Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

Several years ago, I was contacted by a Montreal man named Peter Weldon who asked if I’d like to hear an unreleased 1969 recording of Kate and Anna McGarrigle’s original folk group, the Mountain City Four, singing the music of Wade Hemsworth with the composer himself. Absolutely, I told Weldon. I’d long loved Hemsworth’s songs and was excited to hear anything unreleased that included the wondrous McGarrigles. The Mountain City Four had begun when Weldon and another musician, Jack Nissenson, recruited the younger McGarrigle sisters to join them in song (I have a personal connection with Nissenson, but more on that later). Soon, the MC4 were packing coffeehouses as stars of Montreal’s burgeoni...

Before they became the darlings of the folk scene and the revered singer-songwriters behind such classics as “Heart Like a Wheel” and “Talk to Me of Mendocino,” Kate and Anna McGarrigle performed in a little-known Montreal singing group. It was the early 1960s and coffeehouses were springing up everywhere, filled with earnest folksingers and attentive audiences. The McGarrigle sisters were just teenagers when they joined musicians Jack Nissenson and Peter Weldon in 1962, calling themselves the Mountain City Four. “We entered into the folk scene through the records of Joan Baez and Bob Dylan,” Kate recalled. “But when we met Nissenson and Weldon, they introduced us to music at the sources and...

From the beginning, Rufus Wainwright’s star has shone brightly—almost blindingly so—in pop’s pantheon. His 1998 self-titled debut drew him comparisons to Stephen Foster and Cole Porter, while later albums were hailed for their wit and opulence. Openly gay, Rufus has never been a wilting violet. The son of songwriters Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle, he grew up in a matriarchy after his parents divorced, with his mother, grandmother, aunt Anna and sister Martha and surrounded by music. “Emotions were always high-pitched in our house,” Rufus once recalled. “Breaking down and crying was almost mandatory.” Channeling those emotions helped to give Rufus’ career an extraordinary trajecto...

Folksinger Kate McGarrigle left a deep musical legacy both in recordings with her older sister Anna McGarrigle and in her two children, singer-songwriters Rufus Wainwright and Martha Wainwright. Kate and Anna McGarrigle were revered for their heavenly harmonies and sensitive love songs, made famous by the likes of Linda Ronstadt and Maria Muldaur. Lavish praise greeted the Montreal duo's arrival in the mid-1970s, with the British and American press citing the intimacy of their voices and honesty of their songs. Along with critically lauded albums, the McGarrigle sisters each gave birth to musically talented offspring. Kate McGarrigle grew up bilingual, but, in many ways, music was her first ...