Rufus' new harmony

The death of singer Rufus Wainwright's mother caused him to pull out of headline festival performances in Australia and New Zealand.

Now, he has spoken out on life and death in folk music's most famous - and most troubled - family.

His mother, Canadian folk singer Kate McGarrigle, was the linchpin of the sprawling singing dynasty that also includes Rufus' sister Martha, his estranged father, the 60s folk sensation Loudon Wainwright III, and his aunt Anna, Kate's sister and the other half of the folk duo the McGarrigle sisters.

"As death approached she got more withdrawn and very concentrated on the simple things," he says.

"Day by day she became more childlike as we tried to bathe her and feed her."

The family, and close friends including Emmylou Harris, were gathered around her hospital bedside when she died, singing songs together and playing old recordings from the past.

Her funeral in Montreal at which Rufus and Martha sang, drew a congregation of more than 1000 mourners.

Wainwright is in London to oversee rehearsals for his first opera, Prima Donna, about an ageing soprano who prepares to return to the stage.

He is relieved that his mother, who was his biggest critic, got to see the opera.

He was similarly locked in a race to finish his sixth album, All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu, so he could devote himself to looking after her.

The album is unflinchingly, heartwringingly personal. Baring all is, of course, in the genes. The Wainwright clan have long been known for airing their linen through their songs.

Loudon, who walked out on McGarrigle when his son was 3, began the tradition when, on noticing his infant son's thirst for his mother's milk, wrote the song Rufus Is a Tit Man. Later he wrote a song, Hitting You, about the first time he struck Martha as a child.

When Loudon and Kate were divorcing, it was Kate who found solace in song, penning the acidic Go Leave. Rufus then heaped scorn on his father with Dinner At Eight ("Daddy, don't be surprised that I wanna see the tears in your eyes"), though, in a customary display of one-upmanship, Martha went one better with her ode to Dad, Bloody Mother F***ing A******.

Does Rufus, I wonder, ever wish he and his family had kept a few things to themselves?

"I worry sometimes about what I've done," he reflects. "Maybe all of us have sacrificed too much with our songwriting but the die is cast and I do think that where you'll hear a song where we attack one another, there'll be another one where we try to reconnect. We're a battered ship but it's afloat."

Now, following the death of Kate, and the premature birth of Martha's son Arcangelo just 10 weeks before his grandmother died, Rufus wonders if there will be "new rules" in how they relate to one another.

Certainly, there has been a reconciliation of sorts with his father, who was at Kate's bedside when she died.

Wainwright also talks of his sister, with whom he has always had a tense rivalry, with unexpected tenderness.

"Martha has astounded me in how brilliantly and classily she has been throughout this whole time," he remarks.

Not so long ago it was Martha who had to look after her brother in his hours of helplessness. These were the days of the party-loving, sex-crazed, drug-addled Rufus, a man basking a little too much in the praise being heaped on him and slowly losing the plot.

Now Wainwright appears focused and serious. Though he has retained his louche good looks, he has clearly grown up.

Work has also kept the demons at bay, and in the past seven years he has not stopped. He is preparing for a solo tour in which he plans "to really go for the jugular, emotionally".

The hardest times, he says, are the glimmers of happiness.

"Things are going so well at the moment.

"At the end of each day I think, 'I've got to call mom and tell her how it's going'. That kind of stops me in my tracks."

- INDEPENDENT