A tribute to Kate McGarrigle

Here's some fond remembrances from the Calgary Herald.


'Irreplaceable' folksinger Kate McGarrigle dies

Max Harrold
Canwest News Service; With files from Heath McCoy, Calgary Herald

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Montreal folksinger and songwriter Kate McGarrigle has died.

The folksinger, famous for her collaboration with her sister Anna, was 63 and had been battling clear-cell carcinoma. She died Monday at home in Montreal surrounded by family members, her brother-in-law Dane Lanken said.

The McGarrigle sisters sang in English and French and played piano, guitar, banjo, and button accordion.

"Sadly, our sweet Kate had to leave us last night," said a statement on the McGarrigle sisters' website. "She departed in a haze of song and love surrounded by family and good friends. She is irreplaceable."

Mike Regenstreif, 55, a music writer and producer of the McGarrigle sisters' tours in the 1970s, described Kate as "one of Canada's greatest singers. It was the sisters' wonderful harmonies that first attracted me to them."

Their sound and style had a closeness that reflected their tight-knit family and it added to their art, he said.

Kerry Clarke, artistic director of the Calgary Folk Music Festival, added her voice to a chorus detailing McGarrigle's impact on the Canadian music scene. "(Kate and Anna McGarrigle) were almost like building blocks of folk music in Canada," Clarke said. "(They were) that crucial. And they're so influential, when you get people like Emmylou Harris covering their songs."

Clarke fondly remembered watching the McGarrigle sisters perform at the Calgary folk fest over the years, noting their quirkiness behind the scenes and the magic of their music onstage.

"(Before their set) it was almost like they were a little bumbling and not quite ready," Clarke said. "They seemed hesitant and a little disorganized. . . . Not quite set up. But then they'd do this amazing, mesmerizing brilliant kind of show. There's nobody like them."

In the 1960s, the sisters were influenced by Bob Dylan and Pete Seger and the McGarrigless gwriting had strong appeal. Over the years the McGarrigles' songs have been recorded by Judy Collins, Marianne Faithful, Emmylou Harris and Nana Mouskouri.

Anna's Heart Like a Wheel was recorded in 1972 by McKendree Spring and, as the title song of an LP, in 1975 by Linda Ronstadt; Anna's Work Song and Kate's Cool River and Lying Song were included on LPs by Maria Muldaur in this same period.

The sisters were awarded the Order of Canada in 1994.

Kate McGarrigle was the mother of singers Rufus Wainwright and Martha Wainwright.

© Calgary Herald 2010

Another loss for the folk community

If bad news comes in threes, let's hope Lhasa's is the last remembrance we post for a good long while...

The wonderful artist Lhasa de Sela who mesmerized audiences at folk festivals and other venues across Canada passed away in her Montreal home on January 1, at the age of 37. She succumbed to breast cancer after a twenty-one month long struggle, which she faced with courage and determination.

Throughout this difficult period, she continued to touch the lives of those around her with her characteristic grace, beauty and humor. The strength of her will carried her once again into the recording studio, where she completed her latest album, followed by successful record launches in Montreal at the Théatre Corona and in Paris at the Théatre des Bouffes du Nord. Two concerts in Iceland in May were to be her last.

Lhasa's unusual childhood was marked by long periods of nomadic wandering through Mexico and the U.S., with her parents and sisters in the school bus which was their home. During this period the children improvised, both theatrically and musically, performing for their parents on a nightly basis. Lhasa grew up in a world imbued with artistic discovery, far from conventional culture.

Later Lhasa became the exceptional artist that the world discovered in 1997 with La Llorona, followed by 2003's The Living Road, and 2009's self-titled LHASA. Her unique voice and stage presence, earned her iconic status in many countries throughout the world. She has been described as passionate, sensual, untameable, tender, profound, troubling, enchanting, hypnotic, hushed, powerful, intense, a voice for all time. Lhasa had a unique way of communicating with her public. She dared to open her heart on stage, allowing her audience to experience an intimate connection and communion with her.

An old friend of Lhasa's, Jules Beckman, offered these words:

"We have always heard something ancestral coming through her. She has always spoken from the threshold between the worlds, outside of time. She has always sung of human tragedy and triumph, estrangement and seeking with a witness's wisdom. She has placed her life at the feet of the unseen."

RIP Vic Chesnutt

The Athens, Georgia singer-songwriter Vic Chesnutt died Christmas Day. He performed at the Calgary Folk Music Festival in 1997, bringing his unique take on songwriting and sense of humour to the rapt audiences. He returned to Calgary in November to perform at Calgary’s Marquee Room.

Paralysed from the waist down following a car accident in 1983, Chesnutt expressed that this tragedy helped to focus his creativity. The sense of humility and wry levity in his songs could only have been born out of tough personal experience that elevated his music far beyond the maudlin.

REM’s Michael Stipe produced his first two albums, 1990's Little and West Of Rome. Chesnutt released over a dozen albums, and was considered at the peak of his abilities. His last couple of Constellation Records’s recordings At The Cut and North Star Deserter highlight raw, powerful, fragile chamber-rock elegies.

Chesnutt was a real songwriter who lived his songs and transformed our sense of what true character, grace and determination are all about. As his good friend Kirstin Hersh wrote: “Vic was brilliant, hilarious and necessary; his songs messages from the ether, uncensored. He developed a guitar style that allowed him to play bass, rhythm and lead in the same song — this with the movement of only two fingers. His fluid timing was inimitable, his poetry untainted by influences.”

Hersh has set up a website to raise money for Vic’s family, to cover his considerable medical bills: http://kristinhersh.cashmusic.org/vic.

While insured, Chesnutt reportedly owed $70,000 in unpaid medical bills and had recently been served with a lawsuit by a Georgia hospital. On the Constellation Records homepage, Jem Cohen, a filmmaker and producer of Chesnutt's North Star Deserter vented his spleen at the United States' "broken health care system depriving so many of the help they need to stay around and stay sane, and a society that never balks at providing more money for more wars but fights tooth and nail against decent care for its citizens. Vic's death, just so you all know, did not come at the end of some cliché downward spiral. He was battling deep depression but also at the peak of his powers, and with the help of friends and family he was in the middle of a desperate search for help. The system failed to provide it."

Community remembers Reverend Ron

Calgary's music community is still in shock following the announcement that Reverend Ron, 20-year host of CJSW's The Blues Witness, passed away Thursday Nov 12, after a battle with cancer.

Ronald J. Predika died the night before CJSW made their long awaited move to the third floor of the MacEwan Student Centre, on the University of Calgary campus. The last song to be played in the old space was Ron's theme song, Merlin Johnson's "Down on Easy Street."

Ron was respected by many and his social circles extended wide and far, said CJSW station manager Chad Saunders.

He kept his illness private. People didn't know much about his background because he didn't think it was necessary -- he wanted to know what your thoughts were now, explained Saunders.

"I can recall blues musicians coming into CJSW," he said. "They were welcomed by Ron as if they had been friends for years -- some were and some he had just met."

Saunders first met Ron after a station meeting when they went for a beer in the Den and sat down at the old picnic tables. When Ron asked the server what was on tap, she replied Labatt's Blue.

"Ron pointed at me and said 'That's for young guys like him, that's not my beer.' The server went through all the beers and Ron had a comment on every single one. It was pretty funny," he recalled.

"Then Ron looked at Don McSwiney [former CJSW station manager] and said, 'Let's talk about CJSW and what makes good radio.' For somebody brand new to the station, that was probably the most informal yet most significant oral history lesson on what it took to make good radio. You knew that as long as Reverend Ron was there, it was going to be alright. He was also our good luck charm when it came to the funding drives. He could get people pumped up."

Over half of CJSW's impressive collection of blues discs have Ron's notes written on them. He had an influential hand in defining that library.

"I don't think that anyone who knew Ron here at the station will forget his programming," mused Saunders. "That will live on forever for sure."

It was Kerry Clarke, now artistic director for the Calgary Folk Music Festival, who put Ron on the air for the first time in 1990.

"I invited him to come on a show Suki Davis and I did as a guest," recalled Clarke. "He brought all kinds of wacky albums, including some Hawaiian ones he found in the garbage. Upon discovering he knew quite a bit about the blues, I asked him to do a few shows. He initially just hosted and I teched. I slowly groomed him into taking over the show, [then called The Blues Experiment.] I remember his first few interviews, where he asked artists things like 'do you have a jukebox?' and 'do you eat jambalaya?' which prompted nervous record reps to suggest that I have Ron ask about their latest album and tour."

During the Calgary Midwinter Blues Festival last February, Ron was inducted into the Calgary Blues Music Association Hall of Fame as a Lifetime Achievement award recipient.

Calgary International Blues Festival co-producer Cindy McLeod said they couldn't imagine a more worthy choice.

"His acceptance speech underscored his humble view that he was 'just a guy spinning records,' but to those of us who love the blues, the Rev will evermore be remembered as the man who brought the best in blues to our radios every week for nearly two decades."

Friends and family are invited to a celebration of Ron's life at Mikey's Juke Joint, 1901 - 10th Avenue S.W., at 12:30 p.m. Sun., Nov. 22. All are invited to stay for the following Sunday open jam.

Image caption: Reverend Ron preaches to the masses at the 2008 International Blues Festival.
Image credit: Ken Clarke / the Gauntlet

From Ken Clarke, The Gauntlet, Thursday, November 19, 2009

Festival Hall hits the airwaves

This weekend Jian Ghomeshi talked up Festival Hall and doled out kudos to the CFMF and city hall for working to make new creative spaces. Thanks Jian!

http://www.calgaryfolkfest.com/mp3/festivalhall_CBCQ.mp3

Triple Song Contest winner releases new album.

Three of John Wort Hannam's Ship & Anchor and CFMF Songwriting contest songs are included on his new release. Congratulations John.

Songwriters - the 2010 song contest will be coming soon! We will begin accepting entries on December 15 with new criteria and categories. Stay tuned. (Word is that John will be a judge this year instead of a contestant.)

(PR) Black Hen Music announces a November 17 release date for Queen's Hotel, the latest album of songs from Canadian singer/songwriter John Wort Hannam. The Black Hen Music label is distributed in the U.S. by Burnside Distribution

Queen's Hotel is Wort Hannam's fourth full-length CD and second release for Black Hen Music. His last album, Two-Bit Suit, was released in 2007 and produced by Juno award-winner Steve Dawson, who again takes the helm producing 11 tracks of authentic Canadiana folk/roots music on the new CD. The writing, although true to John's narrative story-telling style, is tighter, smarter, more personal, and with a breadth of subject matter not seen on previous recordings. The upbeat "With the Grain" (a song for which Wort Hannam won Grand Prize at the 2009 Calgary Folk Music Festival Songwriting Competition) recalls the conversation where John tells his father he would quit teaching to attempt a shot at performing music.

"Worth a Damn", a timeless sounding duet performed with multi-Juno award-winner Jenny Whiteley, is reminiscent of a John Prine/Iris Dement collaboration. Despite the title, "Requiem For A Small Town" is a rollicking 3 and ½ minute look at the town that just never quite made it. The poignant but catchy closing song, "Lucky Strikes," was written after a visit to the infamous Queen's Hotel, located near the Canadian Rockies in the Western Canadian province of Alberta. "When I Drink Too Much" (winner, CFMF Song Contest 2007 - ed) is a humorous tune that begs for a sing-a-long in a funky barroom. Wort Hannam also revisits two songs from previous independent releases: "Church of the Long Grass," (winner, CFMF Song Contest 2004 - ed) which has been called by some "the unofficial anthem of southern Alberta," and "Pier 21," which recounts the immigration of Wort Hannam's family from the island of Jersey in the Channel Islands, UK, to Canada in the late '70s.

- from antimusic.com

The festival's international reach

We recently received a great email from Brasil regarding a CFMF sighting...

I must tell someone with the Festival Management about an incidence of amazing synergy involving mind boggling logistics and of course if there was such a thing as coincidence we could definitely use that term...

I am a former CFF goer - my absence in recent summers is due to the fact that I have relocated to Sao Paulo Brasil.

Sao Paulo is a monster city and amongst the 20 million or so residents are counted the largest number of Japanese people in a community outside of Japan. Sao Paulo has a "Japan Town" called Liberdade. There are a few Chinese and Korean businesses mixed in but anyway...I'm with a friend recently she was here on vacation- a Calgarian woman of asian origins and we are poking around in Liberdade. I was looking at some of the wares in this hole in the wall shop including beautiful Japanese pottery and mass produced Chinese dishes , I picked up a blue plastic plate with a cow sporting a guitar around her neck and a familiar logo. I bought it and the mate, for 4 Reals which is about $2.50 CDN. I always returned my plate for the twoonie back home. They now have an honored place at my BBQ here in Brasil and I am still trying to figure out what it all means.
I'm guessing global distribution has something to do with it...

Sincerely & with a chuckle from Brasil ,
Tracy Meier-Ragazzi

Thanks Tracy for bringing this to our attention - you got a steal of a deal!