KATE and ANNA McGARRIGLE: "I keep
reading about us everywhere. What's it all about?", by RICK MITZ
"The point is that we're recording artists, not concert stars."
IN the crackerjack world of pop music, sometimes the box actually contains a valuable prize. If you're really lucky, the box contains two prizes like Kate and Anna McGarrigle. Performing alone, each would be great; together they are like bookends, supporting each other musically and emotionally. When they open their mouths to sing in public--which they don't do all that often-they are one of the hot test sister acts to hit the music industry since the Andrews trio. And although you might not actually have heard the McGarrigles, you must have heard their work. They are well-respected songwriters as well as singers, having written Linda Ronstadt's Heart Like a Wheel and Maria Muldaur's Work Song, among others. From critics they have received praise the likes of which record companies couldn't even buy in the good old days of payola.
"I don't understand it," says Anna, who probably doesn't. "I keep reading about us everywhere. What's it all about?" What it's all about is this:
Anna and her younger sister Kate have been singing together practically since birth (or so it seems) in the most unlikely concert halls-bathtubs, swimming holes, around camp fires. Music is a second-no, third-language to them (they are Canadian and speak fluent French and English), and singing and writing songs are accomplishments as familiar to them as changing their socks.
About two years ago, they cautiously released their first LP, "Kate and Anna McGarrigle" (Warner Bros. 2862), a quiet little album filled with their own songs. With no big promotional push, the album got noticed-and more. It was hailed and huzzahed. It received rave reviews and not a few awards, one of them from STEREO REVIEW (in the 1976 Record of the Year Awards). The sisters became the darlings of the music press and of other performers (Judy Collins and Phoebe Snow couldn't high-tail it backstage fast enough after the McGarrigles performed in New York this year). And no wonder. Kate and Anna are superb musicians and marvelous writers.
Their songs-hybrids of folk, Broad way, and rock-are a Canadian brew of American sounds with a Gallic flavoring. In today's fast-food music establishment, with its artificial ingredients and dangerous preservatives, the McGarrigles provide natural food for the ears, pure, nutritious, delicious.
"We're songwriters, we make records," Anna says. Hot on her heels, Kate adds: "Making records is like going home and weaving a rug. It's some thing we like to do, and it's kind of fun.
I know how to knit; I know how to make jam. Recording is just another thing to do." The analogy is apt. "When our producer came to town to start recording our second album," Kate recalls, "we were in the middle of making grape jelly. We were boiling the grapes down. I just had to finish the jelly before I could start the record."
Anna and Kate see each other all the time, and not just because they live two blocks from each other in Montreal.
They like each other. "We have no sib ling rivalry when it comes to music or singing because we're so different," Anna says. "If we ever do have a fight, it's because we spend too much time together."
Kate agrees with Anna, as she nearly always does. "If we're tired, we have little scream-out matches sometimes, but if our fights last an hour, that's long. I think the best musical combina tions are family combinations because that kind of relationship helps you get a good vocal thing happening." They certainly do get that: not since Donizetti wrote for Lucia and the flute have two beings chirped away so melodiously as the McGarrigles. Their music could be called coloratura pop, and their singing comes across sweetly and sensuously on their albums.
"The point is," says Anna, "that we're recording artists, not concert stars. We made a good first record, and when we got good press, we kind of expected it. We tried to do the second al bum the same way, not any better or different." That album, "Dancer with Bruised Knees" (Warner Bros. 3014), is a continuation of the first one, full of melodies that are both rich and stunningly simple.
The McGarrigles are serious about their albums, but a bit less so about their careers.
Kate: "You know, I think our mother is more serious about all this than we are." Anna: "Yes, she knows who all the critics are and what the rock magazines are. She sends us pep letters. She had
Kate's STEREO REVIEW award on her wall . . ." Kate: ". . . but I took it down and put it on my wall." Anna: "I never think about selling a million records." Kate: "I'd buy a house." Anna: "We have a few dollars, but we're not rich." Kate: "I don't have a car or a maid, but I do have a grand piano." IT is at that grand piano that Kate has written some of her best songs. One of her favorites is on the "Dancer" album and is called First Born Son. "I wrote it," she says, "because in my own life I tend to fall in with first-born males.
Loudon [her husband, the singer/song writer Loudon Wainwright U I, from whom Kate is now separated] was a first-born male, you know. I hate them because their family position is opposite to mine, and they have a tendency to be spoiled. But I guess they also have a lot of pressure on them. It's not really an enviable spot in the family." Do they consider their songs to be feminist oriented? They laugh.
"People see or hear whatever they want to in our songs," Anna says.
"They're all wrong and at the same time they're all right in their descriptions of our music," Kate adds.
"Maybe in a year's time, if we continue along in this vein, they'll find a classification for our music. We write from the intellect, but it starts off in the emotions." Sometimes those emotions flare up, especially when the McGarrigles put themselves against some of the realities of today's record business. They object to the necessities of heavy promotion--the cross-country tours to assure across-the-counter sales in particular.
Anna: "You couldn't even find our first album in the stores. Tours and interviews may help sell records, but it also helps if the record company does something too. Oh sure, they put money up front, but why bother to spend money if you're not going to make a real effort to market an album? "We don't mean to complain," Anna complains, "but there are no lyric sheets included in our albums. That's because they cost two cents extra each, and they charge the artist directly. The company doesn't think we'll sell enough. No confidence." Kate: "You know in advance how many records you're going to sell if they start by pressing a lot of copies." And so it goes. It's their outspoken ness and stubbornness that have made the McGarrigle sisters a bit of dust in Warner Brothers' grooves. It's not exactly the Sisters McGarrigle vs. the Brothers Warner, but the women do take a few nibbles at the hand that feeds them. Warner Brothers tries to look the other way, but, says one employee, "Of course, we're a little hurt.
We've put a lot of time, money, and energy into promoting them. We set up interviews, we give them a band so they can tour, and then they complain in public and everyone hears about it.
----------- "I'm pregnant, but what's so strange about that? I'm thirty-two years old, and I think it's pretty unusual for a woman of thirty-two not to have any children."-----------
It doesn't make sense." Kate and Anna are well known for saying whatever's on their minds in all areas-if you can get them to sit still long enough. You do practically have to tie them down to a hotel chair to accomplish that. Says Kate: "Anna has a tendency just not to show up for an interview or a photo session or whatever if she doesn't want to be there, no matter what the schedule is." Anna: "The company just nags and nags and finally you say 'okay.' Then you just don't show up because you didn't want to do it in the first place." One of the things both of the McGarrigles seem to do with some regularity is get pregnant. When they canceled a major tour last year, Warner Brothers announced that it was because Kate was pregnant.
"That's nonsense," says Kate. "The tour wasn't working out. We were playing in Boston, and I asked our lawyer how much we were getting paid, and it was $240 a week, which was fine.
But then we found out that the record company was paying $4,000 a week to keep the tour going! We felt like little trained performing animals, and we couldn't handle it." Anna takes over: "Then someone brought us a tape of one of our concerts and told us how fantastic we sounded. We listened and then looked at each other and went “oooohh . . .this is what we've been working for?” We were horrible." The last time around it was Anna who was pregnant, and reports drib bled out that this would get in the way of touring commitments. "Ridiculous," Anna announced during their tour last spring. "I'm pregnant, but what's so strange about that? I'm thirty-two years old, and I think it's pretty unusual for a woman of thirty two not to have any children. It's crazy. I'm not a fashion model. Any way, I've worked nine straight weeks pregnant and even longer making the album. I think that now it's just time to come home." Anna has since had her baby, and the McGarrigles are back in the studio working on their third album. Considering the sisters' working habits, the scheduled January release date is by no means firm.
Speaking of coming home, though, Kitty Come Home is the title of a song Anna wrote for their "Dancer" album.
"Oh, it's a lovely story," she says animatedly. "Kitty, of course, is Kate. In September of last year Kate was feeling a bit grim. She was in New York, married, and I was in Montreal. I knew she wasn't feeling terrific-you know, upstairs, mentally. But she sounded so brave on the phone. She was just get ting ready to separate from Loudon then. Mother thought that Kate was de pressed and she asked me to go to New York and cheer her up. So I went to New York and the two of us sat up and listened to the usual set of records opera records, which always make us cry. And so we were crying and it was quite moving." "Cathartic," Kate interrupts. "You see, I'm the kind of person who lets herself get pushed around. When I split up with Loudon, we had an apartment in New York and a house in the country. I kept thinking, "Why didn't I get the house? Why don't I have the car? Why am I sitting in this dingy apartment in Spanish Harlem with two kids and without a car? What am I doing?' But I didn't want to live in the country either because Loudon had lived there all his life-it was his territory." "Anyway," Anna says, continuing her story, "we decided that Kate should come home for a while to get her bearings. So my mother and I went to New York in a rented car and picked up Kate and the two kids-the crib and all the stuff." But what about the song? "Oh, yeah," Anna says, remembering. "When I went home, after seeing Kate all sad in New York, I wrote that song. I remember someone heard Kitty, Come Home and wanted to know why we were making all that fuss about a cat." Kate laughs. "After a while, people were saying to me, 'Kitty, go home.' "THEY laugh together-half-giggle, half-cackle. But they soon get serious again. "You know, I'm still surprised about all the wonderful things that have happened to us," Anna says. "But I don't know how much importance should be placed on this whole thing, just because we're newsworthy now." "I don't consider myself news worthy," Kate says, "although it's nice to have your work recognized." "I think it's also nice that we waited. We wouldn't have been able to do this eight years ago. We have a lot behind us." "We now know solidly who we are and what we are," Kate says.
Then she tells a story that very much parallels their career together in the music business.
"I've been swimming since the age of four. When 1 was a child, I learned to paddle around in ravines and water-holes. Then I went to college. I could swim fine, but I didn't know any of the regular strokes. So they made me take swimming lessons." And did she learn the strokes? What do you think? "I was the only non-form student in the class! Isn't that something?"
----------- In the dressing room after their April "official
New York debut" at the Bottom Line, Anna and Kate greet well-wishers
from the singing sisterhood-Judy Collins and Phoebe Snow.
---
Also see:
BEST RECORDINGS OF THE MONTH: Concerted music: Carl Nielsen's Clarinet, Flute, and Violin Concertos; Elgar's Cello Concerto Vocal: Tom Paxton's "New Songs from the Briarpatch"; Nancy Wilson's "I've Never Been to Me"; two recital discs by Jill Gomez .... Rock: War's "Platinum Jazz".