Entries from March 2008 ↓

I am not a Throwing Muses ’superfan’. I don’t know all the words to the old songs. But I don’t think that takes anything away from Kristin Hersh’s new art/performance piece. In the Queen Elizabeth Hall on the South Bank, Hersh read from her autobiography and accompanied herself on the guitar.

The subject matter is not light. Kristin talks about about being in a car crash, mental illness, being consumed by songwriting. But anyone who has seen her perform solo before will know that she can be extremely funny. After the audience loosened up a tad, we were all laughing. In between extracts, the lights went down, leaving Kristin in silhouette, and she would sing in earnest. Her voice has this tendency to fill a person up with feeling. I think all of us felt close to tears at some point.

So it was with trepidation that we went backstage (thanks to the wonderful Laura). I tried to open a bottle of wine, but was actually so nervous that I needed to be rescued. We ate Kristin Hersh’s chocolates. We chatted with her husband, mostly quite successfully. Then we talked to Kristin. We were not smooth. Here’s a photo of me and Laura posing outside afterwards, with our backstage passes.

My name isn’t that common, so I Google well, as they say. But I recently noticed that another Jess McCabe has popped up in the search engine, and this one is a pastor at the ‘Big Bend Cowboy Church’. You can read about him here.

For some reason I can’t quite explain, this pleases me immensely. Cowboy Pastor Jess McCabe is a “plain-speaking, fifth-generation cowboy from New Mexico”. I am not completely convinced that he will be as pleased to find out that the top hit when Googling his name is a feminist, progressive, bisexual woman from London, England.

He seems nice though:

When asked why he chose Alpine he simply smiles with a crooked grin and says that the Lord made it very clear to him that Alpine, Texas is where he was supposed to be.

And as far as churches go, this one seems mostly to involve roping and an esoteric activity called “wool & mohair“.

Six months. That’s how long this domain name has been sitting around, unloved, waiting to be turned into my new project. But life has been busy. Work has been busy. New projects consume time and energy that have seemed hard to come by. Eventually I realised that you have to make these things happen, so even though I’m not exactly sure what Sugarcrash is going to be yet, I’m starting out anyway.