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"  Martha Wainwright, she of the ingeniously titled album I Know You&amp;#039;re Married But I&amp;#039;ve Got Feelings Too, is standing under blue and pink lights on a makeshift stage in a tiny, exposed-brick venue on the Lower East Side, singing her heart out. Wainwright wears a sophisticated version of the kinder-whore look first popularized by Courtney Love: a sequined tunic over black leggings, studded ankle boots, and thick pink socks. Her eyes are closed, as if to shut out the gaze of onlookers, while her warbly voice\u2014her older brother, Rufus, refers to it as &amp;quot;arguably one of the greatest voices of our time,&amp;quot; while she herself describes it as &amp;quot;a bit unruly&amp;quot;\u2014goes here, there, and everywhere, suggesting all of life&amp;#039;s ironies in the turn of a phrase or the fall of a note. Her sense of timing is almost comedic: &amp;quot;You always wrote/ a song a day,&amp;quot; she sings, thrashing the guitar and loudly keeping time with one foot, &amp;quot;and there were always words/ and it made me want to say/ shut up....&amp;quot; The crowd is young and rapt, with a sprinkling of Brits and Canadians among the locals. They look too smart to bother with deliberate hipness; most are simply dressed in jeans with plaid shirts or sweaters. Despite the icy January night, it&amp;#039;s standing room only, although the place, Rockwood Music Hall, is bare-bones and has but a scattering of tables and chairs to begin with. In between songs, Wainwright, who projects a rakish kind of glamour, flirts with the audience, drawing them into an ongoing conversation, explaining that she&amp;#039;s been booking herself into Rockwood every Monday night in January &amp;quot;in an attempt to kick myself in the ass to write some new songs. The goal is to have a new song each week.&amp;quot; And, in fact, her rough-hewn 45-minute performance has the feel of a practice session: She yelps, plays wrong chords (&amp;quot;I get bored always playing the same chord,&amp;quot; she ad libs), chides a recalcitrant string on her guitar (&amp;quot;Oh, c&amp;#039;mon, you fucker&amp;quot;), corrects herself midsong, and goes right on. The audience appears to respond to her even more for being willing to show them her imperfections\u2014or perhaps they&amp;#039;re transfixed by the way she seems to take her many mistakes in unruffled stride. She alludes in passing to the death of her mother, Kate McGarrigle, a year ago and to her own relatively recent motherhood. (Her son, Arcangelo, was born in November 2009.) &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s difficult to find the edge,&amp;quot; she says, with just a trace of apology in her voice, &amp;quot;but I&amp;#039;m trying.&amp;quot; Edge, of course, is precisely what Wainwright provides in abundance\u2014the kind of gritty, bittersweet knowledge that permeates Alice Munro&amp;#039;s stories, that comes with having lost your girlish illusions about men and love, with having knocked around a bit and emerged intact but with a few bruises. &amp;quot;One can tell that she has lived a lot and [that] this life was probably not a smooth road,&amp;quot; observes Hal Willner, who produced Wainwright&amp;#039;s third album, an Edith Piaf tribute. Indeed, the singer&amp;#039;s astringent but wide-open lyrics manage to touch on raw longing\u2014&amp;quot;And then when he undressed/ me/ And took my body/ I was resolute to being fine/ Now the soldiers are all on fire/ And our hearts are dead from desire&amp;quot; (&amp;quot;The Tower&amp;quot;)\u2014while at the same time suggesting that romantic dreaminess is brief-lived, easily imperiled by reality: &amp;quot;Remember when you said we&amp;#039;d/ marry/ The wilder shores of love/ The tide it changes fast/ Ah, when you&amp;#039;re fast/ It never lasts&amp;quot; (&amp;quot;Jesus &amp;amp;amp; Mary&amp;quot;). Her songs are filled with quirky observations and a contained sense of desperation that seems familiar somehow: &amp;quot;I spend my time trying to forget/ you with/ booze and smoke from/ cigarettes and dope/ I only seem to forget myself/ It&amp;#039;s only you that is left.&amp;quot; The melodies accompanying her lyrics don&amp;#039;t have conventional hooks; they&amp;#039;re usually freewheeling affairs that take a lot of left turns through which Wainwright&amp;#039;s voice seems to float of its own accord, up and down the octaves, going from wispy softness to full-throated power. &amp;quot;She doesn&amp;#039;t just sing a song,&amp;quot; Willner says, &amp;quot;she lives it in front of you.&amp;quot; Cut to several weeks earlier, at the Carlyle hotel bar on the Upper East Side, where I&amp;#039;ve arranged to have lunch with the 35-year-old Wainwright, who lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant (&amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s a little rough at night, but during the day it&amp;#039;s fine&amp;quot;). I know what she looks like from photos, and yet I almost miss her when she arrives. At 5&amp;#039;8&amp;quot;, she&amp;#039;s taller than I&amp;#039;d envisioned. She&amp;#039;s wearing jeans and no makeup (she has the kind of face that can go from ordinary to striking with just a dab of lipstick and eye shadow), her blond hair pulled back and pinned up. She looks very much the laid-back downtown artist in these elegant surroundings\u2014albeit one with a definite sense of style. She carries a Valentino bag I admire, which she says she found at Heathrow at half price. We order some drinks and settle down on a banquette to talk. Wainwright calls herself a &amp;quot;chameleon&amp;quot; both in terms of music and style. She admits to loving clothes but also admits that &amp;quot;everything&amp;#039;s sort of on the floor&amp;quot; of her closet. Her look &amp;quot;goes from jeans and a T-shirt to a Viktor &amp;amp;amp; Rolf dress,&amp;quot; she says, conceding that her lack of a consistent image probably hasn&amp;#039;t been useful for her career.  I futz with my digital tape recorder, ever anxious in the face of technology, although Wainwright&amp;#039;s lack of hauteur\u2014of palpable persona (she insists she doesn&amp;#039;t see things &amp;quot;as a songwriter&amp;quot;)\u2014makes her refreshingly easy to talk to. She seems to be largely free of the caprices of celebrity, or perhaps it&amp;#039;s just that the ordinary stuff of life\u2014she cooks three meals a day\u2014interests her more. &amp;quot;I go through life doing things, cleaning the toilet or whatever, and then get upset if I haven&amp;#039;t written a song. When I was younger and didn&amp;#039;t have a husband, there was a lot to write about. Then things close in.&amp;quot; Wainwright&amp;#039;s music is hard to categorize; there&amp;#039;s something of the torch singer in her and something of Janis Joplin&amp;#039;s reckless abandon, along with a touch of Dylanesque phrasing and Rickie Lee Jones&amp;#039; little-girl intonation. &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s not that person who strums the folk G chord,&amp;quot; notes her aunt, Anna McGarrigle. &amp;quot;And she didn&amp;#039;t learn all those riffs boy and girl singer-songwriters often learn.&amp;quot; Wainwright might be said to toy with wearing her heart on her sleeve rather than actually doing so; her mood in her songs turns quickly from playfulness to vindictiveness to a kind of infuriated desire. Her fans are mostly women\u2014their ages running &amp;quot;from 14 to 84,&amp;quot; as Wainwright puts it\u2014who tend to identify with the unguarded emotionality of her songs. &amp;quot;[Martha] doesn&amp;#039;t seem concerned about masking who she is,&amp;quot; says Scottish singer-songwriter KT Tunstall, who&amp;#039;s toured with her. &amp;quot;She embraces sexuality, power, and vulnerability in her lyrics in a way that comes across very honestly.&amp;quot; Among her influences, Wainwright cites Chrissie Hynde (&amp;quot;She had more balls than her whole band combined&amp;quot;), Nina Simone, Patti Smith, Annie Lennox, Warren Zevon (&amp;quot;I like when I can cry at the morbidity of the lyrics&amp;quot;). She&amp;#039;d like to sing with Stevie Nicks, she says, and it would be &amp;quot;fun&amp;quot; to perform with Dylan, whom she&amp;#039;s met and who once called and asked her if she was married. (She was.) Was she tempted? &amp;quot;I didn&amp;#039;t need to sleep with Bob Dylan,&amp;quot; she replies. &amp;quot;I needed to open up with him onstage, so I proposed that idea. And he said, `Send me some music,&amp;#039; and I did. And I never heard back from him.&amp;quot;  Indeed, Wainwright has a somewhat quizzical attitude toward fame, especially with regard to her celebrated family: Her father is the singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III; her brother, Rufus, whose theatrical personality has earned him ardent fans, has been cutting records since 1998; and her mother was part of the McGarrigle Sisters, a renowned French-Canadian singing duo. While Wainwright has become very much a folk-rock figure in her own right, with a cultlike following on this side of the Atlantic and a larger one in Europe (England in particular, where, she says, &amp;quot;people are more musicphiles\u2014&amp;quot;it&amp;#039;s easier to make an impact because music is a bigger part of the culture&amp;quot;)\u2014she points out that she&amp;#039;s invariably described as &amp;quot;underrated.&amp;quot; (The comment makes me smile, and I remind myself never to call her that, though it definitely had occurred to me.) Wainwright then goes on to discuss her feelings about her illustrious musical lineage. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve thought that I&amp;#039;d be more famous if not for my family,&amp;quot; she confides. &amp;quot;Or that people might be more appreciative of my talent, instead of `It&amp;#039;s to be expected; it&amp;#039;s all in the genes.&amp;#039; But I&amp;#039;ve also thought the opposite\u2014that I&amp;#039;m only where I am because of my parentage.&amp;quot;  Any way you look at it, putting forward her own music in a family as profusely gifted as hers can&amp;#039;t have been easy. Not to mention the imposing shadow cast by Rufus, who showed an inclination toward the family business almost from the cradle. &amp;quot;Rufus was the designated singer,&amp;quot; says McGarrigle of her nephew. &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;d sing at the drop of a hat.&amp;quot; Martha, meanwhile, says she was &amp;quot;more intimidated as a kid,&amp;quot; although she was paying close attention and secretly wanted to be Cyndi Lauper. &amp;quot;It was always evident that she had ability,&amp;quot; Rufus recalls in a phone conversation, &amp;quot;but she lacked the ego I had right off the bat. She bided her time, did her own thing but kept one eye on the prize, chose her moment.&amp;quot;  Wainwright grew up in Montreal\u2014a city she calls &amp;quot;sort of granola&amp;quot;\u2014with her musical taste formulated by her brother and her parents, who divorced when she was still an infant. Rufus had been part of a &amp;quot;dynamic duo,&amp;quot; as he says, with his mother since early on\u2014&amp;quot;she on the piano, me singing `Somewhere Over the Rainbow.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Martha remembers following his lead: &amp;quot;He learned all the songs to Peter Pan. I listened and hummed along.&amp;quot; But she also liked to belt out show tunes &amp;quot;at the top of my lungs.&amp;quot; At age eight, Martha sang backup for her father at the Newport Folk Festival and got her first taste of the roar of the crowd: &amp;quot;I liked the attention. I hammed it up a lot onstage.&amp;quot; Although brother and sister were forced together (&amp;quot;like twins,&amp;quot; Rufus says) when they were young, Rufus was closer to their mom. &amp;quot;My mother and I were instant boyfriend and girlfriend,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s a good thing I&amp;#039;m gay, or it could have gotten weird.&amp;quot; Martha, meanwhile, developed her own sensibilities as she entered adolescence. &amp;quot;I went for opera, Judy Garland, gay bars,&amp;quot; Rufus observes. &amp;quot;She went for Leonard Cohen, girls&amp;#039; school, a lot of boyfriends.&amp;quot; Before moving to New York in 1999, Martha spent two years in theater school. &amp;quot;I thought she was definitely headed for the stage,&amp;quot; says Anna McGarrigle. &amp;quot;Then one day Kate called and said Martha was performing with a little band and that she was really worried she wouldn&amp;#039;t be able to sing. She was about 16. Martha came out and sang, and it was great, and Kate relaxed.&amp;quot; Anna says her niece&amp;#039;s songs were original from the get-go: &amp;quot;They had a strange tonality to them. Martha might pick up a guitar, and it might not be in a standard tuning, but she&amp;#039;d adjust the strings to something that worked for her. Because of her love for the stage, she can get up unrehearsed and still pull it off.&amp;quot; In New York, Martha lived in an apartment in Williamsburg and pursued a bohemian lifestyle, going to three or four shows a night at places such as the Mercury Lounge. &amp;quot;I discovered punk rock, Television, and Nick Cave,&amp;quot; she says. Surrounded by people &amp;quot;even less successful than I was,&amp;quot; she played at open mics, made three EPs, and sang backup for her brother. She continued to write a particular sort of musically open-ended, lyrically elusive song\u2014filled with what Rufus describes as a &amp;quot;kind of naked anger that she plays with.&amp;quot; These included the memorably defiant &amp;quot;Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole&amp;quot; (&amp;quot;I will not pretend/ I will not put on a smile/ I will not say I&amp;#039;m all right for you&amp;quot;), which has been surmised as being aimed at her father and eventually appeared on her first album, 2005&amp;#039;s Martha Wainwright. (Martha&amp;#039;s explanation: &amp;quot;My father and I were having an argument that I wasn&amp;#039;t really doing much, that I was drinking excessively and living off my mother.&amp;quot;) Still, she had trouble getting signed. Her aunt wonders whether a record deal was so long in coming because &amp;quot;Rufus was already out there, and she was the kid singer.&amp;quot; At some point Martha met Brad Albetta, a bassist whom she&amp;#039;s laughingly said she pursued &amp;quot;in a really disgusting way&amp;quot; and who eventually became her producer and husband\u2014&amp;quot;I wanted to get married,&amp;quot; she tells me unselfconsciously. The two went into the studio with $9,000, and four days later emerged with the first album\u2014which she herself refers to as &amp;quot;a really strong record&amp;quot; and which was picked up by Zo\u00EB Records, an independent label specializing in folk-rock and alternative-pop artists such as Mary Chapin Carpenter and Dean &amp;amp;amp; Britta. Wainwright says her husband is &amp;quot;a great musician&amp;quot;; he accompanies her on the road, eliminating the need to hire a piano player. (&amp;quot;There is no band,&amp;quot; Martha says. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s the beauty.&amp;quot;) She is grateful to Albetta for keeping his cool in the face of the revealing lyrics of her songs, often addressed to former lovers. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t know if he&amp;#039;s not listening or if he&amp;#039;s incredibly confident,&amp;quot; she says, adding that he &amp;quot;really understands the importance and power of poetry.&amp;quot; Not that Albetta has escaped his wife&amp;#039;s pen. Living with another woman when they met, he was among the inspirations for her second album, I Know You&amp;#039;re Married But I&amp;#039;ve Got Feelings Too. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s about a couple of people whom I&amp;#039;ve had serious unrequited crushes on,&amp;quot; Wainwright told The Daily Telegraph in London last summer. &amp;quot;That was a big part of my existence before meeting my husband and even, obviously, at the beginning of that relationship. I have a tendency to run after people who are completely unattainable and uninterested and make a complete fool of myself. Basically, I was not that pretty a girl and I was never pursued as a teenager or young woman, so I was used to having no shame and trying to get people to love me.&amp;quot;  Martha and Rufus and the rest of the gang, they keep tabs on each other, but affectionately. One of the first things Wainwright says when we meet is that her first record came out when she was 28 and her mother&amp;#039;s at 30, while both Loudon and Rufus hit that mark at 21 or 22. And when I ask if her father is a fan, she says, carefully, &amp;quot;I think more now...but yes, definitely. I think this whole thing of all of his kids doing what he does\u2014he&amp;#039;s kind of taken by surprise.&amp;quot; She says she&amp;#039;s learned to rein in her voice in these past few years and that she remains haunted by her mother&amp;#039;s death: &amp;quot;I can&amp;#039;t afford to think too much about it, because it&amp;#039;s still very unjust and painful&amp;quot; (Kate died at 63 of liver cancer). For all the casualness with which she approaches her image and even her career, she strikes me as deeply ambitious. Even though she says she&amp;#039;s not doing much of anything until she goes on tour in Australia in February, for instance, she&amp;#039;s already shot two pilots of a cable show in her house where she cooks and hangs out with musician friends (so far, Norah Jones, St. Vincent, Justin Bond, and Kiki and Herb). All of which makes me think that, large as her talent is, we haven&amp;#039;t seen anything yet. &amp;quot;It could all turn on a dime,&amp;quot; says Rufus, who&amp;#039;s every inch the diva his sister isn&amp;#039;t, calling me via a publicist who stays on the phone while he and I talk, interrupting only to say: &amp;quot;This is your last question, Daphne.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I wouldn&amp;#039;t count her out in any way. Sheryl Crow became famous when she was older. Martha fits comfortably into that mature woman position.&amp;quot; He pauses and adds, for this is clearly a scenario he&amp;#039;s given a good deal of thought: &amp;quot;She could very easily eclipse me at any moment. I&amp;#039;m prepared.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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