Events Calendar · March 2023
KC Turner Presents Martha Wainwright at Hopmonk Tavern
Date: Sunday, March 5, 2023
Time: Doors Open at 6:00pm and Show Starts at 7:00pm
The beguiling performer and songwriter returns with Love Will Be Reborn, out in August. Not since 2012’s Come Home to Mama has a Martha Wainwright record been so full of original written material. Wainwright’s fifth studio album follows recent years of loneliness and clarity in search of optimism and joy.
Wainwright wrote the first song—and what would become the title track— of the record a few years ago. It was a very dark time, she says, but the positivity and luminosity of “Love Will Be Reborn” signalled what was to come. Wainwright was at a friend’s home in London to collaborate on something else entirely when she was struck by the need to write the song. Wainwright demures when songwriting—her process is undisciplined and she prefers to be alone. That day, soon left to that solitude, “Love Will Be Reborn” poured out of her.
Much of Wainwright’s songwriting since 2016’s Goodnight City felt too raw. “There were several years where I picked up the guitar, and I was so, so sad and depressed. I would just put it down because It was terrible.” Before writing it out, or writing through it for catharsis, Wainwright had to live it. Album opener “Middle of the Lake” reinforces Wainwright’s path forward as she sings over voltaic chords and percussion, “I sing my songs of love and pain Winds of change or simply singing, I'm singing in the rain.” Her work never shies away from an existential throbbing wound. “There are a couple major subjects on the record. From what I can tell, there's really dark and then light,” she says,” It really is reflective of a very difficult period of divorce. Then, after that, it’s meeting somebody new and amazing. And so you hear certain songs about this new love.”
Love Will Be Reborn does have its playful and sensual side running parallel to some grim honesty. “Hole In My Heart” is an upbeat song, with Wainwright singing, “I got naked right away when I saw you My love was like the rain when I saw you,” as is the track, “Getting Older,” which is about aging. And this new love. Other songs, she says, “represent me trying to shake away the past a little bit, the ball and chain of that anger, trying to escape from it.”
Tickets are $25 - $30 depending on location, plus service fees and can be purchased in the above website link.
