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Artist
Kate McDonnell
12+ albums
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about
Kate McDonnell’s introduction to folk music was conventional, if precocious – as a four-year-old, she heard a Joan Baez album in her mother’s collection. Her reaction was somewhat less conventional: she picked up her mom’s guitar, taller than she was, and started to teach herself how to play the instrument, strung for a righthanded player, lefthanded – “upside down and backwards,” using her stronger right hand for chording and ignoring the customary positioning of the guitar strings. Armed with her unusual guitar style and crystalline soprano voice, Kate teamed with her twin sister to perform as “Katie and Anne McDonnell” around their Baltimore hometown during their high school and college years. After a four-year sabbatical from performance in the mid-’80s, during which time she moved to New Haven, CT, and worked at editing and AIDS social service jobs, Kate returned to music by partnering with guitarist Freddie Tane, at one time a member of Bill Haley’s Comets. McDonnell-Tane cut two self-released albums in their 3-1/2-year career and opened shows for touring stars such as Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Judy Collins, Arlo Guthrie, Leo Kottke, and Kathy Mattea. Kate also found time to join an all-female trio, Colossal Olive, which gigged in the New Haven area. In 1989, Kate started writing her own songs and, not coincidentally, began racking up serious critical recognition in the early ’90s, when she was named a New Folk Finalist at the wellknown Kerrville Folk Festival in Te
