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A family affair >> The McGarrigle Hour reunites family members past and present by CHRIS YURKIW
Indeed, The McGarrigle Hour unites, or reunites, not only Kate and Anna's families proper but also many of the people who helped them create their first two landmark albums of the mid-late '70s, Kate & Anna McGarrigle and Dancer With Bruised Knees. So of course Kate's budding, singer-songwriter kids are here, Martha and Rufus Wainwright (who, by the way, just had his debut album make Spin's Top Twenty for 1998), along with famous papa and ex-hubby Loudon Wainwright III. But so is Anna's lesser-known brood, including the husband she met while singing in the '60s with the Mountain City Four, Dane Lanken, and their children Sylvan and lovely-voiced Lily Lanken, who might be the next of the clan to break out. Third sister Jane McGarrigle kicks in, too, as she did on K&A's first album, and so does the fourth Mountain City Four, Chaim Tannenbaum, who's also played with Loudon. Ronstadt and Harris make appearances as honourary McGarrigles, for all the K&A songs they've covered over the years, but so does the behind-the-scenes team of producer Joe Boyd and engineer John Wood, who recorded those first two albums. The same photographer/art designer is even on board. So, a unique project--but if you think about it, Kate and Anna McGarrigle have been doing this kind of thing their whole careers, their whole lives even--from singing as kids in their Laurentian living room to seeing their kids turn their own records, as Rufus did with his debut, into what at least visually looks like a family photo album. It just took someone on the outside, famed English folk producer Joe Boyd, to focus this one into a family record album. "Joe was starting to have these feelings that life is short and we have to enjoy it," says Kate, "and it was almost as if he wanted to surround himself with people who were familiar. The songs were secondary in a way--it was more the feeling in the studio." "It was a bit of a fluke that those songs ended up on the record," adds Anna. "There are many more songs that we've sung that we know better." A third of the pieces on The McGarrigle Hour are originals--written by everyone from Rufus to Tannenbaum--but the bulk is quintessential K&A cover material, regardless of its unfamiliarity to them. There are pop-stands by Cole Porter and Irving Berlin ("What'll I Do" teams Kate, Loudon, Rufus and Martha), trad folk like "Green Green Rocky Road," and more contemp stuff like friend Jesse Winchester's "Skip Rope Song." But regardless of the "roots" theme, the family thread still dominates: the choice of songs was inspired by Kate and Anna's mother, Gaby, who died in 1994. "It sort of became songs that everybody knew through her, not necessarily from her," says Kate, "songs that were sung in her house, songs of her era--songs of the century, essentially, because she had spanned the century." "We could have made a record like this ourselves a long time ago, with family and friends," says Anna. "Maybe it was just too obvious." Kate & Anna McGarrigle, and family and friends, play Cabaret this Sunday & Monday, December 20-21. Also: Global airs the TV concert The McGarrigle Hour on Dec. 30 at 8pm, featuring all the album participants
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On the surface, Kate and Anna McGarrigle's eighth album, The McGarrigle Hour, would appear to be a unique project. How many folks, for instance, can summon their husbands and children, their siblings and former spouses, Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris(!), and get them all into a recording studio to give concept to their new album--with nary a fist fight in sight?