Kate McDonnell- Upside Down and Backwards by Richard Cuccaro
I think it was back in '98 when I first saw Kate McDonnell in a showcase at the
Northeast Folk Alliance. She was a playful, mischievous imp, joking with her
admirers in the audience and playing the guitar in her trademark style, upside
down and backwards, the treble strings on top. Her fingerpicking, crisp and deft,
was a thrill to listen to. Her voice clear and sharp, spanning both alto and soprano
ranges was spellbinding. A raven-haired beauty of Irish descent, her vocal tone is
reminiscent of Joan Baez. There's also a bit of Joan in her sustained vibrato. Personally,
though, I get more emotional coloring in Kate's expression. The writing is on a par
with the best, anywhere. Joan would do herself a favor to cover a few of Kate's songs.
Somehow, over the last couple of years, careening from one feature artist to another,
I hadn't seen Kate perform in a while and had missed hearing her most recent work.
After an interview, she sent her most recent CD, Don't Get Me Started.
Produced in 2001, it came on the heels of the dissolution of her marriage and is a distillation
of the feelings she went through. There is a majesty in how she explores the range of emotion
without getting maudlin. Before, I'd found her performances and recordings to be amazing,
but this body of work is staggeringly beautiful. Smartly produced by guitarist Scott Petito,
this surpasses her earlier work.
The sound came wafting through the earphones, nice and clear. Hearing her is at once a soothing
balm and a tugging at the cables of memory. A floating vision hanging in the mind. As with her
earlier work, it reflects the true story of her life. There are singer/writers who try to project jaded
sorrow and it doesn't come across. This writer's work encompasses irony, humor, regret and rebirth
with aplomb. She delivers.
Exploring don't Get Me Started, first we encounter her rage at the initial confrontation with disillusion.
The title track is painted in slow, bold strokes:
"Lucky girl, they used to call me lucky,
our house was as nice as nice can be.
Lucky girl, you should have seen our dishes,
and how they broke on the day he broke with me."
With brutal honesty, she explores both sides, her touring and her husband's getting left behind:
"I could say, my dreams were so tempting,
you could say, you just can't leave a man alone."
Then pondering about the disconnection to life in:
"Oh, it's been so long since I walked out in the rain, but don't get me started."
And, "Could be me, could be him, could be me…"
She moves on to "Give it Back," a feisty, rapidly strummed bluegrass number based
on a poem by Dorothy Parker.
"Oohh, give my heart, give it back to me.
You don't know how to use it, you already rammed it up a tree."
She follows that with "Gone," a slowly strummed, stately presented scene of departure worthy of
Steinbeck or Hemingway:
"Well, the first time I pulled into town, I stopped at a hill and looked below, (and I said)
if there's a god, then I wanna know, how can death go so slow?
…who the hell am I to say what's better, everyone takes what life gives.
You might make some sense from it. Everybody dies, but not everybody lives.
Well, I'm gone, yes I'm gone, oh, I'm gone."
And there's a lot more in there for the listener to savor.
In the next track, "You're Wrong," she talks to her ex, levelly setting matters straight:
"I walked all through my mind, searching for a clue,
finding all the sticks and stones that I had thrown at you.
I can't say you were wrong to go,
but if you think that I'll never forgive you,
if you think that, you're wrong."
The track after that, "Toss it to the Wind," is a soft heartache, gently evocative of
the sorrow in the loss of someone. There is an elegance in the choice of melody
and the sound of Kate's voice and her fingerpicking.
"Maybe you know a better way to care for my heart.
But it's too late, you should have tried that from the start.
Oh, let's toss it to the wind,
let's toss it to the raging sea, and let's toss it to the wind."
Kate's feisty, mischievous nature comes bounding back in the next track, "Sticky Buns."
She feels strong enough to appraise the opposite sex once again and give them
some consideration. The title is a tribute to that part of the male anatomy most women
seem to regard in an unabashed, frank manner.
There are a number of other double entendres in there as well. She sings:
"Sticky buns, ain't nothin' sweeter,
sticky buns, I'd steal one from Paul to pay Peter.
Sticky buns, it's worth a lick… I commit to that stick."
The album then reaches into memories of her childhood and the foundations of her life,
with "Take Me Home." The connection is completed by the song that follows, the traditional
"Banks of the Ohio," where Kate is joined by her multi-talented family.
One of the pluses that characterizes her is that she handles both contemporary and traditional
material equally well. "Will You Be Leaving" is a song which has a traditional sound and
Kate fills it out like a snug pair of jeans.
The album concludes with an unlisted track that offers a glimpse into what the Mcdonnell
household sounds like after a holiday meal when they all gather 'round to sing. With the tape
rolling, Kate laughingly coaxes the family members to join her in a number.
"Are you ready for another one?" We hear someone say, "Can't Dad just do the tuba?"
Her father expresses some misgivings, saying first, "Let me outta this damn thing!" and
"Let's sing a John Wayne Cowboy song," then, "I don't think you ought to use this song… I don't like it!"
She pushes forward and they all join in a rousing version of "My Little Darlin'."
Get this CD as soon as you can. Get it in the CD player and leave it there. Get acquainted.
Beginnings
Her musical roots extend from her family. Her mom played the piano by ear and her father
sang in operettas. Her grandfather on her mother's side was a trumpet player. According to
the bio on her website: "It all started at the age of four. Kate was rummaging through her
mother's "VINAL" record collection, landing on "Joan Baez 5." The record went on the RCA Victor,
"Mom!!! I wanna do that!" she exclaimed.
She got out her mother's old Gibson and placed it on her lap &endash; the wrong way &endash; and started making
up her own chords. Although right-handed, she continued to play the guitar in a position opposite of
the standard and she still does that today. In the third grade, she played Silent Night for her class, and
would often play during "show and tell."
Her parents bought her first guitar for her when she was 10 years old. It wasn't the most expensive model.
In her heart, she always longed for a Martin. When she was in high school, she made this fact known to
her father. Since money was not in great supply, her father put the desire in the following perspective:
"Kate, do you want a Martin, or do you want to go to college?" She replied: "I want a Martin!!"
Complete with finger wagging, he retorted, "You're going to college!!"
In junior high school, she discovered guitarists such as Leo Kottke and John Fahey. Later on, she became
a fan of Alt-rock guitarists such as Yes's Steve Howe. At one point a luthier showed her how to play
"Little Martha."
In high school and college, she was joined by her twin sister Anne to form the duo "Katie and Anne McDonnell."
Kate handled the guitar and lead singing for the most part while her sister provided harmony.
The Career
Kate graduated college in 1983 with a B.A. in English Literature. She moved to Connecticut in 1985 to
tackle a variety of "real jobs" such as editing and AIDS work. She returned to performing in 1989, as
one half of the duo McDonnell-Tane (Fred Lefkowitz). They were good enough to open for people
such as Bob Dylan, Suzanne Vega, Kathy Mattea, Willie Nelson, Judy Collins, Leo Kottke, and Arlo Guthrie.
Kate started her solo career in 1993. She released her first album, Broken Bones, in 1994 She was voted
#1 singer/songwriter in New Haven, CT, where she was residing, appeared as a New Folk Finalist at the
Kerrville Folk Festival was a finalist at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival Showcase, and performed about
100 gigs a year. Kate's songs began to appear on CD compilations in the U.S. and in Europe, and she
was invited to be a guest vocalist and guitarist on several recordings, as well.
Sing Out! Magazine honored Kate's "Ordinary Man" from Broken Bones as an example of a classic folk
song. "Falling Down," from the same album, with its country blues flavor and Kate's crisp picking might've
been given some strong consideration.
In 1998, Kate released her second solo CD Next, the time that this author made her acquaintance.
There are some very striking songs on this album. "Baltimore" is a showpiece for her driving fingerpicking
style and grew out a momentary glimpse from a train window, of a man down on his knees in an alleyway.
"Enola Gay" is a portrait of her encounters with a childhood bully, brutally stark, yet, in the end, compassionate.
"Looking Down For Looking Up" is another direct look at small town lives. In 2001, as stated, she released
Don't Get Me Started.
In 2002 Kate was the grand prize winner as "Best Performing Songwriter" at the first Mountain Stage NewSong
Festival, held Aug. 9 to 11, 2002 at the historic Claymont Court estate near Charles Town, West Virginia. Kate
won for her performance of her original tune "Go Down Moses." She was the last of 99 performers on the contest stage.
Today, she lives with a new significant other, and things appear to be moving smoothly. Given the hard road to
success, though, there'll be plenty of angst to provoke new song material.
And politics? Well… don't get her started! …Oh, hell, Let's!
Kate will be appearing at Falcon Ridge Folk Festival in the Friday Afternoon Songwriter's Showcase.
She'll also be appearing at the Watchung Arts Center in Watchung, New Jersey at 8pm on July 31st
and at the Triad Theater on W.72nd St. in New York City on August 3rd.
Check her web site at www.katemcdonnell.com for updates.
Kate with this month's co-feature Pete Granata
at the 2003 Falcon Ridge Folk Festival
Pete Granata- About Guitars and Giving Something Back by Richard Cuccaro
If you've been to Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, you've probably seen Pete Granata. The booth for
Granata Guitars is situated between the main stage and the workshop stage next to the phone booths.
A skilled craftsman, Pete is nevertheless quite rugged. Toward evening, as the air of the Adirondacks
slides into a chill, he'll hang around in just a tee shirt while the rest of us are donning our sweatshirts
and jackets. Every year, Pete builds a guitar to be raffled off at Falcon Ridge. The festival pays for
the materials and then they get the proceeds from the raffle. His guitars start at $2500. The money
from the raffle probably goes a whole lot higher than that. There are one or more guitars at the booth,
including the one to be raffled off, for people to try out. Some of the better players in the list of performers
will stop by at times, to tickle the frets. That's always fun to listen to.
He believes in giving back to the community that brings him the music he loves. In lieu of a standard donation,
he also built a guitar for WFUV-FM for them to hold a benefit auction. "They got a lot more out of that than
what I could afford to donate in cash," he says.
The Path
Pete's love of guitars had its beginnings in high school when he taught himself to play. He heard
"Teach Your Children" by Crosby, Stills Nash and Young and thought, "I have to learn that." So he did,
along with some Jackson Browne and a few more.
After high school he spent two years in college studying business and then worked for his father in an
insurance office. He says, "I spent the whole day staring out the window. That was where I wanted to be… outside."
He then moved to Colorado and followed a course of action most of us would die for. He did carpentry, lived
with a bluegrass band, jammed every day, and did sound for them. He also went to school for a year to learn
Recording Engineering. He also met his wife, Mary out there (Mary currently books gigs for Cliff Eberhardt,
Louise Taylor, The Kennedys, Karen Savoca/Pete Heitzman, and Liz Queler. -- www.granataagency.com).
You might say Pete hit a grand slam.
When work dried up in Colorado, Pete and Mary headed back east to New York. Pete looked for work as a
recording engineer. He said, "I wanted to become the next Phil Spector." Before that could happen, something
else intervened.
While attending a concert at the Bottom Line, in 1988, he listened to the sound of the guitar being played and it
floored him. He found out the name of the luthier, Jim Olson, and began a campaign for a chance to work with
him, making phone calls. At the same time, having found that it was possible to actually make a guitar, did just that.
To start, he bought a kit. He says , "It came out OK…" not really up to the standard he was seeking and certainly
nowhere near his standards today. "But," he says, "I still play it and people still offer me money, trying to buy it."
Not for sale.
The Jump
On his web site, www.granataguitars.com, he offers a more detailed description of how he evolved into a full-time luthier:
"I began building guitars in 1989 in a small (152 sq. ft.) one room shop. I became obsessed with the art after having
seen an instrument built by James Olson. That's how I came to realize that an individual maker could make an instrument
far superior to the factory built jobs I grew up with."
"After about four years of experimenting, visiting local factories and shops, and several phone calls to Mr. Olson, I began
to see my own instruments rise to the level of quality I so admired in other handmade guitars. Sales began picking up and
I was proud to show my work and call myself a luthier."
"Since then I've developed some of my own philosophies on guitar building, what they should sound like and what
they should cost. I built a new shop (1500 sq ft) which allows me to explore all these things."
The Giving Back
His desire to make a contribution extends to building web sites. When he first began attending concerts at
Tim and Lori Blixt's Cabin, attendance was sparse, so he built a web site for them. Now artists regularly play
to a full house and many shows are completely sold out. He also built a web site for the Victorian Mansion in
Middletown. Though someone else handles that now, Pete was there first.
He believes that there are a vast number of people "who don't realize that there is viable music being made
for adults. Whenever possible, we should all offer to take somebody to a live show, or babysit for them so they
can see a show for themselves."
Pete continues to get up every morning and head for his workshop, a barn-like structure behind his house.
His list of clients includes Cliff Eberhardt (regular and resonator), Cheryl Wheeler and Eric Taylor. He lives
up to the philosophy he believes is shared by luthiers everywhere: "Factories build guitars… we build instruments."