Two years ago, Daniel Valoff recorded his deeply personal survivor’s anthem, “There’s Still a Light in the Sky,” for the first time in his home studio. Today, he’s revisiting that emotional track under very different and much happier circumstances, enjoying the “best day of his life” at Los Angeles’s legendary Village Studios.

“I was spitting up blood, and you could hear that on my demo recording,” the Orange County-based musician, who is currently battling Stage 4 thyroid cancer, forthrightly recalls of his initial attempt to record his poignant ballad. “My vocals are kind of breaking up a bit, because there was blood on my vocal cords. I was singing the song and it just kind of came really, really quick, because it was really from the heart about how I felt.”

But today, Valoff is working with Cancer Can Rock, a nonprofit that gives musicians facing aggressive cancer the chance to preserve their musical legacies, on an updated recording of “There’s Still a Light in the Sky” with a stellar cast of music luminaries — among them, notably, Rufus Wainwright. And Wainwright isn’t just lending his iconic background vocals to the Village Studios production. FOLK CANCER: The Kate McGarrigle Project — an organization founded by Rufus and his sister Martha in honor of their folk-singer mother, who died of sarcoma in 2010 — is also funding the recording, which premieres June 23 via the countdown YouTube player below:

Rufus witnessed up-close the healing power of music during his mother’s cancer journey. As he sits with Valoff at the Village right before the afternoon’s first-ever Cancer Can Rock/FOLK CANCER recording session, he fondly recalls how McGarrigle gave her final public performance at an all-star Royal Albert Hall holiday concert just six weeks before her death.

“There was a definite kind of magical moment, some magical moments for her, with her last Christmas show,” Wainwright marvels. “She wasn’t doing particularly well health-wise, but every time she came out onstage to perform, she just put it out there. It was like 20 years had just been [rolled back], and she was just right back to where she started. The life force that music imbues is profound.

“When she was going through her treatments and stuff, it was such an incredible outlet and release for her, to just forget about the world for a second and focus on art. So, we just wanted to help continue that process for people who were going through treatment,” Wainwright continues. “And luckily, we found Cancer Can Rock and decided to join forces. And this is my first kind of venture into this new world, today.”

left to right: producer Jim Ebert, engineer Gabe Burch, Rufus Wainwright, Daniel Valoff (photo by Erik Nielsen)

Valoff can relate to McGarrigle’s experience. “I noticed when I was doing these home recordings, it was kind of the only time all the noise in my head stopped and I was just focused on singing and recording and getting lost in it — just having a moment of shutting everything off and kind of finding the sanctuary and music,” he reflects.

By the time Valoff was finally diagnosed with thyroid cancer, after he started coughing up blood while out for run and “it took a few months [for various specialists] to figure out what was going on,” a tumor had already grown around his laryngeal nerve and into his trachea. Doctors advised him to have surgery that would “pretty much remove my voice” and a render him unable to sing, but that, understandably, was not an option. “I said, ‘No, there’s got to be a different way,’” says Valoff, who’s been undergoing alternative treatments to shrink the tumor instead.

“When I got this diagnosis, a lot of thoughts that come into your head, and it kind of gets overwhelming. And one of my thoughts was, ‘I have all these songs I’ve written and I’ll never be able to sing them, possibly.’ And the other thought was, ‘If the worst happens and I’m not here much longer, I feel like songs live a lot longer than we do and could touch a lot of people.’ And I kind of wanted to leave behind a legacy.” Valoff explains. “So, I started recording all these songs urgently, at home —  home recordings of all these songs I’d written in the past that I never got around to recording, while I still had a voice. And on top of that, I kept on writing new songs. And the song we’re doing today is one of the songs about this journey I’ve been on.”

photo by Erik Nielsen

Valoff recalls writing “There’s Still a Light in the Sky” in a sudden flash of inspiration, as he envisioned a murky, moonlit seascape and thought, “It doesn’t matter how dark it gets — as long as there’s one star or a moon, you can always chart your course and be guided. There’s always something, as long as there’s one light in the sky. And for me, that light is my faith in Jesus.” (The song’s bridge references the Bible verse 1 Corinthians 15:55, as Valoff croons, “O death, where is thy sting?”)

Valoff says he wouldn’t be able to get through his cancer ordeal without his two “anchors”: his music and his faith, which are closely intertwined. And Wainwright, while “not a particularly religious person,” understands.

“I do believe in spirit, and I love Jesus too — what’s not to love, in a lot of ways? I believe in spirituality, and we need it now,” says Wainwright, who last year released Dream Requiem, an orchestral work featuring text from the Latin Mass for the Dead. “And one thing I actually say about music is: It chooses you. You need to a certain degree to be receptive to it, and you have to work at it, but it is this calling. It’s a sacred event.”

Daniel Valoff & Rufus Wainwright (photo by Marguerite Chan)

“I keep my faith. I know that I’m not alone in this,” Valoff asserts. “If I was going through this and I felt like God wasn’t aware of what was going on, I would feel really alone. But He is aware. … I’ve never questioned my faith. I just know we live in a fallen world, and I know that God didn’t do this to me. We weren’t designed to die. I have a spirit that will live eternally, forever. … I’m believing I’m going to get through this and be healed, but even if I don’t, Jesus promises if you believe in Him, it’ll give you eternal life. So, I have hope beyond this world that I’ll have an eternal life — which starts now.”

Fate and faith have figured greatly in Valoff’s Cancer Can Rock story. After applying to be a Cancer Can Rock featured artist — “I just couldn’t believe there were other [musicians with cancer] who had the same situation; I thought I was having a unique experience,” he says, recalling how excited he was to learn of the organization — he’d just received his invitation from Cancer Can Rock when, serendipitously, he had chance encounter with the always charity-minded Wainwright at a wildfire relief benefit in Pasadena.

“A couple hours later, I happened to run into Rufus Wainwright, and I showed him my email: ‘You won’t believe this!’” Valoff laughs. “And he was gracious enough to say, ‘Well, let me know. I want to be there when you do it.’”

In another seemingly fateful moment, as Valoff joins Wainwright today at the Village, his gifts Wainwright and the session musicians with candles. And as Wainwright points out, “There’s a song that I wrote, actually around my mother’s death, called ‘Candles.’ … I lit a lot of candles during my mother’s illness and it did help me, just that ritual.”

And now Valoff is at the candlelit Village with not only Wainwright, but with producer/mixer Jim Ebert (CCR’s founder, who has worked Ice Cube, Madonna, Butch Walker, Jason Falkner, and Meredith Brooks); engineer JC LeResche (Kendrick Lamar, the Strokes, Weezer, Tyler, the Creator); bassist Jon Button (the Who, Michelle Branch, Shakira, Sheryl Crow); guitarist Dory Lobel (Backstreet Boys, Hilary Duff, Enrique Iglesias, The Voice); keyboardist Bill Appleberry (Stone Temple Pilots, Walsh, Fugees, Macy Gray, 311, Hole); and veteran tribute-band drummer Rolly DeVore.

photo by Marguerite Chan

“I’m excited to be working with Jim Ebert today and Rufus and all the great musicians downstairs, revisiting the song,” Valoff enthuses. “I recently wrote a string arrangement for my demo, so I’ve spent a lot of time listening to it. It was very meticulous. So, I’m ready to record today, and then move on to a different song. Because when you work on a song so much… I’m not revisiting past thoughts that I had a long time ago. They’re thoughts I’m currently battling right now.”

Wainwright has faced his own battles and demons, and he quips, “Sometimes I wish I didn’t have to write so much music, because it can be painful! … I wouldn’t mind a little less heartache and falling in love with the wrong person and all of that stuff. I wish I didn’t have to write those songs sometimes.” Then he adds more seriously, “But in the case with my mother, when you’re really up against the biggest challenges in life, that is when music really matches it. … When push comes to shove and everything’s really going down, music is there. It’s always there.”

Daniel Valoff and Rufus Wainwright’s Cancer Can Rock recording of “There’s Still a Light in the Sky” will be available via YouTube as well as streaming services on June 23. An audio preview of the track is below, along with its full lyrics.

LISTEN HERE:

There’s still a light in the sky

There’s still a light in the sky

The night is coming on my love, but there’s still a way to get by

My feet are still on the ground

My feet are still on the ground

The waves are crashing over my head, but I will not be knocked down

It’s not the kind of thing you get to rehearse

You only do it once, for better or worse

I still don’t know which way all land

I’m doing my best with the cards in my hand

And there’s still, still light, light in the sky

They tried to bury me

They tried to bury me

They tried to put me in the ground, but I grew up like a tree

They swung their sickle in vain

They swung their sickle in vain

Come on, they tried to come in down

New branches grew from the pain

It’s not the kind of thing you get to rehearse

You only live it once, for better or worse

I still don’t know which way I land

But I’m doing my best with the cards in my hand

And there’s still, still light, light in the sky

O death, where is thy sting?

A new life began in me

No gravel victory, for I have been redeemed

And I’m ready, but I don’t want to say goodbye

But there’s always a light in the sky

There’s still a light in the sky

There’s still a light in the sky

The night is coming on, my love

But there’s still wait get by

In January 2010, folk legend Kate McGarrigle, beloved mother of singer-songwriters Rufus and Martha Wainwright, passed away at age 63 from a rare form of cancer called sarcoma. She gave her last public performance, alongside her children, at a historic Royal Albert Hall charity event just six weeks before her death. (“All of the atoms just rallied” when she was onstage, Rufus remembers.) And when Kate’s adoring family gathered to sing around her hospice bed in her final days, there was, as Rufus recalls, a ”famous moment where suddenly she broke out of the coma and she was there with us. … She woke up and she was present for about five seconds, kind of mouthing along to the song.”

Kate’s death understandably had a profound effect on Rufus.”For anybody whose mother is dying, the best advice that was given to me is that your mother gives birth to you twice — once when you’re born, and once when she dies,” he muses. In the years since, he and Martha have carried on their mother’s legacy, not only in their own critically acclaimed musical careers, but also through the Kate McGarrigle Fund. Having witnessed firsthand how music-making was so therapeutic for their mother, the Wainwrights’ charity has helped musicians facing aggressive cancers record their own songs and preserve their own legacies. “There is definitely some kind of life-giving force that music can give to us,” says Rufus. “I think for anybody struggling with cancer, just any moment you can have where you feel health and you feel power and you feel inspiration is just so, so valuable.”

And now, on Dec. 6, Rufus and Martha will play their annual Hooray for the Holidays benefit show — for the first time in Los Angeles since 2012, at the famous Saban Theatre. Net proceeds will go directly to Folk Cancer: The Kate McGarrigle Project, the siblings’ collaboration with Cancer Can Rock which offers musicians the opportunity to create, express, and record their music during a very unsettling time. The show will be a family affair, with appearances by Rufus and Martha’s singer-songwriter father, Loudon Wainwright III, and their half-sister, Lucy Wainwright Roche; other special guests will include the mother/daughter duo of Annie and Lola Lennox, fellow second-generation musicians Beck and Chris Stills, Lucy Dacus, Jake Wesley Rogers, and more.

“My mother always loved Christmas,” Rufus says fondly. Below, he opens up about his mother’s legacy and final days, becoming a parent himself, the evolution of his relationship with Martha, the healing power of music, and what Kate McGarrigle would think the state of the world in 2025.

LYNDSANITY: Happy holidays! Please tell me about Cancer Can Rock, in conjunction with the Kate McGarrigle Project, and why it is important for you to do this.

RUFUS WAINWRIGHT: My sister Martha and I, our mother Kate McGarrigle was a great musician. She and her sister Anna were one of the preeminent folk duos of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, and made some of the best records ever made — I think, anyways. So, music was sort of the center of our lives, of our family’s life. And growing up, and we started doing these Christmas shows at a certain point, because my mother always loved Christmas. And so that was kind of going along swimmingly, but then unfortunately, my mother was diagnosed with a very bad form of cancer. It was a sarcoma, a very rare form, which is never good, and the outlook was not positive.

At that point, my mom, who knew that pretty much that she didn’t have much time left, decided to really shift the focus of these Christmas shows and have more of a charity base to them. We started raising money for sarcoma research, and she really used that as a way to just get her mind off of what was happening in her life. We did that for about three years as her health declined, and they were amazing concerts. In fact, her last one was in London at the Royal Albert Hall, and it was packed. All these special guests like Boy George and Neil Tennant and Brian Eno — everybody was there. So, her last concert was at the Royal Albert Hall, and that was a great way to go.

That was not long before she passed, correct? She was pretty much performing until the end?

Yeah, that was the [December] before she died. She sang up until the end. Music was such a kind of powerful tool for her to both forget about what was going on and also face what was happening. She was able to do both of that at the same time. And she wrote this amazing song actually called “Prosperina,” which is the myth of Persephone, which we still sing at every Christmas show; Martha has an amazing version of on one of her albums. Anyway, after she died, my sister Martha and I decided to keep up that work of raising money for [cancer] research.

We felt at a certain point that we would really love to do something where we could see the results immediately, and something that our mother Kate would’ve really loved, so we came up with the idea of creating these grants — $10,000, let’s say — to musicians who are struggling with very serious cancer. Just give them a little bit of money so that they can go into the studio and just take some time off from their care and focus on their art, which is their true passion. … Lo and behold, this wonderful organization, Cancer Can Rock, got in touch with us. And I looked at their mandate and I realized that they were doing exactly what we wanted to do. … So, we got in touch with them, and it’s just a really beautiful voyage since.

I’m trying to phrase this question away that won’t sound like corny or cliché or too Hallmark-y, but do you think that music heals, or can be medicine? You talk about how your mother was singing almost up until the end. I don’t know if you have any theories if that maybe prolonged her life, or could that music and performing could prolong the lives of people who are seriously ill.

All I can say is — and this pertains to that concert at the Royal Albert Hall — is we were backstage, and my mother was actually most of the time lying on the couch with a pile of coats on top of her. She was just so sick and so cold. But she wanted to be there. And then she’d kind of get up and do makeup to go out, because she would sing periodically throughout the evening, and when she went out, she suddenly was imbued with a certain life force. All of the atoms in her body just rallied! And then she walked offstage and she looked totally healthy and great, for about 10 minutes. And then, she was exhausted again.

But there is definitely some kind of life-giving force that music can give to us. Whether we have to pay the price for it, I don’t know. But I think for anybody struggling with cancer, just any moment you can have where you feel health and you feel power and you feel inspiration is just so, so valuable. It’s also very meaningful, because as I said, it’s also a way for a cancer [patient] — and I can’t talk to this personally, I just saw my mother go through it — to process what’s happening and what might happen in the end. So, it’s deep.

(photo: Miranda-Penn-Turin)

I hope you don’t mind me asking about this, but I did read, I think an interview you did with The Guardian that you sang with your mother in the hospital when at the end. Do you mind me asking about that?

It wasn’t actually in the hospital; it was in our home. She died at home. But yes. I think for the last few days or about the last week, she didn’t want to hear any music.

Really?

Yeah, yeah. I think at that point it was a little too emotional for her. She wanted silence, which I get. It was mostly about being silent, which is the ultimate music in certain ways, one can argue — true silence. So, she wanted silence at the very end. But then once she went into a coma, everybody gathered around. Even Emmylou Harris came up from Nashville, and my dad came up, and we all sang for about a day around her. I will say that was probably mostly for us, but it was incredibly powerful. I don’t know… I think she was deserving of that type of drama! My mother was that type of figure.

Were there specific songs that you recall singing?

Yeah. One of the most amazing things that happened… we sang a whole bunch of things, and I would play opera recordings that we loved and different things, but there was one song, which is an old French folk song that she sang to me. I sang it to our daughter, and it’s probably gone back hundreds of years, maybe even like a thousand. We started singing it, and then it was that famous moment where suddenly she broke out of the coma and she was there with us. She didn’t sing the lyrics, but she woke up and she was present for about five seconds, kind of mouthing along to the song. And then she departed again. So, it did bring her out for a couple of seconds, then she was off on her journey.

What an amazing story. Thank you for sharing that with me. I’ve noticed in your own recent work you’ve been singing more about family and marriage. How does that mindset tie into what you’re doing with Cancer Can Rock?

I’ve always written about my life, for better or for worse. In fact, one of my favorite kind of experiences of late is that I’ve really gotten into Randy Newman, and I didn’t know that none of his songs are about him! They’re all fabricated, they’re all pretend situations, and I was just bowled over, like, “You mean I don’t have to write about myself all the time?” [laughs] But whatever, I took that road. And yes, my life at the moment is really family-based. My husband and I have a 13-year-old daughter, and I’m also continuing a tradition. I mean, my mother and father did the same thing: They wrote about us.

Yes, your dad wrote quite a famous song about you and your mom!

Yeah, “Rufus Is a Tit Man.” [laughs] So, we’re just kind of also continuing a tradition. It’s just our destiny, I guess.

Obviously, your daughter Viva [whose mother is Lorca Cohen, daughter of Leonard] has musical lineage on both sides. Do you see her following a musical path? Is she musically inclined?

Yes, she has a beautiful voice, and she’s curious. I tend to not want to push her in any direction. I think for anybody in our family, it’s a lot of pressure too, so I just want her to enjoy her childhood. But yeah, she has a beautiful voice, so when she wants to, it’s all there.

I’ve interviewed various second-generation musicians over years, and I do actually remember Dhani Harrison telling me when he told his father George that he wanted to go into music, his dad was like, “No! Be a lawyer!” Obviously, fame and the arts can be a hard career choice, but it can also be a hard road if you’re following the footsteps of famous parents.

Well, I was very fortunate because my parents, though they were quite well-known and certainly respected, I never had to deal with that level of fame of the Beatles, or even with Leonard Cohen and stuff, which Viva has to deal with a bit. I was blessed with not having to deal with that; I could see that being very difficult. But that being said, if you need to do it, you need to do it. And that is what dictates the path with music: You have no choice in the matter. So, you just have to go for it, if it tells you to.

So, if Viva does say one day, “I want to go into music,” you won’t be like, “No, become a doctor”?

No, no. I would support her all the way and I’d be totally into it. Actually, that’s what I’m used to.

Am I correct in the timeline, that Viva’s birth was not long after Kate passed?

She was born about a year after my mom died. So yeah, there was a transfer of some sort in the ether. … That whole period in general around my mother’s death was a very mystical time, and obviously heartbreaking and dark and so forth, but also magical in a lot of ways. For anybody whose mother is dying, the best advice that was given to me is that your mother gives birth to you twice — once when you’re born, and once when she dies. And it really was that kind of full-blown experience, where it was this whole new world with opening up, for better or for worse. So, I actually cherished that time deeply, deeply, and feel so fortunate that I was able to be around for it as well.

Your most recent album, released in January 2025, is the live recording of your classical production Dream Requiem, which is less personal and family-oriented than some of your other work. Can you tell me a bit about that? I know you wrote it during the pandemic.

As well as doing pop music and stuff, I’m now, I guess a classical composer as well. I mean, I’ve written composed two operas and some other works, but this is my Requiem Mass, which it’s a complete classical piece, and I’m very excited about it because wrote it mostly during COVID and it really came out galloping. Whether it was like pent-up, latent Catholicism, I don’t know, or the fires in California at a certain point, and of course just the state of the world in general. Just that whole Latin death-mask thing was really speaking to me, whether it was redemption or damnation or hellfire or heaven. So, it has that, and then of course, within that, there’s this poem called Darkness by Byron, and that poem specifically talks about ecological destruction. It was a poem that was written in I think 1815 after this insane volcano had erupted in Asia, and the whole world was dark for a year, and nobody knew what was happening. Everybody thought the world was ending. And in fact, it was the year that Frankenstein was written and so forth, so it was kind of a Gothic year. And so that poem is about, what if everything was would crumble? And sadly, we’re now faced with that possibility. Whether it’s that or just the state of the world in general with wars and stuff, this piece is engaged in that battle. I think we are in a time where we just have to face a lot of this stuff. And so, yeah, come hear it, because it’s talking about what’s happening.

Do you feel like it resonates even more now than when you wrote it a few years ago?

Well, not to be spooky about it, and it’s not being spooky at all, but just so much of that text is about the Middle East. It’s all Israel and Zion and stuff going on there. And when you just see these images coming out of that part of the world, and we’re just still fighting over all that crap, it’s just whether you like it or not, it’s still so central to our existence as human beings. I personally kind of hate it, but you can’t run away from it. And so, this is sort of taking some of that spirit and trying to make it into something more, I wouldn’t say necessarily uplifting, but something more transformative. … As an artist, I do feel very strongly that these dark times are good for the arts. Your creative powers become more both in tune, and also needed. You can see that there’s great movies coming out now and some really interesting music, I don’t know, I go to the arts to salvage the world.

What do you think your mother think of the state of the world right now?

That’s a very interesting question; I haven’t thought about that. She would definitely look more into the kind of psyche of the world and maybe even the United States, in the sense that there’s just an insanity that we’re still grappling with. And my mother was a little crazy too. I don’t think she would’ve been a Trump supporter or anything like that at all — she’s very Canadian, and she would’ve been very levelheaded on that level. But nonetheless, she liked a good dramatic time as well. So, I don’t think she would be depressed, but I think she would also be kind of up for the fight, shall we say.

Do you feel like your music that you put out in the next few years will lean more towards the political, not the personal?

Well, I really do think that Dream Requiem is going to be an important touchstone artistically for this era. I sound really, whatever, arrogant, maybe saying that, but it came so fast, and I just felt like this conduit that was delivering this piece of music from somewhere else. And just so many people have been wanting to do it, and it’s going to so many places, so just the timing of it seems too good to be true. So, I am going to be really riding on that train for this. And in the meantime, I just wouldn’t want to make a pop record. At some point I’d like to get into the studio and just kind of translate some of this into my own songwriting, and I don’t know what that’ll be like, but I’m excited to do that. And that’s just to escape the world and so forth.

Meryl Streep played the narrator on the Dream Requiem Paris recording. How did Jane Fonda become involved in the L.A. production that took place this year at Walt Disney Hall?

I told her about it at a cocktail party, and after I said, “I think we’re bringing it to Disney Hall,” she went, “I’m doing it.” She just immediately said, “I’m doing it.” And I was like, “OK, we’re set.

Wow! Is there anything else you want to talk about regarding Cancer Can Rock?

We’re just very excited to work with Cancer Can Rock and create Folk Cancer, my sister Martha and I. It’s very important for us also to work together — then we see each other more, because she lives in Canada. There’s just a special magic when her and I, especially together honoring our mother’s memory, and so I think people will get a kick out of it.

Am I correct in recalling that maybe, at least at one time, you and Martha had some kind of friction?

When my career first started, there was a lot of jealousy from both sides. I think she was jealous of my success and so forth, but I was certainly jealous of her rock ‘n’ roll attitude and her punk-rock spirit. She was more Brooklyn; I was more Manhattan! We straightened things out over the years, but really when our mother died, that cemented our love for each other.

To purchase tickets for Hooray for the Holidays, click here. Watch Rufus speak about the origins of the Folk Cancer project, which launched on Giving Tuesday last year, in the video at the top of this page.