For many years, acclaimed singer-songwriter and musician Martha Wainwright had been a regular visitor to Australia. Of course, like many other artists, Covid upset everyone’s apple cart making it difficult to tour. It still ain’t easy! Finally, this month Martha will return to our stages with a fabulous band to perform tracks from her latest album Love Will Be Reborn, as well as playing the usual set list favourites and reading some passages from her 2022 memoir Stories I Might Regret Telling You. The band consists of: pianist Edwin de Goeij, bass player Morgan Moore, drummer Tommy Crane and saxophonist Nicolas Deslis.
Australian Musician editor Greg Phillips caught up with Martha via a zoom call (we in Melbourne and she in Montreal) to chat about the upcoming Australian tour (which begins May 8), the Love Will Be Reborn album and her memoir Stories I Might Regret Telling You.
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Back in Montreal, using the basement of the café bar, Ursa, which she’d opened in 2019, as a studio recording space, Martha enlisted a trio of Toronto musicians and, in a beautiful kind of closing of the circle, producer Pierre Marchand, who had produced several of albums recorded by her late mother, singer-songwriter Kate and her aunt Anna McGarrigle, as well as her brother Rufus’s second album poses.
In May 2022, a year after releasing Love Will Be Reborn, Martha published her memoir, Stories I Might Regret Telling You, in both English and French. To accompany its release, she released a digital deluxe edition of Love Will Be Reborn that includes five new songs that she had written about in the memoir, four of them her interpretations of songs written by her family – her father Louden Wainwright III’s Thanksgiving, Rufus’ Dinner At Eight, and her mother Kate’s Tell My Sister and Go Leave. The other track is a “reimagined” version of Love Will Be Reborn.
With the arrival of a new year, it’s time to return to the concert stages of the world with her band – pianist Edwin de Goeij, bass player Morgan Moore, drummer Tommy Crane and saxophonist Nicolas Deslis – to present those new songs, the expanded Love Will Be Reborn and the songs from her storied back catalogue that still mean so much to her and to her fans.
“Similarly impressive was her virtuosic use of vocals as musical shading, adding texture and timbre, effortlessly switching gear between a hushed whisper and melismatic yodel,” Stephen Dalton added in his review for The Standard.
“I can’t deny myself the need to express myszelf,” Martha admits. “As a songwriter, I have to be able to express myself.” And for that, we can all be forever grateful.
MARTHA WAINWRIGHT ANNOUNCES AUSTRALIAN TOUR
TOUR DATES MAY 2024
Wednesday, May 8 – Princess Theatre, Brisbane, QLD
Thursday, May 9 – Anita’s Theatre, Thirroul, NSW
Friday, May 10 – City Recital Hall, Sydney, NSW
Saturday, May 11 – Newcastle City Hall Concert Hall, Newcastle, NSW
Sunday, May 12 – Blue Mountains Theatre, Blue Mountains, NSW
Tuesday, May 14 – The Gov, Adelaide, SA
Thursday, May 16 – Odeon Theatre, Hobart, TAS
Friday, May 17 – Recital Centre, Melbourne, VIC
Saturday, May 18 – Capital Theatre, Bendigo, VIC
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