Throwing Muses frontwoman Kristin Hersh: ‘I was compelled to make music after cracking my skull open’
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- Kristin Hersh says being struck by a car at 16 — cracking her skull and altering how she heard sound — compelled her to make music, though she believes Throwing Muses would have been "more forgettable" without that concussion.
- Hersh started Throwing Muses at age 11 with no developed sonic vocabulary, later hearing the Violent Femmes' 1983 debut while babysitting for a music critic who told her Gordon Gano was "the male me."
- Hersh first heard the Pixies during soundcheck, initially thought Charles Thompson was a woman, and immediately recruited them to tour with Throwing Muses — a relationship that lasted years.
- Michael Stipe discovered Hersh's leftover acoustic tape and called her about it, ultimately singing on "Your Ghost" from her solo debut — recorded only to fulfill her Warner Brothers contract after she tried to leave the label.
- Hersh credits EMDR therapy with treating PTSD and a dissociative disorder severe enough that band members had to protect her from triggers; she compares the process to "psychological chemo."
- Leslie Langston, Throwing Muses co-founder, left between Hunkpapa (1989) and The Real Ramona (1991) due to a skin condition, returned for Red Heaven, and is only now starting to play bass again — nearly playing on Hersh's upcoming record.
- Hersh's upcoming album 'Sugar on Blackstone' is autobiographical, rooted in her Providence, Rhode Island childhood on Hope Street off Blackstone; the track "Dark Eyed Junco" recalls playing basketball with her little brother to avoid their stepfather.
Why it matters: Hersh frames her four-decade career — and her survival within it — through a chain of accidents (literal and musical): a concussion that made her write, an accidental Pixies discovery that helped launch an era, and EMDR therapy that made continued performing possible. Her new album revisits 1970s Providence trauma, positioning a deeply personal late-career statement as the culmination of the honesty she says made Throwing Muses commercially unmarketable but emotionally resonant.
