INTERVIEW: Melissa Auf der Maur Details New Memoir “Even the Good Girls Will Cry”
03/19 @ Basilica Hudson
Patty Schemel and Courtney Love onstage, 1995. © Melissa Auf der Maur
“I feel like it's my duty as a human and as a mother to be clear with what I witnessed, because I want to be able to live with myself.”
Proud Hudson, NY resident of over 18 years, co-founder of Basilica Hudson, multidisciplinary artist and former bassist of Hole and Smashing Pumpkins, Melissa Auf der Maur, is releasing her memoir Even the Good Girls Will Cry reflecting on ‘90s music, culture and women in rock. The book is out March 17 (her birthday) and Auf der Maur will host a reading, signing and DJ set at Basilica Hudson on March 19 as part of an international book tour.
Through this book and reading tour, Auf der Maur questions: “What was lost? What can we get back? How analog are we? How can we make a liveable future, informed by the past?”
Auf der Maur has engaged these questions locally through her work over the past 15 years, establishing Basilica Hudson as a space for local Hudson Valley independent artists and arts lovers to create a community that respects analog values and deep human connection.
“When we started Basilica, that was in response to what I knew was coming since 1999,” Auf der Maur says. “In the early Basilica, around 2010, we had signs on the door saying, ‘Consider leaving your phones in the car.’ We were trying to get people to keep hold of the analog world then, and still are now.”
Basilica is the biggest building of its kind in Hudson. With a population of only 7,000 people, Basilica brings 20,000 to Hudson every year. When Auf der Maur moved to Hudson, she joined the Capital Region Economic Development Council to further support a thriving, sustainable arts community in the Hudson Valley.
“That's what Basilica still stands for: [non-corporate] music festivals, communal sharings, farm and flea markets, and just small, local, real life, but on a big scale.”
Auf der Maur explains how lessons learned in the ‘90s have informed how she approaches running Basilica with her husband — co-founder and filmmaker Tony Stone — as a place that supports experimental, multi-disciplinary artists who are also conscious people against corporate greed.
“How I have built my life in Hudson is a real reaction to what I experienced in the ‘90s when I saw a tiny, intimate underground scene being bought and owned by some of the biggest media companies in the world,” Auf der Maur says. “I feel like it's my duty as a human and as a mother to be clear with what I witnessed, because I want to be able to live with myself.”
In the memoir, Auf der Maur recounts her upbringing in Montreal that pushed her into the arts and music, her almost overnight fame playing Reading Festival as only her seventh ever live gig, losing herself after the death of her father and the emotional toll from the pressures of the music industry.
“Everybody needs to lose themselves to find themselves further,” she says. “I am very proud of how well, and how long I protected myself. It was the loss of my father that broke my final forcefield layer, but that's normal. Death is an opportunity to lose yourself so you can rebuild.”
Auf der Maur flew to Seattle to join Hole at 22.
“My greatest teacher was my 22 year old self. I believe that every young woman has access to clarity of who they are — do not lose that. People will try to take it from you, loss will stomp it out of you, but even in all that loss and grief and confusion and temptation and love and heartbreak, I still got out and took care of myself,” she says. “Because I trusted myself and I still trust myself.”
The memoir is deeply personal, but Auf der Maur also sees it as a broader cultural reckoning with the global changes that happened from 1991-2001 as the world shifted from an analog to a digital society.
“I wrote this to unpack, move on, and heal, especially for my [14-year-old] daughter River,” she says. “The '90s were a very heavy time for me, but also for our generation. Gen X watched the world change, and the world as we knew it never really recovered after 9/11 and Y2K. We saw the rise of capitalistic greed and we couldn’t stop it.”
To coincide with the release of Even the Good Girls Will Cry, Auf der Maur will also be digging into her extensive photography archive. Despite having access to such materials, she tells me she did not consult any of her photos for assistance with writing the book.
“I wrote this 99% by heart. I think it's because I was a documentarian at the time that my memory logged it all, perfectly intact. [The writing] could not stop coming out of me for a year straight.”
Her photographs will be presented as a photobook, My ‘90s Rock Photographs, and exhibition in September at The Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, with the possibility of the exhibition touring to Hudson and internationally. Auf der Maur explains the memoir to be the "mission statement” and the photobook as a more “impressionistic” version of the story.
Auf der Maur will also be making a bass-centered score to go alongside the photo exhibition, referencing some of her 4-track demos from the ‘90s. For her, this is an exciting multimedia element to work with and a way for her to return to making music.
“A big part of the writing of the book was trying to reconnect with the purity of my young self that was so determined to bring music into my daily life… a more innocent place of music,” she says. “My relationship with my bass has always been beautiful, but the environment that it's been in has not been. I needed a master cleanse, and now I'm going to find my way back very subtly.”
Auf der Maur also recorded backing vocals for Courney Love’s new album set to release later this year.
“Our friendship is the best it's ever been. I've never been closer to her. We are just cheerleading each other on. It’s so healing, so beautiful.”
Self-portrait at Chelsea Hotel, NYC, 2001. © Melissa Auf der Maur
On March 19, Auf der Maur will present this book in conversation with fellow Hudson resident and Oscar-nominated casting director Jennifer Venditti, a longtime friend and the godmother of Auf der Maur’s daughter.
To make things even more personal, her daughter and her friends will be a part of the Basilica production by reading from the book, working the door, and selling books which Auf der Maur felt was a way to empower teenage girls at this event.
These values of anti-capitalist greed and empowerment being at the heart of Basilica are even more important now after Hudson experienced a dramatic cultural and economic transformation as the result of an influx of wealthy newcomers during COVID.
“[Post-COVID] Hudson is too fancy and too expensive for anything, but Basilica isn't. We are an affordable alternative culture,” Auf der Maur says. “I do not want Basilica to be overshadowed by the ‘fancification farm-to-table’ rest of Hudson.”
“Our forward facing public events are a commitment to keep independent music, and independent artists going. Whether you're a candle maker or a weird music maker – that is why we built Basilica.”
Basilica recently partnered with Bowery Presents to manage bookings which is sure to be an exciting partnership to bring more independent and alternative artists to the Capital Region. Basilica is committed to supporting alternative music acts as well as local farmers and artisans through Basilica Farm and Flea markets held three times each year, featuring regional vendors and local farm-fresh foods.
A reading for Melissa Auf der Maur’s memoir “Even the Good Girls Will Cry” will be held at Basilica Hudson on March 19 at 7 pm in partnership with The Golden Notebook. A book signing and DJ set from Auf der Maur will follow. Tickets via this link.