The Wainwright Sisters: How having children encouraged them to collaborate

The wainwright sisters, Martha, 39, and Lucy, 33, are the latest collaborative combination from the musical dynasty – there is hardly any variation left untried. The half-sisters have performed with their brother Rufus on tour, as well as their father, the American singer Loudon Wainwright III, and sang with their families as children.

Now, following in the footsteps of their mothers, who also featured in all-sister bands (Martha’s mother is the late Canadian folk singer Kate McGarrigle and Lucy’s is American folk singer Suzzy Roche), they are singing together for the first time.

Their debut album, Songs in the Dark, is a collection of dark and wistful lullabies for both adults and children.

The sisters made the record over a couple of days cooped up in a small log cabin in St-Sauveur-des-Monts in the mountains of Quebec. It is part of Martha’s grandfather’s property, where she and Rufus spent their childhoods away from school in Montreal. The cabin was a place in which Martha’s mother always dreamed of installing a little recording studio.

“So for me, it was important to do it there,” says Martha. “It is tiny, with little bunk beds, a toilet and a fireplace. It is very quaint. And my husband [Brad Albetta] brought in a bit of recording gear – just microphones for the voices and guitars – and recorded us in that space.”

The Wainwright sisters only started to spend quality time with each other after Martha’s first son, Arcangelo, now six, was born. “I needed help,” says Martha. “I had limited family in New York. Lucy was the main person who helped me with the baby. She is much calmer than me and it was through this situation that we became closer as sisters. We were not as connected as we wanted to be but we didn’t really realise that until I had my kids and we needed each other. We noticed the parallels between our mums – we never realsied how similar they were.”

Lucy, who has always lived in New York, adds: “Perhaps if we had had hung out a lot beforehand we might have sung together sooner. The idea of the project came out of her having children.”

Their album was inspired by a mix-CD that a friend gave Martha to play at night for her and her newborn baby. “I thought it was really special to share it,” says Martha. “As you are coming into the night-time, it is a hard time when you have young children. I would put it on in the evening to calm us all down. What I liked about the songs, some of which are now on our album, is the slightly negative connotations.”

Other songs on the record are lullabies with a deep family connection; the American folk song “Go Tell Aunt Rhody” was sung to Martha by her mother, who also wrote “Lullaby For a Doll” about her. “Screaming Issue”, a song about Lucy, was penned by Loudon and Lucy’s aunt, Terry Roche. Another song written by Loudon, “Lullaby”, is about his own inability to sleep. Some of the songs, such as “El Condor Pasa” by Simon and Garfunkel and Woody Guthrie’s “Hobo’s Lullaby”, shaped their childhoods. “The End of the Rainbow” – a “devastatingly depressing” song as Martha calls it – was written by Richard Thompson.

“Anybody who knows our work separately would know that, if we were going to make an album, it would probably not be a sing-song kids’ record. It was going to have to take a different tone,” says Martha. “It’s not that I don’t like happy music – it’s just not very reflective of my own music. This seemed a nice way to do an album for adults and kids without changing my music or who I am. Adults and children really should be listening to the same music.”

The Wainwright family see performing as “a chance to be together”, Lucy explains. “These tours with our family members are the meat and potatoes of our relationships.” The singer, who has a teaching degree, says she originally tried to escape her musical fate but then “got sucked back in”. “It is the only time we will see each other – because when we are not on the road together we are on the road apart,” she says. “When you add up the tour dates, we may even spend more time together than most adults in families do.”

Both have been joined by their father on tours, but Lucy has toured with him the most. “I’m not as tolerant as she is,” explains Martha. Both have also provided support for brother Rufus. Martha was also a backing singer on his first two records.

There is no sibling rivalry between the sisters. “We are out of each other’s way a lot. We are not stepping on each other’s toes in terms of genre,” explains Lucy. But, although Martha is more rock’n’roll to Lucy’s pure folk, Lucy says that sometimes when they switch harmony “we can’t tell who is who”.

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At their first London show earlier this month, they both ran off stage a few times to check on Martha’s children – Arcangelo and two-year-old Francis Valentine – who were in a side room. One song performed by Lucy, “Mud and Apples”, was given its song title by Arcangelo, who, according to Martha, “is a real ham” who loved being on stage with Loudon last Christmas when his grandfather sang a rendition of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”.

“I used to worry about [Arcangelo] joining the family business. Wouldn’t it be better if they had better jobs? But then I did a show with Rufus and I got a moment of sadness if he didn’t do it,” says Martha. “It would be as if the circus was over. It has been passed on several generations. If [my son] stops, the legacy would die out.”

She adds: “I think I am going to get him to learn an instrument. It will be cheaper than me hiring a load of babysitters because he can come on stage and join us all performing.”

Martha, who is currently recording her first solo folk-rock album in two years, having taken time out to have a second child, says: “I think Rufus and I need to make a record together at some point.”

She has been touring throughout this period, sometimes with her children on a tour bus. “My mum and her sister did what I don’t want to do –they stopped performing for about eight years when they had their children. Life took over. They were full-time mothers. But they came back to music when we were more grown up.”

The sisters say that the main lesson that they learnt from their mothers was about blending harmonies. “It was about leaving ourselves out of it,” says Martha. Lucy adds: “It’s a negotiation really like any family situations – it’s folding into one another.” However, Rufus and Loudon never blend in, according to the sisters. Lucy explains it as a “female thing”. “I think groups of women and sisters learn ways to fit in with each other.”

Songs in the Dark is out now