Kate & Anna McGarrigle

Born to a French-Canadian mother and Irish father, Kate (born Catherine Frances McGarrigle in 1946) and Anna Ruth McGarrigle (born 1944) enjoyed a small-town childhood in Saint-Sauveur-des-Monts, Quebec, in a home steeped in French-Canadian folk music and timeless American music including the songs of Stephen Foster.

The sisters explain how their careers evolved: “We were taught to sing at home, but mostly we sang because we had fun. It wasn’t until much later, in our twenties, that we began singing together.” While attending university (Kate at Montreal’s McGill University and Anna at Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Montreal), the sisters fell under the spell of the folk-music revival recordings of Bob Dylan and Joan
Baez. They began performing Dylan covers with the folk group The Mountain City Four in 1963 at Montreal coffee houses. There they developed their idiosyncratic guitar- and piano-based arrangements, combining traditional Quebec folk instruments like harmonica, fiddle, and button accordion with Appalachian banjo and mandolin.

The sisters went on to bring this informal old-time sound to their music with songs such as Talk to Me of Mendicino, Love Over and Over, and Cool River. Kate explained, “I think that’s why we have an original sound. We didn’t try to imitate anyone.” After university, Kate left Canada to explore New York City’s folk music scene, as did other Canadians like Ian and Sylvia Tyson. When Kate told her sister that others were writing their own material like Dylan and the Tysons, Anna sat down at the piano, in one afternoon composing Heart Like a Wheel, the song that became their trademark.

Kate then turned her hand to songwriting as well, and in 1973 rising star Maria Muldaur recorded The Work Song on her hit debut album. The following year another rising star, Linda Ronstadt, recorded Heart Like a Wheel on her breakthrough album, launching the McGarrigles’ career as songwriters.

Reflecting on what Heart Like a Wheel meant to the McGarrigles, Kate’s son Rufus Wainwright explained, “My mother and aunt hadn’t planned on being professional songwriters, but when Ronstadt picked up the song, it altered their paths and accidentally led us all [including himself and sister Martha] into a life in show business.”

The McGarrigles became sought-after songwriters – but ones who had not yet recorded their own music.