Unforgettable songs from a pair of Canadian sisters

If somebody made a movie, a musical biopic about a pair of highly regarded songwriters who provided material for some of the most popular and influential pop, folk and country singers of the day, they wouldn’t cast a pair of French-speaking sisters from a small Canadian village outside Montreal as the leads. Yet that is the real-life story of Kate and Anna McGarrigle, who wrote songs for Linda Ronstadt (including the title song of her breakthrough album “Heart Like a Wheel”), country queen Emmylou Harris, and Maria Muldaur.

But luckily the McGarrigles also sang and played their own songs. Over the course of 30 years (1975-2005), the sisters recorded 10 albums, two of them sung completely in French. Occasionally they ventured out on concert tours. Kate and Anna McGarrigle’s albums often sounded like recitals from the family living room in the village of Saint Sauveur des Monts, Quebec – folksy blends of pianos, guitars, fiddles, banjos, accordions and harmonicas.

But the songs are unforgettable. The rich blend of acoustic instruments and vocal harmonies showcase deeply felt and incisive lyrics about life, love and family, filled with the insight, passion and inner life of an Emily Dickinson poem. They give life to the joy, sweetness, sorrow and anger of romantic and familial love. “Talk to Me of Mendocino” recalls the longing and reverie of a romantic getaway in the California Redwoods. “I Eat Dinner” embodies the loneliness of divorce.  “Leave Me Be” tells of a parent’s worst fears realized when her child first faces the world alone.

The McGarrigles are considered folk artists. They came of age during the 1960s folk renaissance, and Kate was a part of the scene in Greenwich Village, where she met and married singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III. But even if their musical arrangements employed banjos, accordions, fiddles and guitars, their songs hark to popular songcraft from an earlier era, including Cole Porter and Stephen Foster. In fact, they frequently covered songs such as “Gentle Annie,” “Hard Times Come Again No More,” and “What’ll I Do.” Their vocal harmonies, often including members of the extended family, also harked back to an era of singing old songs in the parlor.

Joe Boyd, who produced the McGarrigles, summed up the sisters’ unique origins and appeal in the liner notes to “Tell My Sister,” a box set of their first two albums:

“(Kate) and Anna have given us a bridge to a sensibility from another time: they grew up north of Montreal in a house with no TV, a piano, and a father who was born in the 19^th century. Her parents and older sister Janie sang in the evenings, and the way to earn approval was to find a harmony part. Yet Kate and Anna resisted being filed under folk, and they were right. They might not have been pop stars, but they occupy an uncharted landscape on the border between Cole Porter, Quebecois traditions, Stephen Foster, and the innocent early years of the folk revival. Wherever you locate it, the heart of North American song isn’t far.”

Kate McGarrigle died  of cancer in 2010, but the McGarrigles' music hasn't been completely silenced. Kate and Anna were/are the matriarchs of an extended musical clan made up of spouses, children and friends and relatives. Kate was mother to singing stars Rufus Wainwright and Martha Wainwright, both children of her marriage Loudon Wainwright III. The extended McGarrigle family has recorded a memorial concert, and various family members are still performing. Rufus and Martha probably have long careers in popular music ahead of them.

Kate and Anna McGarrigle sing Heart Like A Wheel, with help from Linda Ronstadt, who made the McGarrigles’ song a hit in 1975, and Maria Muldaur, who also recorded McGarrigle songs:

"Talk to Me of Mendocino:

   

"Mother Mother:"

It's (almost) beginning to sound a lot like Christmas

It’s almost Halloween, and that means … Christmas season will begin at Wal-Mart any day now. I don’t engage in most of the frenzied lead-up to Christmas. Sometime around Thanksgiving, we’ll put up the tree and string up lights on the eves. If we’re lucky, we’ll send out the family letter before New Year’s. And when I get into the mood, I’ll pull out some Christmas music and give it a spin on the stereo.

In keeping with my listening habits during the other 11 months, I tend to avoid the usual suspects when it comes to Christmas music. Thankfully, there’s a world of great Holiday tunage beyond Bing Crosby, Burl Ives and country megastars. Here are several of my favorites:

The Roches, “We Three Kings” (1990): My all-time favorite Christmas disc is by the Roche sisters from New York City, Maggie Terre and Suzzy. The Roches have made a lot of music over the years, as a trio, individually, or in various combinations with siblings and children. Most of it is folk-tinged songs with close, sisterly vocal harmonies. But, as the liner notes explain, they got their start by singing Christmas carols on the streets of NYC. This disc is just a joy – sacred and secular music from all eras.

John Fahey, “The New Possibility: John Fahey’s Guitar Soli Christmas Album:” This 1993 reissue includes guitarist Fahey’s first disc of Christmas music originally issued in 1968, along with 11 songs from a second volume released in 1975. Fahey is a true original. Fahey applied finger-picking techniques from pre-World War II blues and country music to a broad variety of musical idioms. Beginning in 1959, he made some remarkable guitar music that defied category, yet was utterly distinctive and original. He died in 2001.

Pink Martini, “Joy to the World” (2010): This Portland band, sometimes associated with the neo-swing movement that emerged in the 1990s, actually plays quite an eclectic mix of music that includes a lot of jazz and standards, mixed with original material. On this holiday disc, eclecticism rules, with both American and Japanese versions of “White Christmas;” a Ukranian bell carol; opera; songs from a variety of cultures and winter holiday celebrations; an original composition; and, yes, several Christmas standards.

Kate and Anna McGarrigle, “The McGarrigle Christmas Hour” (2005): Canada’s First Family of Folk, led by (the late) Kate and Anna McGarrigle, gather the clan – children, siblings, in-laws, outlaws – for a festive selection of traditional Christmas songs from several cultures, pop music, standards, and originals. Just surrender and let the vocal harmonies and acoustic arrangements wash over you. Family in every sense of the word.

  

Other favorites from the Ostdiek home:

Wynton Marsalis, “Crescent City Christmas Card” (and its sequel, “Christmas Jazz Jam”)

Carpenters, “Christmas Portrait”

Vince Guaraldi, “A Charlie Brown Christmas”

James Taylor at Christmas

Carols for Christmas Vols. I and II, Royal College of Music Chamber Choir and Brass Emsemble