Kate McGarrigle
I just wrote about our arrival three days ago in Dallas. The low point of the day was when I learned in our hotel room that evening that Kate McGarrigle had died. What a loss! (If you’re unfamiliar with Kate, and her sister Anna, you could learn about them by going to their website. Or see the NYT obituary here.) I stumbled on the news in Rick Hertzberg’s post about her at the New Yorker blog. I can hardly add anything to Hertzberg’s comments, so please have a look, and while you’re there, click on the youtube video he has embedded.
What album in recent decades has more good music than their first, Kate and Anna McGarrigle? A little over 15 years ago, I had the unexpected pleasure of meeting one of the musicians who played on that album: Joel Tepp. He’s on only a couple of the songs, as I recall, but boy is he good. And since his daughter went to elementary school with the daughter of our good friends Andy and Cynthia (whose son, in turn, went to pre-school with Joel), we got to know him. I played Kate and Anna McGarrigle over and over for weeks after first meeting him. I need to dig it out so I can do so again.
