Nothing in life is predictable.
Like when you drive to Chapel Hill with Craig and Cross on a Friday night to see Kristen Hersh, and you get there at 9:15, which coincides neatly with the time the opening act has taken the stage every other time you’ve been to the venue, and you’re chatting loudly with your friends as you round the corner into the performance space. And you’re forced to stop, mid-stride and mid-sentence, because there she is, Kristen fucking Hersh, sitting alone on the stage in a chair, strumming a guitar for a rapt crowd of maybe 300 people, all seated.
Yes, seated. In a venue that doesn’t normally have seats. And there aren’t any more seats to sit in, so you sneak into the back, buy a beer for the guys, and stake out a spot in front of a bored-looking sound guy (Craig told me he saw him checking his email on the laptop during one of the songs), near a faceless lady sitting off in the dark who laughs just a bit too loud at Kristen’s between-song banter.
At least Kristen is in top form, belting out solo acoustic versions of (I guess) her solo songs. As much as I like her material, both solo and with Throwing Muses, I’m really only familiar with “Hips and Makers,” her tour de force from some hazy time in the early-90s. So I know she plays “Your Ghost,” sans Stipe, during the main set, and (this one kills me) “A Loon” during her encore set. Predictably, I swoon for those two and listen politely to the rest of the material – all of which is strong but otherwise unfamiliar to me.
Her voice is simply smashing, growly and bluesy but unmistakably feminine. I read somewhere she has four kids (she had just had her first the only other time I saw her [in Boulder, with Patrick! Yay!], with a full band, in support of “Hips and Makers”), which is believable, I guess, but which isn’t by any means apparent from her stage demeanor. She is, pardon the expression, one hot mama. She employs a cute and curious head tic while singing – a slight sideways wiggle timed impeccably with lyrical pauses and stutters – that is irresistibly sexy.
I have a crush on Kristen Hersh, and goddammit I’m not afraid to admit it (and as I stand in the dark by the sound guy that crush is manifesting itself, just a bit too uncomfortably, in a string of drool that has formed on my chin).
But, alas, there is too little of her. We arrived late, after her set had begun, and we saw her perform at most a dozen songs.
The lights go up, we are denied additional beers, we go home.
All too predictably.