Why would you be a musician if you’re just gonna lie? Maybe to show off, I guess. “Otherwise, it’s distracting, and depressing, and you wonder what we’re all doing here. She just wrapped up a tour with Grant-Lee Phillips, someone she really admires. “It helps to get in the right frame of mind, to have someone that doesn’t suck right before you go on,” she said about Philips. She’s been chosen along with artists like Nine Inch Nails, My Bloody Valentine, and Deftones to play this year’s Robert Smith-curated Meltdown Festival. Under the right circumstances, it’s great. This doesn’t mean Hersh dislikes playing live. To make it happen between us is finishing a chemical process.” Even though she admits she can sound esoteric, Hersh is genuinely sweet, funny, and self-aware, careful to distinguish what she considers herself (a musician, creating art for listeners) versus what she doesn’t consider herself (a performer). “I’m just focused up there,” she said. “People say to me, ‘You might as well be typing.’” The self-described “musical commie” recognizes the fickle nature of song ownership–not even in terms of the way people purchase or don’t purchase music, but in the way people interpret it. “I have so much respect for the listener who brings their own substance to the soundtrack and adopts it,” she said. “It’s the highest honor for me. Or, as she puts it, “People who don’t get paid.” We spoke from San Francisco, where she was for a week, not only doing shows but loads of press for podcasts and blogs like this one. “I’ve probably sold millions of records, but it’s taken me millions of years.” The rock singer-songwriter, known for her bands Throwing Muses and 50FOOTWAVE as well as her solo career, wants to engage with people who care. “I’ve been a musician since I was 14 and not because I sold a million records when I was 18,” Kristin Hersh said to me over the phone last week.

Kristen hersh put me in that box