“I can’t believe you can hear me all the way over in Australia!” Kristin Hersh – author of two books, mother of four children and indie darling – cackles down the line as she candidly chats away in the apartment she has just moved into in New Orleans.

“We had the phone line installed two days ago,” she explains. “We’ve only had trouble with it so far. I had a friend call me literally from out in my front yard and I couldn’t hear them! The fact that you’re able to talk to me and there’s no disruptions is so funny to me.”

Minutes later, she’s letting the cable guy in, all the while cheerfully discussing everything going on in her life. It’s said that the best interviews can often feel as though they’re not interviews at all, but rather conversations between friends that haven’t met. This is certainly the case when it comes to Hersh, who is currently in the midst of promoting her second book. Entitled Don’t Suck, Don’t Die: Giving Up Vic Chesnutt, the memoir of sorts details Hersh’s friendship with Chesnutt, one of the truly underrated American songwriters, who tragically passed in 2009.

“I never thought I’d write a book, let alone two,” Hersh confesses. “Honestly, I only wrote the first book [2011’s Paradoxical Undressing] because other people had threatened to do it for me. Some writer wanted to move in with me and make me talk for months on end – I stopped returning their calls. My manager told me that since I wasn’t willing to talk to anyone else in order for them to write a book, that it was up to me – so I did it. This one similarly came about by accident – I was approached to do it, and I’m such a doormat that I immediately said yes. I didn’t entirely mean ‘yes’, though. Just, ‘Yes, I’m interested.’ I didn’t even start work on it until six months later when the publisher called up and asked how the book was coming along. I had to be straight with them – I was like, ‘Yeah, not great!’”

Once Hersh properly began work on Don’t Suck, Don’t Die, however, she found herself immersed in the process of detailing her relationship with the estranged Chesnutt, fondly recalling the bond they shared as perceived outsiders. “I would be up at dawn every morning, ready to go into the past,” she says. “I found it such a beautiful experience. People always make out our lives to be so hard and such a struggle – we honestly never saw it that way ourselves. To us, we were living out our dreams as we played music for people that loved it. The only real sadness that arose from the process of making the book, interestingly enough, was something completely unrelated to it. I was married when I started the book, but I wasn’t married anymore by the time I finished it. It was a time of great sadness and great heartbreak for me – so it was a gift from Vic himself, really, that he was indirectly able to get me through that time in my life.”

Now that Don’t Suck, Don’t Die has been out in the universe for nearly six months, Hersh has had time to fully soak in the public reception to the book. Although she still doesn’t see herself as an author of any particular note (“I’m not a creative person,” she quips, “I think I’m just a weirdo!”), she expresses both surprise and gratitude at the way people have reacted to the stories shared within the book’s pages.

“I was ready for people to bristle at the way I treated him in the book – we were like squabbling siblings a lot of the time,” she says. “We’re supposed to treat the dead like gods, and the way I wrote about him definitely takes the good with the bad. Almost entirely, though, people have been so positive about the book. People that never listened to him while he was around, people that knew him – I’ve gotten to share our story with so many people, and I’m grateful that people have been so kind to this little book.”

Hersh is set to return to Australia this coming April, performing several headlining shows around the country and joining the party at The Gum Ball Festival in the Hunter Valley. At her headlining dates, Hersh will delve into her back catalogue – solo, with Throwing Muses and with 50 Foot Wave – as well as readings from Don’t Suck, Don’t Die and a few key covers of Chesnutt’s most beloved songs. Australia has been oft-described by Hersh as her second home, and she makes it clear exactly why this is the case.

“I think the reason my kids and I love New Orleans so much, in fact, is because it reminds us of Australia. The green of the cities, the down-to-earth people, that familial sense whenever you’re there – I mean, that’s heaven to us. When I was over there doing the Adelaide Fringe, when my eldest was still young, he actually developed an Australian accent – it was the only way that he could be understood! Honestly, we would never leave if y’all didn’t kick us out as soon as my tour dates run out.”

[Kristin Hersh photo by Renata Steiner]

Appearing at The Gum Ball Festival 2016, Dashville, Lower Belford on Friday April 22 – Sunday April 24, Kristin Hershalso appears at Newtown Social Club on Sunday April 24.

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