This Summer

The Celebration of Kate McGarrigle at London’s Southbank in June was a smash hit. We saw ✰s. 5 ✰ reviews. The musical guests were all extraordinary and with Kate’s wonderful songs how could it miss. Richard Thompson proposed the evening in his capacity as curator of this past Summer’s Meltdown Festival and Joe Boyd put the talent together. A wonderful team. There’s talk of another Kate tribute in NYC in the Spring of 2011.

That night, Martha sang ‘I Am a Diamond’, a song that Kate, Jane and I wrote for a musical that never did get produced, and which Kate often did in concert. Martha’s touching performance rekindled interest in this project which is very exciting.

Then it was the opening of Rufus’s very first opera, Prima Donna, at Toronto’s Luminato Festival. The venue was the beautifully restored Elgin Theatre. I hadn’t seen PD before though I’d heard it as it was being composed over the last couple of years. Prima Donna blew me away. It’s a new traditional opera and it’s very very good. I was in tears at the end. Then, Rufus followed this up with his very dramatic solo performance of the songs from All Days are Nights with stark visuals of his heavily-kohled eye (a little more than the Taliban usually apply), opening and closing, opening and closing.

A little while later Martha blew (blowy blog) through town with the Piaf show, Sans fusils, ni souliers, à Paris, her great little combo of Brad, Thomas and Doug augmented by strings, horns and a large choir. The showstopper that evening was a lightly rehearsed version of Les trois cloches that la Môme and les Compagnons de la chanson made famous in the 50s. We still have the old Piaf 78 rpm of it at Gardencourt, badly cracked from years of love and abuse. Martha did her last Piaf show at the Outremont in Montreal last night. We were all able to walk to the gig. Kate always did want to own a theatre. The Mittenstrings: Lily, Sylvan and Kathleen W. did a very nice opener (and play again tomorrow night at the Yellow Door 9/11.) Martha was in top form throughout the Piaf plus we got to hear a couple of her new songs, one which dazed old Naan called 4 Black Sheep in the Night, about driving to a gig in blinding snow (a few years back) They were on their way to the Black Sheep Inn in Wakefield Qc, an old logging town on the dark Gatineau River. This reminds me that Kate brought home 2 freshly shorn sheepkins from West Yorkshire last year. She had gone to the debut of Prima Donna at the Manchester Opera Festival. I ♡ ewe.

Two weeks ago, Rufus invited Janie, Lily and me to join him for The Last Song of Summer, his annual fundraiser for Robert Wilson’s Watermill Foundation in the Hamptons, now in its 3rd year. Kate was his inspiration for this event and she made it to the first 2. Janie accompanied Rufus on Over the Rainbow and we all sang back-up for Rufus and his special guests, Kylie Minogue and Krystle Warren. I wondered if the fact that both their names started with a K affected his choice. It was a lot of fun to sing on Kylie’s dance hits and Rufus sounded amazing in his high register on these songs. He’s got to make a dance recording. And write another opera.

Last year, Kate and I started to assemble some of our unreleased songs (versions in our possession that had not been available commercially) into various compilations. The first of these ‘Odditties’ has now been uploaded to itunes (on the querbeservice etiquette) through the miracle of Tunecore, the indie label’s friend. It should be ‘live’ within the next couple of days. It was in late 2008 that Kate started the querbeservice label, a play on words using her street name Querbes, (s is silent) in lieu of curb, an expression that used to denote fastfood served to your car but now has a more sexual connotation and in this case it’s music served up in your car or wherever you want it. Bon appétit.

Odditties is: a few Stephen Foster songs (but not the versions that are already out on cd), a couple of Wade Hemsworth tunes including Log Driver’s Waltz (different from the animated film), some vintage Kate and Anna, a lullaby for a doll, a studio version of a Cajun tune we used to do live, a very old live version of A La Claire Fontaine from 1976, plus an early 70s living-room demo about a lost cat. The music goes on.