The Wainwright Sisters

The Wainwright Sisters are in fact half-sisters, two women with the same father and different mothers, though the three parents involved are all important figures in contemporary folk music, and the sisters themselves were gifted performers of note before they began working together. The Wainwright Sisters are <a href="spotify:artist:67pQ8Yr09zDDzzwWw3EG9R">Martha Wainwright</a> and <a href="spotify:artist:7wozU91V443wj9l0YlISmE">Lucy Wainwright Roche</a>; <a href="spotify:artist:67pQ8Yr09zDDzzwWw3EG9R">Martha</a>'s parents are singer and songwriter <a href="spotify:artist:3loACRmkzdtOMNJEaB6j8L">Loudon Wainwright III</a> and Kate McGarrigle, who performed with her sister as <a href="spotify:artist:7krh6ZjG7i7jvLGiG3YNJF">Kate & Anna McGarrigle</a>, while <a href="spotify:artist:7wozU91V443wj9l0YlISmE">Lucy</a> is the daughter of <a href="spotify:artist:3loACRmkzdtOMNJEaB6j8L">Wainwright</a> and <a href="spotify:artist:2i3jxUiXF9HbbvYfVlxYCL">Suzzy Roche</a> of the vocal group <a href="spotify:artist:2BbwJ8VxAFpJiFr7EHvcCW">the Roches</a>, who was in a relationship with <a href="spotify:artist:3loACRmkzdtOMNJEaB6j8L">Loudon</a> after he and Kate divorced. While <a href="spotify:artist:67pQ8Yr09zDDzzwWw3EG9R">Martha</a> and <a href="spotify:artist:7wozU91V443wj9l0YlISmE">Lucy</a> grew up in different households, they knew one another as children, and like many of their siblings, they developed a love of music and eventually took up music as a trade. <a href="spotify:artist:67pQ8Yr09zDDzzwWw3EG9R">Martha</a> made her recorded debut at age eight on the album Love Over and Over by <a href="spotify:artist:7krh6ZjG7i7jvLGiG3YNJF">Kate & Anna McGarrigle</a>, and she appeared on several projects with her family members before releasing her self-titled debut EP in 1999, launching a critically acclaimed career as a vocalist and songwriter. <a href="spotify:artist:7wozU91V443wj9l0YlISmE">Lucy</a>, meanwhile, originally trained to be a schoolteacher and didn't begin pursuing a musical career until she was in her mid-twenties, when she joined half-brother <a href="spotify:artist:2PfBzriIMRsCXPDtSy9vg8">Rufus Wainwright</a> as a backing vocalist in his live show; <a href="spotify:artist:7wozU91V443wj9l0YlISmE">Lucy</a> released her first solo album, Lucy, in 2010. In 2015, <a href="spotify:artist:67pQ8Yr09zDDzzwWw3EG9R">Martha</a> and <a href="spotify:artist:7wozU91V443wj9l0YlISmE">Lucy</a> began comparing notes on the songs their mothers sang to them when they were young; the conversations led to their first collaborative recording, Songs in the Dark, a collection of lullabies both traditional and unconventional. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi