ATTENTION KATE AND ANNA FANS!!
A wonderful new book published February 2007
Kate and Anna McGarrigle Songs and Stories
by Dane Lanken
160 pages (9” x 11”) of text, articles and lyrics, with 192
illustrations (b/w and colour) detailing Kate and Anna’s lives and
career
— with a songbook of 33 of Kate and Anna’s best-known compositions —
Package price $45 Canadian
Available at local bookstores
or (plus shipping costs) from Penumbra Press phone 613-692-5590/fax 613-692-5589
Kate and Anna McGarrigle Songs and Stories
ISBN 1-897323-03-4
Kate and Anna were born in Montreal, in 1946 and 1944 respectively. They are the second and third daughters of Gabrielle Latrémouille and Frank McGarrigle, the first being Jane. They grew up in St Sauveur des Monts, Québec, Canada, and attended Ecole Marie-Rose, a parochial school run by the Soeurs des Saints Noms de Jesus et de Marie. This order was reknown for its teaching of music and Kate and Anna were fortunate to study piano and solfège at this little country school. Their sister Jane became the church organist at the age of 14. Both parents were musical and they grew up hearing an array of music from the old parlor ballads of the early century to the rock and roll of the fifties. The sounds that some of the local musicians made on rustic fiddles and blown out harmonicas would stay with them and later influence their sound.
When they were 12 and 13 the family moved to Montréal, Québec and during the folk craze of the early 1960s they bought guitars and started to sing with similarly inclined friends, eventually forming the Mountain City Four with Jack Nissenson and Peter Weldon. Both Jack and Peter had a wide knowledge of folk music and instrumental styles and Kate and Anna are forever indebted to them for teaching them some new songs. None of them wrote their own material at that time as they felt it was a risky thing to do with Bob Dylan around. The Montain City Four were big fans of Dylan and attended both of his first concerts at Town Hall and later Carnegie Hall in NYC in 1963.
Kate attended McGill University, graduating in science, and Anna studied painting at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. In 1969 Kate was in New York City with her good friend and fellow musician Roma Baran and she reported back to Anna in Montreal that some of the musicians she had heard at the Gaslight in Greenwich Village were actually composing their own material . Kate thought they should give it a try. From that time on they have been writing songs and Kate and Roma performed some of these early efforts until 1971 when Kate married Loudon Wainwright III and moved to Boston and then New York City.
Two of their songs, The Work Song by Kate and Heart like a Wheel by Anna were recorded by Maria Muldaur and Linda Ronstadt respectively, in 1973 and 1974. Both Maria and Linda had million selling albums and these events led to Kate and Anna making a demo of their songs for Lenny Waronker at Warner Bros. Records. He signed them and their first release, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, produced by Joe Boyd and Greg Prestopino,, was in the stores in early 1976. Dancer with Bruised Knees follwed in 1977 and Pronto Monto in 1979.
In the Summer of 1976, the British publication, Melody Maker, gave their first recording a rave review and named it the best rock album of the 1976. Since that time they have had a loyal following in the U.K. and Ireland. At the same time, Complainte pour Ste Catherine, the first of many co-compositions with Philippe Tatartcheff and the only French song on their first recording, became a hit in Holland and Northern Europe and is still being translated or adapted to this day. In North America, this first Warner recording garnered a ‘best of 1976’ from The New York Times. In the Spring of 1977 they were the musical guests on Saturday Night Live.
The 1970s were a particularly busy time for them. They maintained careers all the while raising their young children. Rufus, was born in 1973, Martha, 1976. Anna married Dane Lanken in 1977 and had Sylvan in 1977 and Lily in 1979.
In the early 1980s they released the all French, Entre Lajeunesse et la sagesse, a.k.a .
French Record. Most of the songs were written with their long-time friend and associate Philippe Tatartcheff. They became known to a wider audience in Quebec through their many appearances on French television, in particular the very popular show hosted by Jean-Pierre Ferland at the time on Station Soleil.
The self-produced Love over and Over followed in 1982-83 and Heartbeats Accelerating, produced by Pierre Marchand in 1990. Matapedia in 1996, The McGarrigle Hour in 1998, DVD version in 1999, with family and friends produced by Joe Boyd, La Vache qui pleure in 2003 and The McGarrigle Christmas Hour in 2005, again with family and friends.
They have made many guest appearances on fellow artists’ recordings. These include: Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt, Gilles Vigneault, Loudon Wainwright, Rufus Wainwright, Michel Rivard, Geoff Muldaur, Nick Cave, Angele Arseneault and Eddy Schwartz.
They have co-written and continue to write with Emmylou Harris.
Kate and Anna, in 1999 and 2000 participated in the 3 tribute concerts to Harry Smith, the eccentric American record collector and experimental film maker whose personal collection of obscure american recordings and accompanying commentary released in 1959 by the Library of Congress are largely responsible for the folk revival in North America.
Kate and Anna appear on the cd and dvd of these concerts which has just been released now in 2006.
Most recently Kate and Anna took part in the tribute concerts of the songs of Leonard Cohen and appear on the filmed version and cd made of these events at the Sydney Opera House in Australia in 2005.
Both these tribute shows were Hal Willner productions.
In 2005, they were invited to contribute a track, La complainte du phoque en Alaska, to Quebec’s supergroup Beau Dommage tribute cd.
As well as performing as a duo with their good friends and fellow musicians, Joel Zifkin and Michel Pépin, Kate and Anna have also toured in the U.K. and Australia with Kate’s son and daughter Rufus and Martha Wainwright and Anna’s daughter Lily Lanken.
In May of 2006, Kate, Anna and Anna’s daughter Lily accompanied Kate’s daughter Martha Wainwright at her 5 star performance (The Independent ) at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London, U.K.
In July of 2006, Kate accompanied her son, Rufus Wainwright in his two highly-acclaimed and sold-out Judy Garland Tribute shows at Carnegie Hall, New York.
Kate and Anna were awarded the Order of Canada in 1994, the Governor-General’s Lifetime Achievement prize in 2004 and a Lifetime Achievement Award from ASCAP also in 2005.
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