Au Revoir, Kate (2010)

 Originally published as a Facebook Note February 7, 2010.

Kate McGarrigle died a few weeks ago, of liver cancer. The Canadian singer, who formed a duo with her sister Anna, would have been 64 this weekend. She has long been one of my favorite musical performers, a singer-songwriter with a throaty alto and an enviable way with words. Kimberli Maloy calls me a wordsmith, a talent for which I have to thank hours of listening to their albums.

In my youth I spent an inordinate time with rather insubstantial pop music, and the main alternatives among my friends were loud rock and the musical travesty known as disco. Somehow, through all that noise, Kate and Anna McGarrigle kept finding me. I ordered one of those $2 samplers Warner Brothers used to offer, and on it was Kate and Anna's "Walking Song" (written by Kate). It was spare, relying mainly on the vocal and the lyric built around two people going on a walk. And the lyrics were odd, in a way that appealed greatly to my starved imagination. "I'll show you houses of architectural renown/Some are still standing, some have fallen down..." I liked it.

Then in college some friends and I went to album night at White Sox Park. Everyone at the game got a free LP, which seemed to be from the record companies' backfiles. I got handed PRONTO MONTO by Kate and Anna McGarrigle, not exactly high on my wish list, but which quickly became one of my favorite albums. The title is a play on the French phrase, "Prends ton manteau" (Take your coat), an energetic breakup song on side 1. There are slow sad songs, romantic songs, and silly songs--the sexual double entendres of "Side of Fries," and "NaCl" which discusses the ionic bonding process, as a sexual double entendre. I bought their first album, KATE AND ANNA McGARRIGLE, which I later found made Rolling Stone magazine's top 50 something or other, and when I saw them on Letterman in 1983 singing "Love Over and Over," I bought that one, too. We were now going steady. I now have seven of their albums, plus a tape Jeff Grills made for me of "The French Album."

One of the great things about McGarrigle albums, besides the tight harmonies and odd but intelligent lyrics, is that so many of the songs are personal, after a few albums it's like you're one of the family. Their first album has "Go Leave," about Kate's divorce from Loudon Wainwright. Their daughter Martha appears as a bitchy teenager in "I Eat Dinner" on HEARTBEATS ACCELERATING, then reappears as a charming young woman in the title cut of MATAPEDIA. Finally, she appears herself on their energetic album of family and friends, THE MCGARRIGLE HOUR, singing "Allez-Vous-En" and her own composition "Year of the Dragon." Loudon Wainwright's back, too, leading off that album with "Schooldays." Meanwhile, "Song for Gaby" on MATAPEDIA describes their mother's funeral--by this time I would have wanted to be there myself--and reminisces about her life.

The love songs are independent and brave:

"Oh my heart, oh my heart, let us stay together
Oh my heart, together but not tethered, or not too much

Though times seem tough, too tiresome, we still must not succumb" ("Oh My Heart," co-written by Anna, on PRONTO MONTO)

"Let's make a date to see a movie
Some foreign film from gay Paris
I know you'd like to think you've got taste
So I'll let you choose the time and place" ("Kiss and Say Goodbye," by Kate, on KATE AND ANNA McGARRIGLE)

With the notable exception of Anna's "Heart Like a Wheel," which Linda Ronstadt covered, the breakup songs are full of regret but not despair:

"It's my town, But I had to leave it, And head south where the climate is kind
And if the time comes when I'm feeling better, I'll be back with the birds in the Spring." ("My Town," by Anna, on KATE AND ANNA McGARRIGLE)

"Maybe I'll dream of the time
When the world and love were young
Maybe I'll dream of the time
Before I heard your swan song sung" ("Cover Up My Head," a cover, on PRONTO MONTO)

With the exception of the dark HEARTBEATS ACCELERATING, their sense of humor is ever-present without being goofy:
"You ask me what it's all about, I say I don't know
Should you stay and work it out, I say I don't think so" ("I Don't Know," by Kate, on MATAPEDIA)

"I could say love, love, love, love over and over
I could say baby, baby, baby til my tongue spirals out of my head" ("Love Over and Over," by Anna, on LOVE OVER AND OVER)

They recorded few albums over their 30-some-year career, seldom performed (though I have video of them on "Songs of the Civil War" and "Cafe Lena"). But I am darned glad to have made their acquaintance.

"Tristes reves troublent mon sommeil
Et braillent que cet adieu ce n'est qu'un au revoir" ("Pronto Monto," co-written by Kate and Anna)