This is a transcript of an interview that Kristin did for a show called 'No Disco' on Irish national TV. She did the interview on the 21st July 1999 and it was broadcast 11 August 1999.

Interviewer: Why, when you have your members with you now, is it Kristin Hersh - is it because you've written all the material as opposed to it being a band - are the band now like an avenue for you to bring your music to the people?

KH: It's because this is the record we're supporting. The name of the band is Kristin Hersh & Friends and I forget...when we played in New York a few weeks ago and there was a 'meet and greet' as they're called, when after the show you go talk to the press and industry people and it's kind of trying for someone who's shy basically, especially after a show and you're kinda sweaty and you just wanna go home, but I said "C'mon, we got a meet & greet" and they all turned around and said "No we don't - You have a meet & greet" It's like "Oh, I do, don't I? This band is me now!"

Interviewer: It sounds like the band is coming out so much more I feel than the last 2 albums - well 'the band', it's you basically isn't it?! - but I mean the instruments, it almost sounds like early Throwing Muses with you where you are right now, you know? It sounds as if you've almost developed this and maybe in your first 2 solo albums you were a bit shier or a bit more reserved with what you were putting forward and now you've got a lot more confidence and you're just like "This is what I'm into, this is how I feel and this what I'm handing you", you know what I mean?

KH: Yeah, I'm glad that's the effect that it has, because it was very liberating for me to find that I still had access to my sound, even though I didn't have access to my band. My first solo records were me saying "Well, I don't wanna make a solo record - I'll make one if I must and I'll call it my name cause it's just me sitting there", but I thought I had to almost fake a folk chick thing! And that's when I realised that the acoustic guitar was really an unexplored medium - at least for me - and it could be pushed to a certain limit. But there are songs, like these on Sky Motel, which don't take to that format necessarily, that need brighter splashes of colour and a longer cast of characters - almost an idiosyncratic approach to production, putting sounds next to each other in a collage form. So as much as it sounds like a band, it's more a production style....I mean, obviously it isn't a band!, but it isn't even played like a band - it's played like a puzzle.

To create a cohesive sound approach that serves every song on the record without the other people making it happen in the room with you - and still it's not as if bands play live in the studio very often - so the only difference was that instead of biking downtown to find the bass player and say "Can you double this bass line?!", I would just grab a bass and do it, so it only took 2 weeks to make the record and I had very few coffee breaks...

Interviewer: Kristin, you were talking about the more colourful aspect, and it's something that's really predominant in your music, you know in all the instruments and in your lyrics. But also even in all the presentation aswell, everything, like even Strange Angels and especially Sky Motel, all the packaging - it's amazing the quality and the colours. Do you have a fascination with colours?

KH: Chords all have colours in my mind, for some reason, you know F major is green, A minor is aqua, E major is bright red. They all have different colours...and songs do too. Sometimes they'll move through different colour patterns for me. But usually I can go through a record of mine and say "This one I wrote in Kansas, this one I wrote in New Zealand, this one I wrote in New York". This time they were all written in California, so they're a little bit groovy, and the psychedelia on the cover's to go with that! That groovy psychedelic thing that just falls on you when you live in California.

Interviewer: And where did you record the album?

KH: I recorded it in New Orleans, where the Muses recorded their records - this studio called Kingsway. It's right in the French quarter. People think we go there because it's such a great musical place, but I have yet to absorb any of that! - I just keep making the same records. It's just a very homey studio for us. Our friends all live there and it feels like home, that means that you can focus without any distraction on the project at hand.

I definitely would be totally obsessed with music. I'm almost totally obsessed with music now. And sound - just obsessed with that sense. At the same time, children let you know the minute they're born that you are no longer the story. There's no big I in the middle anymore. And nothing that you surround yourself with from that point on is directed towards your ego, which is a great mindset for writing music - it means you're not just spitting out more self expression, you know "This is the way I think and this is the way I feel", which no one needs to hear - no human being is smarter than another human being. But music does have a story to tell and once you realise that you're not going to be using it to feed your own ego, it will start to talk. You know children teach you to shut up, and when you learn how to shut up you can write music!

Your production needs to be very trendy in order to get radio play I find - I mean maybe I'm talking about America, cause that's where I live - but you have to really be playing the game I find, and I've been around for so long not playing the game. And it would just take a big risk on a record company's part to push the success button on my behalf. It would cost too much money in other words, and it wouldn't be a good idea. But that's fine, because when you're in this year you're out the next year, and that wouldn't work for me - someone who just wants to be a working musician. So it's ok, I mean I wouldn't mind having lots of money, but we just realised the other day that I have actually sold millions of records! It's just taken me about 15 years to do it, so that counts!!

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