A band room in a pub the size of Adelaide's Grace Emily Hotel is somewhere you would not usually see an artist of with a performing career as long as Kristin Hersh (13 March).
Originally forming her band Throwing Muses at 14, then releasing recordings both with that band for 40 years and under her own name, Kristin has deliberately avoided following a career path that goes against her principles.Since her breakthrough with her 1994 solo debut 'Hips And Makers' and hit single, 'Your Ghost', she has decided to avoid the traditional music business plan as much as she can, with regular live gigging primarily how she makes a living.
Local supporting act Alana Jagt, in a complementing performance that doesn't happen all that often, refers to herself several times as the "warm up", awkwardly attempting to get a crowd cheer for the headlining Kristin Hersh.
Alana acknowledges the copy of Kristin's memoir 'Rat Girl' at her feet and comments she has brought it to get autographed later.
Kristin's pared down, no-frills performance has her perched on a stool playing a single acoustic guitar with little audience interaction for close to 75 minutes. She regales us with a career-spanning set, mostly from her solo releases but including songs from what was once her main band, Throwing Muses, and including book readings.
Hersh begins with a portion of the instrumental 'Sparky' from her 1994 solo debut played into 'Eyeshine' from her last album 2023's 'Clear Pond Road', bookending her solo releases.
She plays a bracket of three Throwing Muses songs, introducing the middle song 'Cottonmouth' as though she didn't even write it, commenting it was written by a couple of drunk woman in a bar arguing with each other while she sat scribbling down what they were saying on a napkin.
Even though we are right in front of her, it's like we are further away, her disconcerting stare cutting through the audience. At times though the show, she looks frail but there's always power in her dry, rapsy voice that occasionally rises to a banshee screech as she plays forceful guitar, demonstrating the power she's capable of.
She sings a song about friend and fellow singer-songwriter Vic Chestnutt, who committed suicide in 2009 ('Flooding') before reading from her book 'Don't Suck, Don't Die: Giving Up Vic Chestnutt'.
The songs and performance may be somewhat confronting and maybe Kristin is aware of that, so she adds a bit of humour to diffuse the tension. She plays 'Sundrops' and 'Shaky Blue Can' without breaking, and afterwards back announces it as "a really depressing sunshine medley".
"In this song a goldfish dies. His name was Freddie Mercury because he had a cool moustache," is how Kristin introduces 'Bywater', and hints at the tragic bus crash where she lost everything while living a nomadic existence with her family on tour.
As the set nears an end, she reads from her book 'The Future Of Songwriting', but clarifies it's really a mediation about songwriting from the past and appropriately follows this with the traditional 'The Cuckoo' ("the only one not about a man getting drunk and killing his girlfriend").
It has been 30 years since the breakthrough 'Your Ghost', appropriately (or not?) left to last to be played in the encore (following 'Your Dirty Answer'). Although in this case, she doesn't leave the stage as the cosy environs of the Grace Emily Hotel doesn't physically allow for this age-old tradition.
This long awaited solo show was a demonstration of one aspect of Kristin as a performer, and with the recently announced end of year tour by Throwing Muses I am very much looking forward to the experience of a full-band performance before the year is out.
