Kristin Hersh talks to Francis Dutton, November 4^th, 2003

I last spoke with Kristin back in November of 2001.

For those who don’t know of her work, well, suffice it to say that she’s a very prolific songwriter, who for many years headed up indie band Throwing Muses, and who, in 1994, also began a mainly, but not exclusively, acoustic solo career with the release of the highly acclaimed “Hips & Makers”. She’s now working on her new project, an electric band called 50’ Wave.

Kristin grew up on Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, until the age of six, when the family moved to Rhode Island. She has four children, all boys.

For more information, online community, and “Works in Progress” downloadable subscription series, visit her website at www.throwingmusic.com

This interview will be broadcast on BLU FM 89.1 on Monday, 22^nd of December. An interview with her husband (and manager) Billy O’Connell  will go air on the 29^th.

A big thanks to Amber Jacobus for her help with this transcript, and to Brian MacKellar for help with the recording.

-FD.

F: …yeah, we've got some beautiful spring weather over here at last.

K: So do we actually! Oddly enough. Everywhere we go it's hot.

F: It’s weird, isn’t it, all those fires in California.

K: Oh my god, yeah. But we're not there right now.

F: No, you're on the east coast aren't you?

K: Yeah. But in California, for the last week it's been raining and freezing, even through the fires.

F: Even through the fires?

K: Yeah, and so we go to the east coast hoping for some nice crisp fall air and it's hot and sunny.

F: Wow.

K: Everywhere we go, we go to London it's hot and sunny, we move to Seattle where it's supposed to rain 360 days a year it was warm and sunny the whole year we were there.

F: Well maybe we should have a word to George Bush about that.

K: (laughs) I think that global warming is due to my immediate presence in any given area. (laughs)

F: Well, maybe George Bush should have a word to you about that. We sure know about bushfires here in the Blue Mountains. The radio has taken over the role of emergency broadcaster and every time there's a fire… there seems to be more and more of them, there's all these pyromaniacs running around.

K: But I also think people are building where nature has fires now; fires have always gone on, but now people’s homes are being destroyed because they're building in a fire's path.

F: Yeah. I know, that's true of the Mountains, I have to say that I find it… odd… that people build in some of the places they’ve built. Maybe they came up from the city and they just don't expect it; they put themselves in the path of these fires....  it's going to happen sooner or later.

K: I think it’s a top-of-the-food-chain mindset… they really think money can buy safety, and it's not true.

F: No, exactly. We seem to be becoming further and further detached from nature in a way, there's all those 4-wheel-drives, or RV's or whatever you call them over there, and they're everywhere here, too.

K: Well, I mean, you use ‘em there… people drive around Hollywood in those things, it's ridiculous. They drive Hummers, you know them?

F: Oh yes those hideous great beasts they use in Iraq.

K: They were laughed at for trying to market them, 5, 10 years ago and now, they kinda just… caught on, because they cost a lot, I guess. I don't know why else... they're really hard to park!

F: Well you'd think so, wouldn't you?

K: How often do you find a double wide parking spot?

F: And then of course they'll just build double wide parking spots!

K: Yes, it's true!

F: You were in London the other day, weren't you?

K: Yes I was… very good!

F: Yes, the Barbican, we read about that.

K: Yeah I played with Joe Henry, it was really lovely.

F: Yeah he twiddled the dials on Strange Angels, didn't he?

K: Yes, he did, and our sons are best friends.

F: Yeah, right, he’s got kids the same age. And by the way, congratulations on the latest addition to your family.

K: Thank you so much.

F: Since we spoke, which was almost two years ago, you've released two albums and a baby!

K: (laughs) Yeah, I tend to do those things often.

F: That was a little bit unexpected wasn't it? The baby, not the albums...

K: Kind of... we knew that we wanted to have another, but when that happened...

F: There was a great story attached to when you were first found out you were pregnant with Bodhi, yeah?

K: Yeah, I dreamt about the Bodhi Tree, and there was a little bear in the Bodhi Tree, and on closer inspection it became a little boy, and I woke up and asked Billy what a Bodhi Tree was, and he said 'I think it's the tree of life!' and I thought -doh!- gotta get a pregnancy test! And the funny thing was it wasn't the tree of life, that’s just what I needed to hear to run out and get a pregnancy test. My old hippy dad told me it was the tree that Buddha was enlightened underneath.

F: There was another detail to do with his arrival date…

K: Yeah, the Buddha’s birthday. I wouldn't have known that but my yoga instructor… Zen Buddhism philosophy professor father… his name's Dude… knew that it was the Buddha’s birthday, apparently he celebrates it or something. But he’s is quite a little Buddha like most babies are, and the only word he says is the same word for Buddha, light, and baby. We have this little statue of the Buddha in our house we got… someone gave it to us because of Bodhi, and he points at it and says 'bah!' and he looks at himself in the mirror and says 'bah!', and then he points at lights… 'bah!' (laughs)

F: Wow that's wonderful. He's nearly a year old now, yeah?

K: That's right, yeah. We're going to be on tour when he turns one, and his brothers are extremely dismayed by the idea that we'll be in Madison, Wisconsin, and not a birthday candle in sight. But we told them this was the one birthday we can get away with that.

F: And Wyatt’s no longer the youngest in the family.

K: Yeah, it's so confusing because he's our baby, he’s still the baby. We don't know what Bodhi is yet...

F: My youngest is five, and he's just starting to play the piano, and it's very simple what he does, but he’ll come back the next day and do the exactly the same thing, but slightly improved.

K: Wow!

F: It's great.

K: That's wild.

F: And that sort of reminded me to ask you, are your kids musical at all, I mean Dylan’s the oldest… is he playing much music at all?

K: Yeah, he's in a band called the ‘Son's of Zanzibar’ or something, he just sent me a film clip of them, it was just screaming, non stop, (laughs) …five solid minutes of screaming, I’m like, aww, chip off the old block! And Ryder has been playing guitar. The bass player from the Muses and I just started a band in LA called 50’ Wave, and Ryder sound checked me the other day, I didn't even realise what was happening, I was just listening to the music in the room, and someone pointed on stage, and it was Ryder, who’s as big as me and, just, way cooler… he's checking the guitar! He was the one playing it, it doesn't make any sense to me, cause he's supposed to be 3 years old. And then during the show, it was actually an open rehearsal, but Wyatt the 6-year-old stood centre stage and danced like a freakin' maniac the whole time, just out of control, rocking, and then stage dove at the end of the set.

F: What a cool guy!

K: I know, it's funny, they're both so much cooler than I am. But he plays harmonica, and he takes it out of his pocket anywhere. We were on a bus driving to a rental car in Chicago the other day and he was just playing harmonica for everybody, all the businessmen on the bus. And it’s such a funny soundtrack you know, all these funny associations...

F: You know that song of Vic Chesnutt’s Doubting Woman, with the wonderful harmonica line in it? Every time my boy hears that he’s like, “That’s our song dad, that's the boy’s song”. Vic’s released an album since we last spoke… Silver Lake.

K: Yeah. Silver Lake is where my band practices.

F: Oh really? It's in L.A. or on the edge of L.A. or something?

K: Right, it's just an area in L.A., it's where Elliot Smith just killed himself, actually.

F: Somebody said you dedicated a song to him the other night.

K: That's right, yeah. Silver Lake is beautiful.

F: Yeah it's sort of like, old mansions, and a bit run-down?

K: Yeah, yeah. I was really happy that it was such a return to form. All I’d heard of him in the past two years was him playing with other bands, and kind of tailoring his output to the bands, and I didn't want him to tailor anything, I wanted him to just… puke… y'know?

F: Yeah, it's got some great stuff on it… Sultan So Mighty… numerous things… the one about girls & boys…

K: Yeah, it's got his goofiness, his heartbreaking fragility, his voice in top form… I love that crazy voice. And I think he's playing really well, even though he's having trouble with his left hand.

F: Yeah, he does have problems with his hands, because of the accident, yeah?

K: Yeah, he called us one day and said he'd lost all but two digits on his left hand and he had to kind of hole up and alter his playing style to be able to form chords with only two fingers, and I know it was really tearing him apart. But, I toured with him right before that happened and it was amazing what he's doing.

F: It's incredible when you hear him on the albums, you just wouldn't believe that there was anything wrong with him.

K: No! I’ve watched him play these amazing leads, and his accompaniment, even though it's sparse when he accompanies himself, it's fascinating, and I know it's because if he has trouble with one hand position he'll switch to the other, and there's a pause, but it gives him this fluid timing, it means that he's going from rhythm to bass, to lead, to bass, to rhythm… whatever hand position works, and I know it’s stressful for him because I’ve watched it, but the end result is a fascinating method of accompaniment that no-one does. It's really beautiful and I tell him that but, y'know, he doesn't listen. He’s like, “Shutup!” (laughs)

F: He's a real trouper. We're going to try and get you and Vic out here to tour together.

K: Oh god, that would be wonderful.

F: I’ve got this fantasy…

K: Yeah somebody’s has to bring us there… times have been tough over the last few years, and…

F: We'll think of something.

K: Yay. I know the new band is thinking of going, we're just doing everything we possibly can, it's just a touring band. Cause I’m not going to rely on the music industry any more so we're just going to get there no matter what. Plus we miss it…

F: This is 50’ Wave you're talking about…

K: Yeah.

F: You've just been recording some stuff over in L.A.…

K: Wow, you are good!

F: (laughs) Well, I… somebody calling himself “Fly on the wall,” who I suspect might have some close relationship to you, (laughs), posted something...

K: Oh yeah, he's this guy we call the “great facilitator”, he can make any desire happen, so we keep him… close. Yeah, we recorded six songs, and as soon as I finish this tour, which is a month long, I’ll go into my friend Ethan’s studio, he's one of the engineers from Kingsway studios in New Orleans, and I’ll put down some real vocals, maybe a few overdubs, but it's pretty much done, and it sounds incredible… this is just exactly what I want to hear. And I really don't give a shit if nobody else wants to hear it, not out of bitterness, I mean I really don't care at all, I don't care if they do want to hear it.

F: You’re doing it because you want to.

K: Yeah, cause no-one else is doing it, if someone else was doing exactly what I wanted to hear, then I’d be able to just go home and shut up, and that'd be great, but right now this is my favorite band. I guess I’m lucky to be in it.

F: So what is it about it that you don't hear elsewhere? I mean… I haven't really heard it properly, so I can't tell… is it more full-on, maybe?

K: It is full on, but for a reason… I guess is the difference. I hear a lot of full on, but I can't figure out… why. They don't seem to be organically moved in that direction, they just kinda decided that… ‘this is our musical style’. But, this music seems necessary to me, there's an aspect of precision rock to it which I’m a sucker for, but there’s an emotional quality to it that makes up for the math of that.

F: Yeah. I really don't care what kind of music it is, it could be a scratchy old 78, but it's like with Vic Chesnutt… it's the songwriting… it's kinda got to be there.

K: Exactly, or there's no reason, and you hear that immediately, you feel like you’re being lied to. I do appreciate the songwriting, even though it sounds funny to talk about. (laughs) But the band is so appropriate to the songs I’m writing right now, it's like I’m learning a new language, that I’ve been waiting for, not that Throwing Muses was limiting in any way, or the solo stuff is limiting, this is just another language that I’ve been waiting for, another door opened to new sounds and new expressions.

F: Cause the band consists of you, and Bernard Georges, and a new drummer, right?

K: Yeah. The drummer is unbelievable, and he's a wonderful guy to boot.

F: You've been lucky in that department.

K: I certainly have. Actually Dave helped us choose this guy, because there were a few drummers I was looking at, and Dave said, ‘as a fan I want to hear what you would sound like with someone who doesn't sound like me at all. That’s what I want to hear next.’ And Rob… I can hear how they have a few things in common, but for the most part he’s right, Rob is nothing like him at all. Rob’s main drumming influence was Animal from the Muppets, the puppet who would just go ape-shit on the drum kit. And I laughed when I heard that and he said, no, really, I had to see that I was allowed to play that way. (laughs)

F: I’m certainly looking forward to hearing some. Somebody posted a link to some clips on the throwingmusic online message board, and what I heard sounded exciting.

K: Well it’s exciting to me, maybe because I’m old now, and I’m just doing that “this is the music I grew up with, so it's what I want to hear”.

F: Before when you were talking about there being plenty of full-on bands around, and it sounds a bit kinda bitchy, but when I hear bog-standard indie rock, it just sounds like a bunch of spoilt white guys whining.

K: Exactly.

F: I'm not saying that because you’re white and male and middle class you can't be having a hard time or whatever...

K: But there is real drama in life, there are real problems in this world.

F: It seems self-obsessed.

K: Exactly, if you don't have any problems you’re welcome to go and feel someone else's pain and write about that. You don't have to whine about your weird melodramas or your freakin’ girlfriends. That's insane, I have no patience for that. I actually have very little patience for much… human drama. (laughs)

F: Ha, ha, that's music to my ears!

K: (laughs) That’s so good to hear! I have a lot of feminists that are attracted to me and I am obviously, if I have to be, certainly feminist, I mean… women should exist. But a lot of single mothers come and complain to me about their life, how men are assholes and stuff. And I have absolutely no patience for this, you know, there’s no such thing as gender, number one, it gives me no information, to give me a gender implies nothing to me about a person, so, leave that behind; number two, you’re complaining because you have custody of your children??  Because I know what it's like to lose a child, that’s the tragedy of my life, so don't complain to me because you didn't.

F: And also, I remember reading an interview where you said you've never really held with that idea of women are women, and men are people.

K: Exactly, and women seem to love that, some of ‘em. I just don't have any experience of women being different from men, necessarily. I know people are different from people, but to categorize them according to gender…really... I can’t think of a way to do that. It doesn’t work for me. In my experience women are not like people say women are, and men are not like people say men are, so where's the use in describing them that way.

F: They're frighteningly organic is the only thing you can say.

K: Yeah, ha ha ha! Plus there are so many shades of grey to the terms anyway. I know women with beards, men with breasts… we should begin leaving the genders behind.

F: I remember my old man, when I was about 13 or something, we lived on a farm and we had these three motorcycles we used to ride around on, and I remember saying to my dad one day, 'gee, they're so different those three motorcycles,' and he looked at me and said, 'yeah, well, there you go… imagine how different people are’.

K: (laughs) That’s great… what a funny thing to say.

F: It was an epiphany moment for me. He was a good dad. And, listen, by the way, congratulations on the two albums, Throwing Muses and The Grotto… both have been released since we last talked.

K: Oh, thank you so much.

F: It has taken me a while to get to like the Throwing Muses album, and I don't feel uncomfortable saying that, because I sorta get the impression that it took you a while to get to like those songs.

K: I am always surprised, I have to listen as much as anyone else, the songs are just there, I serve them, then I try to figure them out or appreciate them.

F: Some of those songs were kind of orphan children, if I might put it that way, of the Sunny Border Blue era, weren't they? I think again we might have a certain “great facilitator” to thank for kind of bringing them out a bit, yeah?

K: I didn’t know what was wrong with them.

F: They were kind of languishing a bit, weren't they.

K: Yeah, and I think Billy had all the songs that hadn't been working on a CD, and he was playing it on the bus one day, and turned off the CD and said “I know what's wrong with these, they’re Throwing Muses songs,” and I think he was right for the most part. And I like that they seem to span the history of the band, they sound like songs we played before we were recording, when we were teenagers, and they sound like songs that could have been on the last record, Limbo. They were wonderful to tour. It was an athletic exercise to tour them. Very hard, in both ways difficult and fast and loud, and it was great, it was exhilarating. We had our best tour ever.

F: You sort of have to come up to the level of them, I think that’s why they weren't happening for me to begin with, because really, what you need is to get into a room by yourself with a rather large stereo and crank it.

K: Yeah, I think so too. It's practically a live record really, we didn't even rehearse, we just went into the studio and I knew that they got the songs and they're parts would be great, we worked on them a bit… we would play each one for an hour or so and then record them as soon as they're parts were cemented.

F: It's got a sort of immediacy about the album. There's some great moments, like where you sing “inside that Pandora’s box, was a can of W-O-R-M-S!”.

K: I like to scream the word ‘worms’… that’s my weird job.

F: That’s great, it comes out well. And ‘Speed and Sleep’ is very moving too. The whole thing about 11 years and 44 seasons it’s quite… yeah… hmmm.

K: Billy says the end of Speed and Sleep is like someone whispering 'I’m going to kill you'. (laughs) He says it's really soft and gentle, but really scary too.

F: And The Grotto…I have to say, there's a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde thing going on here…

K: Kind of, but it's just the faces that are different. I mean I guess that is Jekyll and Hyde (laughs). They’re both the same at the root… they're just different expressions of the same thing really. Different faces of the same person, I guess, but…

F: Grotto's a bit of a calm after the storm in a way.

K: It is, it’s not tortured, but it’s spooky.

F: It is, definitely.

K: I think it was lent that quality by the fact that I had severe morning sickness at the time, and in the first trimester of  pregnancy I can’t even keep water down, and this one lasted for 4 months.

F: The actual name 'The Grotto' comes from a district or an area in Providence?

K: That’s right, we were just there today, oddly enough. I haven't been there in a very long time, a year-and-a-half or so. It was where we were kind of hiding out after my step father died, and I was worried that my mother wouldn't make it through, so we moved into The Grotto, to bring her the babies and sort of bring her back to life. It felt like sleep walking at the time. And then when I got pregnant… death and life at the same time. And the sickness… being so nauseated that you can't drink water for 4 months was very odd state of being, but it's not for any bad reason, it's for a wonderful reason. (Bodhi fussing in background… K to Billy: "He's mad cause he couldn't get Ryder’s lollypop!" Billy: “Oh!”) Sorry! He was chasing Ryder trying to steal his lollypop, Ryder thought he had no idea what a lollypop was, but he just trick-or-treated on Halloween, and he found out.

F: You've got a few more years of that to look forward to, Kristin!

K: Yeah, I can't believe it. From breast milk to candy… ugh! I think the record sounds like that, it's dark, and I couldn't sleep because I was so sick, it would wake me up, like, pain. So it’s a night time record… it’s a sleepy, sick, but beautiful record… it's like morning sickness!

F: It is beautiful, the control is right there. It’s a worthy successor to your other solo albums.

K: That’s good to hear. I think it's very strange and I wondered what people would think of it, I’m not even sure what I think of it.

F: It's a long term album, I mean, Sunny Border Blue burnt a hole in my stereo, and still does occasionally, but with The Grotto it’s kind of like you go “oh, that's right, I haven't played that for a couple of weeks, I’ll just pull that out.”

K: Right, it's more gentle than Sunny Border Blue.

F: It's the type of album you can put away and bring out, put away and bring out. Little bits bubble up to the surface.

K: Right yeah, I can appreciate that. I wouldn't expect it to be the same sit down and pay attention thing that Sunny Border Blue was, it's more like you can make this your soundtrack for a little while.

F: It's interesting actually, at this end it's gotten you an audience of people who haven't really heard you before. Seems to be doing the trick. Hey, I’ll tell you what I’m really excited about, is that Shinro Ohtaki did the cover for it, and the Muses album as well… that's so good!

K: Yeah, we're so lucky and so touched.

F: Didn't he do a beautiful job?

K: Oh my god! And it was so important to have him to do both of them at the same time, and he got to hear the record, and so the paintings were painted about the records. It was really moving for us.

F: Apart from the fact that he does great covers for you, the reason I’m such a fan of his is that lovely combination of the artificial and the natural in his stuff.

K: And the mysterious and the goofy, I love that.

F: That’s right! You can see bits of maps and all kinds of stuff.

K: I’m just staying at my mother's house right now, right before we leave on tour so the kids can see her before we go back to California and we walked in and there was a drawing of Shinro's that he did of her house, the house where I grew up, and it's called ‘Kristin's Home’, you know, my home, and I’m also home, I’d never known that and I’d never seen it before. It's a beautiful line drawing.

F: I remember you saying last time I talked to you how he came and stayed with you, and he was walking around trying to break into newspaper stands (laughs).

K: He was obsessed with newspapers, yeah, and he collects them from all over the world, but for some reason he thought that he didn't have to pay for it, or couldn't figure out how to put the money in or something, but he was almost arrested for trying to steal the newspapers and break the machine they were in.

F: That was so funny. That whole artificial/natural thing of his, it’s great because, like, the whole world’s like that, even a cloud… you don't know whether it’s that way because of all the stuff we're pumping into the atmosphere or whatever, you just don't know. Also the thing of getting to love the artificial, like that story of the girl who says 'but mummy it's real plastic,' you know what I mean?

K: Yeah absolutely, its nature versus nurture now.

F: I work in plastic a lot and you love it for what it is, it’s not like, ‘oh, wow, this is plastic’ or anything, it just it is.

K: Absolutely, they're just chemical compounds, we're just rearranging ‘em.

F: There's a bunch of musicians in the Mountains in their early twenties, very talented people, and it's like they're kind of alternative, but they're not self-conscious about it, they just are that way. In my generation it was like you were alternative in contrast to what went before.

K: Exactly, alternative to what, is what we used to say.

F: I was thinking about the first impressions I had when I very first heard your stuff, and there were four impressions. The first one was, she's obviously a kind hearted woman.

K: Aww, nobody thinks that, they think ‘she must be a shrieking banshee!’

F: Well the second was that she's obviously been through some shit, which kind of turned out to be true, cause you did have a rough time.

K: That's nice of you not to put me in the category of whining white people.

F: No, no never. The third one was, where did she get that southern drawl come from, because at that stage I thought you grew up on Rhode Island.

K: (laughs) Oh wow, you are good, I didn't think you guys could tell us Americans apart! Like, we're all from Texas.

F: It's funny actually, when I was very first married, and I’d roll over and I’d say to my wife as if it was something new I’d discovered, ‘I married an Australian girl!’, and it suddenly struck me as really weird, you know, it’s like, my god, I’m an Australian, and there's a line on, I think it’s Sky Motel, were it goes 'I was born in America, born with the fists of a cowboy' and I was wondering if you'd been thinking the same thing, how odd it is to suddenly discover that, hey, I’m an American.

K: Especially given that America isn't really a nationality, its more of an organization (laughs). It really is the melting pot it was intended to be, after all this time and all this in-fighting, it has finally become this (?) place of all these different languages, shapes, and sizes, and colours, and cultures… I’m not sure what that means any more to be an American. But most people can trace their ancestry to other countries, because this country is only a few generations old, but not my family, we’re just… Southern, just, like… from the mountains. There was a couple of American Indians and some Southern white people… that's all we know about us.

F: Yeah because most people in America or Australia, their history kind of jumps off the map if you go back. It’s weird, you know, Europe’s history is my history, and yet I’m not a European.

K: That’s true, yeah.

F: Hey, how are the animals? Have you still got the ocelot?

K: Yes.

F: Oh, good.

K: Yeah, and we have a Wolf Dog, and then we have a little four-pounder, a little Yorkie, I have no idea what he is.

F: That’s not the one that got called Monkey Two-Times, is it?

K: Yes! Very good! We still call him that sometimes, we change his name all the time actually because he comes no matter what we say.

F: That was a great story… the kids definitely, absolutely and without a doubt deciding that that was going to be his name.

K: It was so sad, it was the first time I felt like I an adult mom. You know how kids just assume that their parents are idiots… they had never assumed that about me before, and then I just realised I’d made a classic mom mistake, which is not to have any idea what they were talking about. (laughs) They all seemed to understand so well.

F: They knew what they were talking about.

K: Yeah, and they continue to know what they're talking about to this day. Little freaks.

F: I was going through your back catalogue the other day… I’d discovered for the first time that the disc known as Live at Maxwell’s that was released, for people who don't know, as a bonus CD with the original release of the Throwing Muses album Red Heaven.

K: It was the first time I ever played acoustic, actually.

F: Well that's what I was going to ask you, because I had thought, it's just another live bootleg of a concert you did somewhere, and I thought, I’ll get around to it one of these days, and then I discovered what it was, and its acoustic arrangements of Throwing Muses songs. I made a note to ask you, cause it's right back at the beginning of your discovering the acoustic guitar, yeah?

K: Yeah. It was a long time ago. And I really didn't think it was a good idea.

F: But they're wonderful arrangements of those songs.

K: Oh thank you, that's very nice of you to say that.

F: I've been rediscovering some… there'll be a collective groan from the hardcore following of your band, but I’ve been rediscovering the album House Tornado… that goes right back.

K: I remember that being good, but I probably couldn't listen to it today. I can't listen to the first one either, but… that’s ok.

F: That's ok, there's plenty more to choose from.

K: Actually I don't listen to any of them, I don't know why I’m saying that. I could never listen to one of my records. But if I ever did, it wouldn't be House Tornado.

F: Somewhere I read that Robert Fripp's famous solo on Brian Eno's ‘Baby's on Fire’ was an early influence on you.

K: Oh yeah, I love that, that's a really great solo. I’m so glad you know that. We used to request 'Baby's on Fire' when we would call a radio station and request Throwing Muses and they’d say they didn't have any, then we'd say, alright then, Baby's on Fire. So whenever one of us heard Baby's On Fire on the radio we'd know that the others had tried to request one of our songs. It became code for us not being played on the radio. I'm being requested for a nursing session, I have to go feed the baby now…

F: Well thank you so much.

K: Thank you.

F: Kristin, just before you go, do you think it would be possible to persuade Billy to chat with us for a minute? Do you think he'd be in that?

K: Yeah I bet he'd give you a minute. (laughs) But no more… he's very shy. He’s shaking his head right now.

F: I know, he keeps saying this is not about me, it's not about me. Of course, we all know that isn't true! Well, all the best, and thank you so much for coming on and talking to us, it's been a pleasure. We hope to see you in Australia before too long.

K: Absolutely… we’ll be there.

F: Bye.