And the Welcome everyone to episode 235 of soda jaker on songwriting. I'm Simon here with Brian and

joining us today on the podcast is a Canadian singer and songwriter not to

mention Sion of an illustrious musical family. During an impressive and varied career

recorded or performed with the likes of Donald Fagan,

Chrissy Hind, Snow Patrol, Emily U Harris,

Sufyanneves and Pete Townsend.

In spring of this year she published her terrific memoir, Stories I May Regret Telling You,

which is as engrossing, candid, funny and moving a read as you'd expect from such an

interesting and uncompromising artist.

She spoke to us recently about the book, but mostly of course about her songwriting.

We are very happy to welcome the excellent Martha Wainwright to the show.

Martha was born in New York State in 1976,

but following her parents' separation shortly afterwards,

was raised in Montreal by her mother, highly esteemed Canadian folk singer-songwriter

Kate McGarragull. That said, she

would make regular visits to New York to see her dad the similarly distinguished

Loud and Wainwright III. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Martha was singing from an early age and she and her elder brother, fellow future singer-songwriter of note Rufus, made one of their earliest live appearances singing Dead Skunk on stage with their father.

For her 13th birthday birthday Martha received a Sigma acoustic

guitar from her dad but didn't start learning to play it properly until she was

around 17 when she quickly discovered the natural inclination towards writing

her own songs. A few years later in 1997 she put together a ten-track

cassette of her own material called Ground Floor, which came to the attention of producer and then

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