in front of me so I can grow and learn
from them. Until that happens women are just going to keep falling
over themselves making the same mistakes, and I see it now with
women in their twenties and teens who are getting record deals,
they don't know what's going on, just like I didn't.
KRISTIN:
It's hard to have respect for anyone young. I'm finding a new kind
of ism - it's youthism. I find someone can say almost anything to
me and it can be cool or smart they might even have some depth,
but I hear the age 23 and I just think you idiot. I was stupid when
I was that age and I was one of the smart ones. I felt like it was
a great secret when I found out that I could be in my thirties and
so much better than I was when I was younger and that most of the
younger people I knew - they just didn't seem to have a handle on
things; they hadn't found their place, they didn't understand how
the world works, they didn't understand how to treat other people,
and they certainly didn't know how to stop thinking about themselves,
which is the first thing you have to know before you can make good
music. You just have to shut up…You can't talk anymore (laughing).
Then the music can say what it has to say.
BRENDA:
That's the kind of thing, if nobody tells you, you have to basically
fuck up a hundred times and then you finally figure it out…so what
do you think about making music in the eighties versus the nineties?
KRISTIN:
There's a dark side to both decades. I grew up in a commune where
no one considered me female particularly and my parents didn't treat
me as if there was anything in the world I couldn't do, except be
unkind. As far as the sixties went, that was something good that
came out of it, they were southern Baptist Bible-thumping mountain
people who moved into a commune and became Buddhists right before
I was born. So there was a smattering of Jesus… my brother and I
were meditating before we were six years old, having to stare at
the wall and chant, and stuff, but really that means that we were
raised to be, here/now, and to be compassionate, and that's all
we took from it too. Neither of us became particularly groovy people…so
we didn't really swallow much of the Jesus thing, but we got the
vocab.
BRENDA: Who are some of your personal heroes, are there women in
particular?
KRISTIN:
Exene Zervenka, Natalie Angier, science writer. She just wrote a
book called WOMAN…Starting a band was a gift for others and the
immediacy of music. I wasn't looking for role models that were female.
I was just looking for people who were like us. Like the Violent
Femmes, I thought Gordon Gano was like me because he was a little
white whiny rat person and so was I…They were wonderful. X we related
to and when we played in Boston there was Kim Deal and the Pixies,
and Thalia Zedek who's in Come now but she was in Oozie then, she
is this beautiful monochromatic lesbian - everything on her was
this beautiful tan color, she was so focused and intense. She's
a great person, we toured with them. A couple years ago I would
go to radio stations and they were supposed to be interviewing me
and playing my record and they would say, "We're playing too many
women right now, we can't play your record."… Like, have you ever
said You're playing too many men? Do you hear what you're saying?
BRENDA:
You co-produced this record with Trina Shoemaker. How was it working
with her?
KRISTIN:
We've been working together for six or seven years. It's incredible.
She's one of my best friends in the world. And she's funny. Which
is always how I'd chosen my band members based on their sense of
humor. It might sound like a stupid thing to do but it means not
only are they fun to live with on a tour bus for years, but humor
implies intelligence and intelligence makes for good taste and that's
all you really need when you're playing an instrument. Anyone can
play an instrument - it's knowing the notes not to play and the
button not to push…the fact that I was making this record alone,
I needed Trina there, otherwise I would have been lonely. She and
Ethan Allen the assistant engineer, just having people there who
adored the music and were excited about the project as me, who never
stopped working…It makes me ask a lot of myself in return. If you're
the band leader you tend to want to ask more of yourself than anyone
else, so they tend to raise the bar for me.
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