The adage warns that you can’t go home again, but that’s precisely what Martha Wainwright did, figuratively and literally. The Canadian musician returned to her native Montreal several years ago after a long period in New York, and is now living in the home that she inherited from her late mother, the folk luminary Kate McGarrigle, after she died, in 2010. It is where she and her older brother, Rufus, lived with McGarrigle during their late teens and early 20s, and a building that proved formative in her musical development.
“My mom bought this three-storey apartment when Rufus and I were teenagers, and we each lived on a floor,” she explains on a Zoom call from her kitchen. “I think she was hoping that we would stay forever – but, of course, quickly he went to Los Angeles and I moved to New York. But it’s always been the family home, especially, I would say, artistically. I think we moved in here when I was 17 and he was 19. Each apartment had a grand piano in it at one point, and there was a studio downstairs, and there’s just been a lot of musical activity here.”
It has been strange and comforting, Wainwright says, to return to a home with so many memories. “There are some ghosts of family past, but I think I sort of like that. I’m comforted by it,” she says, smiling. “And I wrote a lot of my first songs here as a teenager and young adult, so it’s interesting to be back and writing songs again in the same space, 15 or 20 years later. And, for me, I think it ties in with the ‘legacy’ factor that has always followed my career and life.” She pauses, a raised eyebrow accompanying a wry grin. “It definitely makes the point.”
Wainwright’s family legacy has occasionally weighed heavily upon her. The musical dynasty that she is a part of – on one side dad Loudon, brother Rufus and assorted members of the Wainwright and Roche families, on the other the renowned McGarrigle folk empire – has entailed a lifetime of rivalry, competition and comparisons. Her most recent album, however, was one of her most brutally truthful and best yet and could go toe to toe with anything any of her (arguably more famous) immediate family members have put out.
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That LP, Love Will Be Reborn, from 2021, saw Wainwright pick over the carcass of her 11-year marriage to the musician Brad Albetta, who formerly played in her band, in her customary fiery, heart-on-sleeve manner. It was occasionally poignant, often angry, somewhat sad but ultimately hopeful; after an acrimonious divorce and custody battle, she is now in a new, stable relationship.
This year also marks 18 years since the release of her eponymous debut album, and she has adjusted her expectations of success in the intervening period. “Of course, we all think about the potential of having a hit and being chased down the street by fans,” she says, laughing softly. “But I think I knew with the songs that I was writing, even at that point, that my place in the music industry was probably not going to be in the commercial, big-selling area.”
Wainwright has never been one to jot ideas down on a daily basis to keep her songwriting muscle flexed; you can probably tell so from her albums, which are habitually fiery, passionate expurgations of what has been happening in her personal life. Life is busy: apart from her two children, Arcangelo and Francis, she owns a music venue and cafe called Ursa, in Montreal.
“One of the things that I’ve had to sort of accept about myself, and that I wish was a little bit different, is that I wish I were somebody who got up in the morning, and went to their studio, and played music all day and was just living this life of creativity and creation,” she says. “But normally what happens is that I go through day-to – day life doing a lot of different types of things, banal things and oftentimes creative things because of work – and then I realise that I haven’t written a song in months, if not longer, and I start to get worried.”
At that point, she says, she has to lock herself in a room and force herself to make time to write songs. “And, usually, there’s a lot there, because I’ve been in contact with people and I’ve experienced things over that time, and I’m filled with anxiety and emotion and love. And those are the things that end up being in the song – which is maybe why some of them are quite charged. Twelve Martha Wainwright songs ... You don’t want to have to write those all the time, because they’re a bit intense.”
The process of writing her excellent memoir, Stories I Might Regret Telling You, which was published last year, also took a lot out of her, largely because it took so long – seven years – to finish.
“I could sit down for a couple of days and write for three, four, five hours, maybe, and get some pages in,” she explains. “But then life took over and there were other things to do. And also, when I was writing the memoir, my life was turned upside-down halfway through it with a difficult divorce. So then I needed to step away from the book, because it became dangerous, because I was going to be in court and all this; it was almost like ‘I shouldn’t publish this,’ because there was too much potential for disaster. But then, after about a year of not touching it – and them telling me that I had to give back the advance – I thought, No, I put a lot of work into this, and I want to find a way to make it work. I can’t be muzzled. I had to be able to tell my story, or part of my story.”
The process, she says, was as cathartic as you might expect; coupled with Love Will Be Reborn, it felt as if she had drawn a line under a difficult period of her life.
“It wasn’t planned in any way, but I think that they both have a ‘light out of darkness’ theme,” she says. “On the record you have these songs that touch on difficult things – separation, divorce – but then you get this sense of new love, of new life, of the second half of life being potentially better. And with the book, too, it sort of goes ‘downhill, downhill, downhill’, but at the end there’s a chapter or two that sort of goes, ‘Well, I’m gonna bounce back, and it’s gonna be better, because I’ve learned from the process.’”
Writing the book, she says, has made her a better person. “Because I had to really examine – through stories, and I hope they were fun stories – certain behaviours of mine and my family’s that, hopefully, will help me make better decisions,” she says. “My parents were maybe not great parents, although they were great people – and that made me keenly aware of some of the mistakes that they made. I didn’t want to make those same mistakes with my kids. I’m sure I’ll make other ones.”
After her forthcoming brace of Irish gigs, in Galway and Cork, she will take a year off to digest all that has happened and begin writing again, to “see what’s there; to discover what the next thing is”. She does plan to mark the 20th anniversary of her debut album in 2025, however, with a vinyl pressing and some kind of rerelease of those songs, which have been restored from damaged tapes.
“It’s also the 50th anniversary of my mother and aunt’s first record,” she says. “Rufus and I own my mother’s publishing, and it’s great that she held on to that – but, also, I feel really strongly about reminding the world of that incredible catalogue. And Anna” – her aunt, Kate’s sister – “is broke, so we’re, like, ‘Let’s try and do something with that, because it’s such an incredible album, too.’”
Wainwright is clearly still ambitious, although she once spoke about wanting to win a Grammy at some point. Does that remain a goal? “You have to be ambitious,” she says. “Otherwise you’d go, ‘Well, what’s the point? Why go on?’” She pauses. “I mean, Grammys for artists like me ... It doesn’t make sense. You have to be a legacy artist to win a Grammy at my age, or it doesn’t fly. It’s a pointless exercise to even think that way or be motivated by that. But ... it’s a scary question for me, because I don’t know. If I really think about how would I, at this stage, achieve more success in some real way, it would take a lot.” She sighs softly. “But you never know what could happen. All it takes is a song – and, of course, my most well-known song, and the song that gets picked up to be in a movie or television show, is Bloody Mother F**king Arsehole. So hopefully I can write another one of those, because that’ll pay the mortgage!”
Either way, I tell her, she seems happy. Making music for the right reasons is undoubtedly better than doing it for fame, glory or riches, surely.
“I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life, and it’s sort of a shocking feeling,” she says. “It’s an uncomfortable feeling, I will say that. And I see myself trying to create problems at all times to destroy that happiness, but it seems to be holding.” She grins. “That’s all you can hope for, right?”
Martha Wainwright plays Galway International Arts Festival on Tuesday, July 25th, and Skibbereen Arts Festival, Co Cork, on Wednesday, July 26th
