Martha was doing an intimate gig at Hotel Cafe the day after her brother, Rufus Wainwright’s big Hollywood Bowl gig (he was recreating Judy Garland’s epic Carnegie Hall performance). Unfortunately, i was out of town for a holiday so i couldn’t attend. Anyways, i was extremely surprised that Martha’s show wasn’t sold out as soon as it was announced seeing as how its Martha and Hotel Cafe is such a small intimate place to see her. I think the capacity is something like 250. I also didn’t want to miss the show with a possibility of Rufus showing up to do a number.

She played a lot of songs i didn’t recognize so either they were new and have yet to be recorded or they were b- sides. She only played two tracks off of her self titled disc- “The Factory” toward the end of her set along with “Bloody Motherfucking Asshole”.
This was my first Martha show and I’ve seen Rufus play once before but it was astounding how similar Martha and Rufus’s onstage personalities and singing style is. Their voices are very different but they both have the same pronounce words and stretch syllables the same way. Most of the set featured Martha playing guitar some with band backup and 3 or 4 songs with her mother, Kate McGarrigle on piano accompanying her. At times, i felt her set list was too slow and the songs were lacking because her vocal melodies did not seem to follow the music she was playing. Though i can maybe contribute it to the songs being completely new to me and not having heard them before made them difficult to digest (i like food metaphors).

Some highlights was when Martha’s mother played songs on piano and martha had to teach her the parts and vice versa. A lucky fan that almost all the songs and got a shout out from stage when she started screaming with excitement. Martha stopped the song twice- once to ask where she heard the track and again to ask her name. Also, Martha played my favorite song, “The Factory”.

When Martha’s new record comes out i will look forward to seeing her perform again.