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If I had a peaceful heart it would look like this
Some trees and hills, a creek by which to kiss
The fog would be this cool,
The hawk would sail that far,
And the song I'd hear would come from Kate's guitar.
"Kate's Guitar" by Greg Brown
Kate Wolf Memorial Festival, June 1997
Sebastopol, CA
In the fall of 1977, my dad, a crusty, widowed New Englander, visited-traveling from Maine to California to see what all the West Coast fuss was about. One evening during his visit, I played a new album I had "discovered" and thought might add some home-spun warmth to the occasion. The album was Kate Wolf's debut effort, Back Roads. Liner notes identified the singer as "a family woman, songwriter, bar singer, country music DJ and folk festival programmer who . . . got together with friends in a living room on the north coast where they recorded these songs."
My dad, normally not much of a music listener, was smitten by Kate's deep rich voice. Etched with sadness, yet warm and haunting with a touch of country and mountain in it, she built her deceptively simple and honest songs with heartache and regret, but also with strength and joy. Upon returning to his native Maine, he decided to write her at her "Owl Records" address in Sebastopol. To my surprise, Kate answered him and, some months later, when she played a few clubs in a short East Coast tour, my dad drove to Rhode Island to meet her. Thus began a mostly long-distance friendship that lasted for the rest of their lives.
When my dad, living alone, suffered a stroke on a chilly, late October night and was found, two days later, lying on the floor in a coma, I called Kate and gave her the sad news. Knowing how he loved her music, I asked if she might have something I could play him-to reach the spark of consciousness that was, I hoped, still buried deep inside his silent body. Within hours, Kate sent a taped rough mix of what would be her next album, 1983's Give Yourself to Love, which I played by his hospital bedside, over and over, until-many days later-his eyes opened, and he was...