After Paris it’s the most romantic city I know and having enjoyed Montreal in every season, I guess I’ll have to go with a delightfully mild (late) spring weekend in envisioning today’s selection.  That’s the scene, as for the time… here’s hoping that you too have experienced one of those occasionally beguiling phases that have little to do with age and everything to do with endorphins and “joie de vivre.”

Few have been more adept at capturing joie de vivre (along with its sibling, “sweet sorrow”) than the McGarrigle Sisters, Kate and Anna.  Raised in a mixed English/French Canadian (and highly musical) family in the Laurentian village of Saint-Saveur-des Monts, they began performing publicly in the mid-‘60s, while Kate studied engineering at McGill and Anna was an art major at Ecole de Beux-Arts de Montréal.

They also began to write their own songs, some of them covered by artists as varied as Judy Collins, Nana Mouskouri, Billy Bragg, The Corrs, Maria Muldaur, Elvis Costello and Emmylou Harris. It was one song in particular, “Heart Like a Wheel” that was covered by Linda Ronstadt on her 1974 album of the same name that at long last landed the McGarrigles their first recording contract.

The result was their 1975 self-titled debut album, “Kate and Anna McGarrigle” which led off with today’s selection and amongst its 12 tracks included their own version of “Heart Like a Wheel” as well as (Kate’s then-husband) Loudon Wainwright III’s “The Swimming Song.”  The album was chosen by “Melody Maker” as the best record of the year.

Through the next 30 plus years (until Kate’s death from clear-cell sarcoma at the age of 63) the McGarrigles would release another nine albums, some in English, some in French, with the later recordings occasionally including Kate’s singer/songwriter children, Rufus and Martha Wainwright.

And sometimes the McGarrigles would tour.  I was lucky enough to see them in London in the ‘80s and in Toronto in the ‘90s and on both occasions they made the concert hall feel like the front parlor of an old house in Saint-Saveur-des Monts on a Saturday night.

 LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Monday 26 March

Kiss And Say Goodbye

 Call me when you’re coming to town

Just as soon as your plane puts down

Call me on the telephone

But only if you’re traveling alone

Counting down the hours

Through the sunshine and the showers

Today’s the day

You’re finally going to come my way

Let’s make a date to see a movie

Some foreign film from gay Paree

I know you like to think you’ve got taste

So I’ll let you choose the time and place

Have some dinner for two

In some eastside rendezvous

Then we’ll walk

Arm in arm around the block and talk

 Tonight you’re mine


Let’s not waste time

 I do believe the die is cast

Let’s try and make the nighttime last

And I don’t know where it’s coming from

But I want to kiss you till my mouth gets numb

I want to make love to you

Till the day comes breaking through

And when the sun is high in the sky

We’ll kiss and say goodbye