SINGER-SONGWRITER-GUITARIST
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 right-handed player, left-handed “upside down and backwards,” using her stronger right hand for chording and ignoring the customary positioning of the guitar strings. Eventually, Kate realized that the guitar could be more than background padding, she started to listen to Leo Kottke, Mason Williams, Steve Howe, and others. At 16, a Baltimore-area guitarist and luthier Ken Dubourg taught Kate to play Duane Allman’s Little Martha, and her skies opened.