Showing posts with label The Great Man.... Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Great Man.... Show all posts
Sunday, 26 April 2020
Wednesday, 1 August 2018
Loudon Wainwright III - Years in the Making
The album is set to release on September 14 via Story Sound Records.
Reece Jamison
American Songwriter
21 June 2018
Loudon Wainwright III has announced his plans to release Years In The Making, a two-disc, 42-track compendium album comprised of live recordings, radio appearances, home demos, cut album tracks and more.
The content of the album spans more than 45 years of Wainwright’s career, showcasing his more rare, offbeat or unissued work. Of the album, Wainwright says: “Years in the Making covers a lot of ground, about half a century’s worth. Sonically it’s all over the place and, at times, noticeably low-fi, but my co-producer Dick Connette and I decided that didn’t matter as much as offering up something that was spirited and representational.” Wainwright’s discography to date is made up of 23 solo albums, 4 live albums, and 5 compilation albums.
The content of the album spans more than 45 years of Wainwright’s career, showcasing his more rare, offbeat or unissued work. Of the album, Wainwright says: “Years in the Making covers a lot of ground, about half a century’s worth. Sonically it’s all over the place and, at times, noticeably low-fi, but my co-producer Dick Connette and I decided that didn’t matter as much as offering up something that was spirited and representational.” Wainwright’s discography to date is made up of 23 solo albums, 4 live albums, and 5 compilation albums.
The two-disc “audio-biography” will be released along with a 60-page hardbound book (with artwork done by New Yorker cartoonist Ed Steed) divided into seven chapters filled with scans of documents, introspective musings and other artifacts from Wainwright’s younger years, supplemented with paintings and drawings by friends and fans.
The album drops September 14 via Story Sound Records.
Years In The Making Track Listing:
DISC ONE
Rosin the Bow
You Ain’t Going Nowhere
Easy St. Louis Tweedle-Dee
Everybody I know
Philadelphia Lawyer
Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms
Love Gifts
Stewball
Floods of Tears
Station Break
Have You Ever Been To Pittsburgh
2 Song Set
Cardboard Boxes
Smokey Joe’s Café
You Hurt Me Mantra
Rambunctious
I Wanna Be On MTV
Birthday Poem / Happy Birthday / Animal Song
Your Mother & I
Button Nose
The Ballad of Famous & Harper
Teenager’s Lament
Things
DISC TWO
Unrequited to the Nth Degree
Ulcer
You Can’t Fail Me Now
No
Rowena
Cheatin’
IDTTYWLM
Down Where the Drunkards Roll
POW
Meet the Wainwrights
Liza Minnelli Interview
Hollywood Hopeful
Valley Morning
Trailer
God’s Got a Shit List
Thank You, Mr. Hubble
It Ain’t Gaza
Out of This World
Birthday Boy
http://americansongwriter.com/2018/06/loudon-wainwright-iii-announces-two-disc-audio-biography/
Loudon Wainwright III's Years in the Making comprehends 45 years of offbeaten tracks - over two hours of rare and unissued Loudoniana. It's a 2-CD audiobiography, with orphaned album cuts, live recordings, radio appearances, home demos, and more. There's audio snapshots of his early folk efforts, with Kate McGarrigle, George Gerdes, and Steve Goodman, singing traditional songs and covering Woody Guthrie and, of all people, Bob Dylan. There's his 70s and 80s forays into the rock 'n' roll world, including Leiber and Stoller's "Smokey Joe's Cafe" and his own "I Wanna Be on MTV." There are featured appearances by Suzzy Roche, Bill Frisell, Van Dyke Parks, Chaim Tannenbaum, and David Mansfield, as well as by his sister Sloan, and all of his children, Rufus, Martha, Lucy, and Lexie.
The CDs are packaged in an elegant 60-page booklet. The wild creations of the brilliant young New Yorker magazine cartoonist Ed Steed are featured on the front and back covers, everywhere throughout the comprehensive credits text, and even on the discs, themselves. There are dozens of scans of documents, introspective musings, and artifacts from what Loudon calls his "swinging life," in addition to lovely paintings and drawings by friends and fans. Altogether, Years in the Making presents sides of Loudon you've never heard or seen before, a privileged perspective on his various public and private selves throughout his entire career.
https://www.propermusic.com/product-details/Loudon-Wainwright-III-Years-In-The-Making-256308
The album drops September 14 via Story Sound Records.
Years In The Making Track Listing:
DISC ONE
Rosin the Bow
You Ain’t Going Nowhere
Easy St. Louis Tweedle-Dee
Everybody I know
Philadelphia Lawyer
Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms
Love Gifts
Stewball
Floods of Tears
Station Break
Have You Ever Been To Pittsburgh
2 Song Set
Cardboard Boxes
Smokey Joe’s Café
You Hurt Me Mantra
Rambunctious
I Wanna Be On MTV
Birthday Poem / Happy Birthday / Animal Song
Your Mother & I
Button Nose
The Ballad of Famous & Harper
Teenager’s Lament
Things
DISC TWO
Unrequited to the Nth Degree
Ulcer
You Can’t Fail Me Now
No
Rowena
Cheatin’
IDTTYWLM
Down Where the Drunkards Roll
POW
Meet the Wainwrights
Liza Minnelli Interview
Hollywood Hopeful
Valley Morning
Trailer
God’s Got a Shit List
Thank You, Mr. Hubble
It Ain’t Gaza
Out of This World
Birthday Boy
http://americansongwriter.com/2018/06/loudon-wainwright-iii-announces-two-disc-audio-biography/
Loudon Wainwright III's Years in the Making comprehends 45 years of offbeaten tracks - over two hours of rare and unissued Loudoniana. It's a 2-CD audiobiography, with orphaned album cuts, live recordings, radio appearances, home demos, and more. There's audio snapshots of his early folk efforts, with Kate McGarrigle, George Gerdes, and Steve Goodman, singing traditional songs and covering Woody Guthrie and, of all people, Bob Dylan. There's his 70s and 80s forays into the rock 'n' roll world, including Leiber and Stoller's "Smokey Joe's Cafe" and his own "I Wanna Be on MTV." There are featured appearances by Suzzy Roche, Bill Frisell, Van Dyke Parks, Chaim Tannenbaum, and David Mansfield, as well as by his sister Sloan, and all of his children, Rufus, Martha, Lucy, and Lexie.
The CDs are packaged in an elegant 60-page booklet. The wild creations of the brilliant young New Yorker magazine cartoonist Ed Steed are featured on the front and back covers, everywhere throughout the comprehensive credits text, and even on the discs, themselves. There are dozens of scans of documents, introspective musings, and artifacts from what Loudon calls his "swinging life," in addition to lovely paintings and drawings by friends and fans. Altogether, Years in the Making presents sides of Loudon you've never heard or seen before, a privileged perspective on his various public and private selves throughout his entire career.
https://www.propermusic.com/product-details/Loudon-Wainwright-III-Years-In-The-Making-256308
Wednesday, 29 November 2017
Loudon Wainwright III - Liner Notes
Andy Friedman
The New Yorker
27 November 2017
Loudon Wainwright III, who is currently on tour, began his career as a singer-songwriter quickly, almost fifty-years ago, with help from a motorcycle accident. Not his own, but the one that left the namesake to his song, “Talking New Bob Dylan,” out of commission at the height of his stardom. “Labels were signing up guys with guitars / Out to make millions, looking for stars,” Loudon sings of that time.
“It happened that fast,” Loudon recalled, on a recent morning walk through Greenwich Village. “I wrote my first song in 1968, and had a record deal by 1969.” John Prine, Steve Goodman, David Bromberg, Leon Redbone, and Bruce Springsteen were some of the other Dylan understudies to arrive in the wake of their hero’s sudden absence. As the Loudon lyrics go: “We were new Bob Dylans / Your dumbass kid brothers!”
Loudon and I met on the corner of West Fourth and Mercer, in front of a math-and-science building owned by N.Y.U.
The ground floor of the building used to house the Bottom Line, the fabled cabaret that was owned by the local promoters Stanley Snadowsky and Alan Pepper, and where, for over a quarter century, Loudon famously held court.
If Loudon were Sinatra, the Bottom Line would have been his Sands Hotel and Casino.
“This used to be the room,” he remembered. “Now it’s a lecture hall.”
Like 1966’s “Sinatra at the Sands,” 1993’s “Career Moves,” recorded live at the Bottom Line, best preserves Loudon’s essence as a performer, which includes the intimate rapport that he has always been known to share with his audience. On the record, Loudon’s trademark blend of acerbic wit and jolly self-deprecation abounds. “Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder,” “Unhappy Anniversary,” and “I’d Rather Be Lonely” are a few of the staples included in the program. In “T.S.M.N.W.A.,” which stands for “They Spelled My Name Wrong Again,” Loudon complains in a waltz about the consistent misspelling of his name, whether in print or on the marquee: “Tell me why do I put up with it / Sinatra would have a shit fit!”
Somewhere in the middle of “Career Moves,” a request is shouted from the back of the room, which happens a lot at Loudon’s shows. “Sing ‘Motel Blues’!” a woman yells. “Sing ‘Motel Blues’?” Loudon confirms, as the awkward task of tuning his guitar is completed. “No, I’ll, uh, possibly do that another time,” he politely explains over a smattering of giggles. “I want to do [a different song], and my therapist has told me to be particularly assertive with women.” The audience laughs loudly, which prompts him to further summon his inner class clown, another Loudon specialty. “ ‘Don’t do stuff you don’t want to do for ’em!’ ” he guffaws, quoting his shrink. “So, I’m sorry,” he continues, as his composure is regained, “but—no.”
Laughter is another frequent occurrence at Loudon’s concerts. Humor is often celebrated in his songs, even when the stories they tell are sombre.
“The Man Who Couldn’t Cry,” from 1973’s “Attempted Mustache,” is so sad that it’s funny. It sets a new record for the amount of hard luck to befall a character in a country song. The previous mark was suffered by the bedevilled protagonist in David Allan Coe’s “You Never Even Called Me by My Name,” a song written by fellow “New Dylanites” Steve Goodman and John Prine. A drunken drive in the rain to pick up his mother after her release from prison ends in tragedy. Coe sings, “But before I could get to the station in my pickup truck / she got runned over by a damned old train.”
In “The Man Who Couldn’t Cry,” Loudon invents a mythically unluckier figure, and turns his catastrophic tale of damnation and subsequent redemption into a parable.
Unlucky as he is, the unflappability of the man who couldn’t cry also makes him a freak of nature: “Napalmed babies and the movie ‘Love Story’/ For instance could not produce tears.” His wife leaves him, his dog dies, and he’s fired from his job: “Lost his arm in the war, laughed at by a whore / Ah, but still not a sniffle or sob.”
After the character’s novel is rejected and his movie is panned, his Broadway show tanks. He winds up in jail, where he’s abused, starved, and forced to make license plates, until he’s transferred to a mental institution. Amid the sterile isolation, the song’s protagonist makes friends, discovers a love of chess, and weeps whenever it rains. He dies when a storm of Biblical proportions causes him to cry so much that he dehydrates. Posthumously, his work finds an audience, and all of his wrongdoers perish in their own evil twists of fate. In Heaven, all of his misfortunes are reversed.
Johnny Cash sings “The Man Who Couldn’t Cry” on 1994’s “American Recordings,” his comeback album, which was recorded alone on guitar and produced by Rick Rubin. “He gets the laugh!” Loudon proudly exclaimed to me. “That song was recorded live at the Viper Room, in Los Angeles. At the end, when the guy gets rejoined by his arm up in Heaven—Cash gets the laugh!”
“It’s fun to throw a couple of laughs into a serious song,” Loudon said. “They’re like little surprises or land mines or whatever.”
But, sometimes, there’s nothing funny about a Loudon Wainwright III song.
In “Hitting You,” also from “History,” Loudon grapples with the shame and guilt of having struck his young daughter on the thigh in a fit of frustration over her wild behavior in the back seat of the car on a family trip: “I said I was sorry and tried to clean the slate / But with that blow I’d sewn a seed and saw it was too late.”
“I don’t know how therapeutic songwriting is,” Loudon said. “I don’t know how much it solves anything. But it offers perspective, and provides a service to the audience. They’re thinking about whacking their kid, too, or having their crappy Thanksgiving dinner, or contemplating their own family dysfunctions, you know?”
In his new memoir, “Liner Notes: On Parents & Children, Exes & Excess, Death & Decay, & A Few of My Other Favorite Things,”* Loudon offers the concert of a lifetime. “In a certain way, songwriting was preparation for writing the book,” Loudon mused.
To tell the stories in “Liner Notes,” many of which have been told, at least to a certain extent, in his songs, a new form of creative discipline that Loudon doesn’t afford his songwriting was required. “You can’t just meander around in your mind waiting for some song to happen,” he said. “You really have to sit there and do it. But I actually enjoyed that. I wasn’t sure I would, but I looked forward to it.”
Interspersed throughout the book is a carefully curated retrospective of song lyrics that inform the narrative, as well as reprinted Life magazine articles written by his father, Loudon Wainwright, Jr. “When I was growing up, it was a big deal,” Loudon recalled. “I mean, I was the son of the famous writer.”
Loudon is far from the last Wainwright to carry on the family trade, or reconcile with a father’s fame and success. Rufus and Martha, whose mother is Kate McGarrigle, of the folk duo the McGarrigle Sisters, as well as Lucy, whose mother is Suzzy Roche, of the Roche Sisters, also a revered folk duo, are all writers of songs. “There was a lot of tension, I think, and a little bit of an oedipal thing going on,” Loudon said, about his relationship with his father, whom he’s written about in abundance, both in his songs and in his memoir. “Surviving Twin,” a one-man show that connects readings of his father’s pieces with performances of their corresponding songs, débuted, in 2014, at the West Side Theatre, in Manhattan. It enjoyed another run the following year at SubCulture. “You know, that competitiveness was just par for the course—we had the same name,” Loudon said.
“I never thought I’d write a book, until somebody told me that I had one in me,” Loudon admitted. “It was like a medical diagnosis. I had to get it out!”
In 2016, a few months before the Presidential election, Loudon had something else that needed to come out. “I Had a Dream,” a song that correctly predicted the nightmare of a Trump Presidency, featured a video that premièred as an exclusive on the humor Web site Funny or Die. Rolling Stone was quick to recognize it as a favorite among the burgeoning genre of anti-Trump protest songs: “He made a bad deal with Putin, a secret pact with Assad / Told the Pope where to go, I swear to God.”
Loudon has yet to write a follow-up, now that his dream has come true. His audience still shouts requests for the song, but he doesn’t play it. “It’s not funny anymore,” Loudon said. “It’s just not.”
Besides, I’ve been busy,” Loudon added. “I’m an author now, so I have an excuse!”
On the subway platform, before we parted ways, I informed Loudon that he and I had once met, briefly, when I was a teen-ager. After a concert at the Stephen Talkhouse, in Amagansett, he signed a caricature that I had drawn of him (with the hopes of having it autographed). I was barely old enough to drive. My date, who had introduced me to Loudon’s music, had been listening to his songs since childhood. Her mother was a fan. They lived alone together. “Divorce, and a lot of the other stuff that Loudon sings about, wasn’t openly discussed in my mom’s circles,” she recently told me. “So here was this guy who sang about it all with a sense of humor. His music became the soundtrack to my life. It was very comforting. It normalized the dysfunctional-family dynamic.”
I also thanked Loudon. As a newly divorced father of two, I’ve been able to relate to his songs in ways that were formerly impossible. “Well, it’s all part of the service we provide,” he said with a wry smile, before stepping onto the uptown D.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/a-walk-with-loudon-wainwright-iii?mbid=social_twitter
Loudon Wainwright III, who is currently on tour, began his career as a singer-songwriter quickly, almost fifty-years ago, with help from a motorcycle accident. Not his own, but the one that left the namesake to his song, “Talking New Bob Dylan,” out of commission at the height of his stardom. “Labels were signing up guys with guitars / Out to make millions, looking for stars,” Loudon sings of that time.
“It happened that fast,” Loudon recalled, on a recent morning walk through Greenwich Village. “I wrote my first song in 1968, and had a record deal by 1969.” John Prine, Steve Goodman, David Bromberg, Leon Redbone, and Bruce Springsteen were some of the other Dylan understudies to arrive in the wake of their hero’s sudden absence. As the Loudon lyrics go: “We were new Bob Dylans / Your dumbass kid brothers!”
Loudon and I met on the corner of West Fourth and Mercer, in front of a math-and-science building owned by N.Y.U.
The ground floor of the building used to house the Bottom Line, the fabled cabaret that was owned by the local promoters Stanley Snadowsky and Alan Pepper, and where, for over a quarter century, Loudon famously held court.
If Loudon were Sinatra, the Bottom Line would have been his Sands Hotel and Casino.
“This used to be the room,” he remembered. “Now it’s a lecture hall.”
Like 1966’s “Sinatra at the Sands,” 1993’s “Career Moves,” recorded live at the Bottom Line, best preserves Loudon’s essence as a performer, which includes the intimate rapport that he has always been known to share with his audience. On the record, Loudon’s trademark blend of acerbic wit and jolly self-deprecation abounds. “Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder,” “Unhappy Anniversary,” and “I’d Rather Be Lonely” are a few of the staples included in the program. In “T.S.M.N.W.A.,” which stands for “They Spelled My Name Wrong Again,” Loudon complains in a waltz about the consistent misspelling of his name, whether in print or on the marquee: “Tell me why do I put up with it / Sinatra would have a shit fit!”
Somewhere in the middle of “Career Moves,” a request is shouted from the back of the room, which happens a lot at Loudon’s shows. “Sing ‘Motel Blues’!” a woman yells. “Sing ‘Motel Blues’?” Loudon confirms, as the awkward task of tuning his guitar is completed. “No, I’ll, uh, possibly do that another time,” he politely explains over a smattering of giggles. “I want to do [a different song], and my therapist has told me to be particularly assertive with women.” The audience laughs loudly, which prompts him to further summon his inner class clown, another Loudon specialty. “ ‘Don’t do stuff you don’t want to do for ’em!’ ” he guffaws, quoting his shrink. “So, I’m sorry,” he continues, as his composure is regained, “but—no.”
Laughter is another frequent occurrence at Loudon’s concerts. Humor is often celebrated in his songs, even when the stories they tell are sombre.
“The Man Who Couldn’t Cry,” from 1973’s “Attempted Mustache,” is so sad that it’s funny. It sets a new record for the amount of hard luck to befall a character in a country song. The previous mark was suffered by the bedevilled protagonist in David Allan Coe’s “You Never Even Called Me by My Name,” a song written by fellow “New Dylanites” Steve Goodman and John Prine. A drunken drive in the rain to pick up his mother after her release from prison ends in tragedy. Coe sings, “But before I could get to the station in my pickup truck / she got runned over by a damned old train.”
In “The Man Who Couldn’t Cry,” Loudon invents a mythically unluckier figure, and turns his catastrophic tale of damnation and subsequent redemption into a parable.
Unlucky as he is, the unflappability of the man who couldn’t cry also makes him a freak of nature: “Napalmed babies and the movie ‘Love Story’/ For instance could not produce tears.” His wife leaves him, his dog dies, and he’s fired from his job: “Lost his arm in the war, laughed at by a whore / Ah, but still not a sniffle or sob.”
After the character’s novel is rejected and his movie is panned, his Broadway show tanks. He winds up in jail, where he’s abused, starved, and forced to make license plates, until he’s transferred to a mental institution. Amid the sterile isolation, the song’s protagonist makes friends, discovers a love of chess, and weeps whenever it rains. He dies when a storm of Biblical proportions causes him to cry so much that he dehydrates. Posthumously, his work finds an audience, and all of his wrongdoers perish in their own evil twists of fate. In Heaven, all of his misfortunes are reversed.
Johnny Cash sings “The Man Who Couldn’t Cry” on 1994’s “American Recordings,” his comeback album, which was recorded alone on guitar and produced by Rick Rubin. “He gets the laugh!” Loudon proudly exclaimed to me. “That song was recorded live at the Viper Room, in Los Angeles. At the end, when the guy gets rejoined by his arm up in Heaven—Cash gets the laugh!”
“It’s fun to throw a couple of laughs into a serious song,” Loudon said. “They’re like little surprises or land mines or whatever.”
But, sometimes, there’s nothing funny about a Loudon Wainwright III song.
In “Hitting You,” also from “History,” Loudon grapples with the shame and guilt of having struck his young daughter on the thigh in a fit of frustration over her wild behavior in the back seat of the car on a family trip: “I said I was sorry and tried to clean the slate / But with that blow I’d sewn a seed and saw it was too late.”
“I don’t know how therapeutic songwriting is,” Loudon said. “I don’t know how much it solves anything. But it offers perspective, and provides a service to the audience. They’re thinking about whacking their kid, too, or having their crappy Thanksgiving dinner, or contemplating their own family dysfunctions, you know?”
In his new memoir, “Liner Notes: On Parents & Children, Exes & Excess, Death & Decay, & A Few of My Other Favorite Things,”* Loudon offers the concert of a lifetime. “In a certain way, songwriting was preparation for writing the book,” Loudon mused.
To tell the stories in “Liner Notes,” many of which have been told, at least to a certain extent, in his songs, a new form of creative discipline that Loudon doesn’t afford his songwriting was required. “You can’t just meander around in your mind waiting for some song to happen,” he said. “You really have to sit there and do it. But I actually enjoyed that. I wasn’t sure I would, but I looked forward to it.”
Interspersed throughout the book is a carefully curated retrospective of song lyrics that inform the narrative, as well as reprinted Life magazine articles written by his father, Loudon Wainwright, Jr. “When I was growing up, it was a big deal,” Loudon recalled. “I mean, I was the son of the famous writer.”
Loudon is far from the last Wainwright to carry on the family trade, or reconcile with a father’s fame and success. Rufus and Martha, whose mother is Kate McGarrigle, of the folk duo the McGarrigle Sisters, as well as Lucy, whose mother is Suzzy Roche, of the Roche Sisters, also a revered folk duo, are all writers of songs. “There was a lot of tension, I think, and a little bit of an oedipal thing going on,” Loudon said, about his relationship with his father, whom he’s written about in abundance, both in his songs and in his memoir. “Surviving Twin,” a one-man show that connects readings of his father’s pieces with performances of their corresponding songs, débuted, in 2014, at the West Side Theatre, in Manhattan. It enjoyed another run the following year at SubCulture. “You know, that competitiveness was just par for the course—we had the same name,” Loudon said.
“I never thought I’d write a book, until somebody told me that I had one in me,” Loudon admitted. “It was like a medical diagnosis. I had to get it out!”
In 2016, a few months before the Presidential election, Loudon had something else that needed to come out. “I Had a Dream,” a song that correctly predicted the nightmare of a Trump Presidency, featured a video that premièred as an exclusive on the humor Web site Funny or Die. Rolling Stone was quick to recognize it as a favorite among the burgeoning genre of anti-Trump protest songs: “He made a bad deal with Putin, a secret pact with Assad / Told the Pope where to go, I swear to God.”
Loudon has yet to write a follow-up, now that his dream has come true. His audience still shouts requests for the song, but he doesn’t play it. “It’s not funny anymore,” Loudon said. “It’s just not.”
Besides, I’ve been busy,” Loudon added. “I’m an author now, so I have an excuse!”
On the subway platform, before we parted ways, I informed Loudon that he and I had once met, briefly, when I was a teen-ager. After a concert at the Stephen Talkhouse, in Amagansett, he signed a caricature that I had drawn of him (with the hopes of having it autographed). I was barely old enough to drive. My date, who had introduced me to Loudon’s music, had been listening to his songs since childhood. Her mother was a fan. They lived alone together. “Divorce, and a lot of the other stuff that Loudon sings about, wasn’t openly discussed in my mom’s circles,” she recently told me. “So here was this guy who sang about it all with a sense of humor. His music became the soundtrack to my life. It was very comforting. It normalized the dysfunctional-family dynamic.”
I also thanked Loudon. As a newly divorced father of two, I’ve been able to relate to his songs in ways that were formerly impossible. “Well, it’s all part of the service we provide,” he said with a wry smile, before stepping onto the uptown D.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/a-walk-with-loudon-wainwright-iii?mbid=social_twitter
* signed copies still available from Cole's Books in Oxfordshire:
https://coles-books.co.uk/liner-notes-by-loudon-wainwright-iii
https://coles-books.co.uk/liner-notes-by-loudon-wainwright-iii
or from here:
Tuesday, 25 October 2016
Loudon Wainwright III at The Sage, Gateshead, October 2016 - review
Loudon Wainwright III at The Sage Gateshead
24 October 2016
Maybe those whining about Bob Dylan’s recent Nobel Prize for Literature should have attended one of Loudon Wainwright’s recent shows in which he mixes music (and words) with dramatic recitation of some of his father’s writing from Life magazine to get an understanding of how the selection and use of words have the power to involve, move and challenge people. In over 25 years of watching Wainwright live, this was undoubtedly the best show I’ve seen. There wasn’t the youthful tendency to cram in as many songs as possible, nor was he hampered by the demands of an audience who had come along purely in search of ribaldry – though there was some of that too! Last night’s crowd was simply enthralled by a man at the top of his game who had found a new way to present several of his songs.
He was relaxed and witty, looked better – more robust even - than I’ve seen him for a while and his voice was superb throughout. He treated us to old songs (School Days), obscure ones (I Don’t Care), covers (the late Michael Marra’s Hermless, here retitled Homeless), poignancy (The Picture) and the odd acerbically witty number (Double Lifetime).
The highlights, though, featured the use of the spoken (or rather, written, for all you Nobel dissenters) word mixed with music, a format taken from the recent Surviving Twin tour, a kind of posthumous collaboration between Loudon III and Loudon II, but featuring Loudon I and any number of family members and their dog. And in the intimate setting of Hall Two, it worked a treat, moving the audience with tales of childbirth, dying dogs and inter-generational resentments, mixed with some heavy ego and self-deprecation and then following up with an apt song, in one case, an outstanding Half Fist, a meditation on the way physical and emotional traits can be carried down the generations, that was so much more powerful than the album version that it warrants releasing a live recording of these shows.
No Loudon show is ever all serious and he had the audience laughing with a new song, Meet the Wainwrights, written to accompany a mini tour of Alaska where he was joined by his son Rufus, his sister Sloane, ex-partner Suzzy Roche and daughter Lucy Wainwright-Roche and where they seem to have taken the audience (or a goodly portion of it) with them to various venues. There was a little dig at Rufus, “more famous and much richer than the rest of us,” but essentially he was leading us to the killer line that if it hadn’t been for him, “none of you folks would be here.” Martha couldn’t make it but he was at pains to point out that she “and the bloody motherfucking asshole stay in touch,” which is good to know.
He was relaxed and witty, looked better – more robust even - than I’ve seen him for a while and his voice was superb throughout. He treated us to old songs (School Days), obscure ones (I Don’t Care), covers (the late Michael Marra’s Hermless, here retitled Homeless), poignancy (The Picture) and the odd acerbically witty number (Double Lifetime).
The highlights, though, featured the use of the spoken (or rather, written, for all you Nobel dissenters) word mixed with music, a format taken from the recent Surviving Twin tour, a kind of posthumous collaboration between Loudon III and Loudon II, but featuring Loudon I and any number of family members and their dog. And in the intimate setting of Hall Two, it worked a treat, moving the audience with tales of childbirth, dying dogs and inter-generational resentments, mixed with some heavy ego and self-deprecation and then following up with an apt song, in one case, an outstanding Half Fist, a meditation on the way physical and emotional traits can be carried down the generations, that was so much more powerful than the album version that it warrants releasing a live recording of these shows.
No Loudon show is ever all serious and he had the audience laughing with a new song, Meet the Wainwrights, written to accompany a mini tour of Alaska where he was joined by his son Rufus, his sister Sloane, ex-partner Suzzy Roche and daughter Lucy Wainwright-Roche and where they seem to have taken the audience (or a goodly portion of it) with them to various venues. There was a little dig at Rufus, “more famous and much richer than the rest of us,” but essentially he was leading us to the killer line that if it hadn’t been for him, “none of you folks would be here.” Martha couldn’t make it but he was at pains to point out that she “and the bloody motherfucking asshole stay in touch,” which is good to know.
The great Chaim Tannenbaum opened for Loudon, who referred to him as the ‘absent-minded professor,’ when he couldn’t find the door to exit the stage – and he did, indeed, look like a professor and, of course, that’s what he was, studying mathematical logic and teaching philosophy while singing and playing folk music for over 50 years, often collaborating with Loudon, the McGarrigles or members of their extended family. With his first album only just released, he proved more than able support and joined his friend on stage for a few numbers, including a version of The Doctor that had to be updated because of Loudon’s age (an unbelievable 70 last month) and an almost nostalgic, affectionate take on Tom Lehrer’s The Old Dope Peddler.
Looking forward to the live version, Loudon. Just sayin’.
FRANK BLACK
Sunday, 3 April 2016
Loudon Wainwright III interview 2016
Loudon Wainwright III: 'I wrote a song about Donald Trump. He’s an easy target'
The veteran troubadour is still on the road and using his songwriting to discuss the issues of the day, including the Republican frontrunner and Spotify
Martin Longley
Friday 1 April 2016
Loudon Wainwright III is just beginning a huge US tour, which runs until April 2017. At his apartment in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, which overlooks the Hudson river, he’s preparing for the rigours of the road. Most of the coming dates will find him alone, as usual. “It’s an economic thing, to a degree,” he admits. “A long time ago, in the 70s, I had a rock band. Primarily I’ve been solo. I don’t go out with a tour manager, I travel alone. It’s getting harder to haul my ass around everywhere, but there are less overheads.”
Customarily, he’ll fly and then hire a car if he’s hitting several cities within driving distance. “It’s hard for me to write on the road, just because it takes every ounce of energy I have to get there, rest a little bit, then go up and do the show. Occasionally I can write songs on the road, but it doesn’t happen usually.”
So a song such as 1971’s Motel Blues was probably penned when Loudon returned home, able to filter his touring experiences. “I’m always trying to write songs, I’m always thinking about putting out another album,” he says, unsurprisingly. “I caved and wrote a song about Donald Trump. It’s a dirty job … He’s a pretty easy target, I wouldn’t even say he’s a moving target. I’m still learning it, just finishing it. I think that there’s some laughs in it.”
Wainwright’s last two albums have markedly different characters. In 2012, Older Than My Old Man Now was steeped in morbid reflection, considering mortality, with any humour, if it was present, being dark indeed. Haven’t Got The Blues (Yet) featured an upbeat band presentation, jumping around to address a wide range of varied subjects, from the weighty to the almost trivial. It sounded like the album of a younger man, as if to recover from the downbeat pall of its predecessor.
“It takes me a couple of years to write an album’s worth of songs that I think are good enough to be on a record,” Loudon muses. “I do it song by song, and then kind of shape it, and the record might have a tone or mood. That’s just the way it turned out, and it wasn’t as if I’d planned ahead of time. I don’t do that. I just focus on trying to get the songs together, and then make a decision over how I’m going to produce the record, and who I’m going to use. It’ll find my, or its, audience, one way or another. Or not!”
In a drive against complacency, Loudon plans on reviving different song selections as the tour proceeds. “I have more than I need. I have a lot of songs. I’ve been going back and relearning some of them,” he says. “It was great to go back to that very old material, some of which I had to relearn, and completely treat them in a different way. I’m struck by how good they are.”
Wainwright grew up in Westchester County, upstate New York. “This is my hometown. I feel comfortable here. I started to play in the clubs here in New York, down in Greenwich Village, the Gaslight [Café], that was the primary club.”
This was a significant hive on MacDougal Street, where the likes of Bob Dylan, Dave Van Ronk and Tom Paxton honed their craft and which the Coen Brothers loosely based 2013’s Inside Llewyn Davis on. Loudon just got in there at the Gaslight a few years before it closed in 1971.
The place he really got his start though was in Cambridge and Boston. “I used to go up and play, little coffee houses. You start off by doing a few numbers on a hoot, or an open mic: they used to call them hoots.
“You don’t have an audience at that point, so you’re really just trying to get noticed, and you’re not getting paid, well virtually nothing.” His luck changed when someone from the Village Voice saw him and wrote up a positive review.
“In a matter of months, I had a record deal, so I was extremely lucky. There was not even a year of bumming around, and trying to play shows.
“John Peel was very instrumental in getting my career going. He played my first couple of albums a lot. You hear about people struggling for five, or even 10 years: I was good, don’t get me wrong, but I was also extremely lucky.”
In June, Wainwright plays a pair of New York City gigs, just below his original Greenwich Village stomping ground, at SoHo’s City Winery, which has been a regular haunt in recent years. The first gig is called Under The Wall And Off The Radar (22 June): “The idea being that I would pick people that I like, that I’ve seen, and that other people may not have seen, but should, that I think are really good.” So far, he’s invited along Dave Hill, Rachelle Garniez, Brian Dewan and Marc Eskenazi, a very diverse crew whose talents veer between writing, singing, guitaring and stand-up, in varying ratios. The second Winery date, on 29 June, is a Family & Friends show, where a possible combination of Rufus, Martha, Lucy or sister Sloan Wainwright may well be involved.
A glance at Loudon’s Spotify page reveals a live album, Late Night Calls, as the most recent release, lifted from a 1972 radio broadcast. “That’s a bootleg,” Wainwright fumes. “I have nothing to do with that complete rip-off. That infuriates me. I wouldn’t listen to it, it’d be too depressing. I hate the idea that someone is just getting something for nothing, but also that there’s no quality control. It pisses me off – I consider it thievery. Being the person who did the performing and writing, I feel violated.”
For him the important things are easily calculated: it still comes down to playing and writing music.
“The exciting part is writing the songs and the fun part is doing the shows. As long as those two elements are in play, and I’m getting paid, I’m perfectly happy.”
Loudon Wainwright III is currently touring the US
The veteran troubadour is still on the road and using his songwriting to discuss the issues of the day, including the Republican frontrunner and Spotify
Martin Longley
Friday 1 April 2016
Loudon Wainwright III is just beginning a huge US tour, which runs until April 2017. At his apartment in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, which overlooks the Hudson river, he’s preparing for the rigours of the road. Most of the coming dates will find him alone, as usual. “It’s an economic thing, to a degree,” he admits. “A long time ago, in the 70s, I had a rock band. Primarily I’ve been solo. I don’t go out with a tour manager, I travel alone. It’s getting harder to haul my ass around everywhere, but there are less overheads.”
Customarily, he’ll fly and then hire a car if he’s hitting several cities within driving distance. “It’s hard for me to write on the road, just because it takes every ounce of energy I have to get there, rest a little bit, then go up and do the show. Occasionally I can write songs on the road, but it doesn’t happen usually.”
So a song such as 1971’s Motel Blues was probably penned when Loudon returned home, able to filter his touring experiences. “I’m always trying to write songs, I’m always thinking about putting out another album,” he says, unsurprisingly. “I caved and wrote a song about Donald Trump. It’s a dirty job … He’s a pretty easy target, I wouldn’t even say he’s a moving target. I’m still learning it, just finishing it. I think that there’s some laughs in it.”
Wainwright’s last two albums have markedly different characters. In 2012, Older Than My Old Man Now was steeped in morbid reflection, considering mortality, with any humour, if it was present, being dark indeed. Haven’t Got The Blues (Yet) featured an upbeat band presentation, jumping around to address a wide range of varied subjects, from the weighty to the almost trivial. It sounded like the album of a younger man, as if to recover from the downbeat pall of its predecessor.
“It takes me a couple of years to write an album’s worth of songs that I think are good enough to be on a record,” Loudon muses. “I do it song by song, and then kind of shape it, and the record might have a tone or mood. That’s just the way it turned out, and it wasn’t as if I’d planned ahead of time. I don’t do that. I just focus on trying to get the songs together, and then make a decision over how I’m going to produce the record, and who I’m going to use. It’ll find my, or its, audience, one way or another. Or not!”
In a drive against complacency, Loudon plans on reviving different song selections as the tour proceeds. “I have more than I need. I have a lot of songs. I’ve been going back and relearning some of them,” he says. “It was great to go back to that very old material, some of which I had to relearn, and completely treat them in a different way. I’m struck by how good they are.”
Wainwright grew up in Westchester County, upstate New York. “This is my hometown. I feel comfortable here. I started to play in the clubs here in New York, down in Greenwich Village, the Gaslight [Café], that was the primary club.”
This was a significant hive on MacDougal Street, where the likes of Bob Dylan, Dave Van Ronk and Tom Paxton honed their craft and which the Coen Brothers loosely based 2013’s Inside Llewyn Davis on. Loudon just got in there at the Gaslight a few years before it closed in 1971.
The place he really got his start though was in Cambridge and Boston. “I used to go up and play, little coffee houses. You start off by doing a few numbers on a hoot, or an open mic: they used to call them hoots.
“You don’t have an audience at that point, so you’re really just trying to get noticed, and you’re not getting paid, well virtually nothing.” His luck changed when someone from the Village Voice saw him and wrote up a positive review.
“In a matter of months, I had a record deal, so I was extremely lucky. There was not even a year of bumming around, and trying to play shows.
“John Peel was very instrumental in getting my career going. He played my first couple of albums a lot. You hear about people struggling for five, or even 10 years: I was good, don’t get me wrong, but I was also extremely lucky.”
In June, Wainwright plays a pair of New York City gigs, just below his original Greenwich Village stomping ground, at SoHo’s City Winery, which has been a regular haunt in recent years. The first gig is called Under The Wall And Off The Radar (22 June): “The idea being that I would pick people that I like, that I’ve seen, and that other people may not have seen, but should, that I think are really good.” So far, he’s invited along Dave Hill, Rachelle Garniez, Brian Dewan and Marc Eskenazi, a very diverse crew whose talents veer between writing, singing, guitaring and stand-up, in varying ratios. The second Winery date, on 29 June, is a Family & Friends show, where a possible combination of Rufus, Martha, Lucy or sister Sloan Wainwright may well be involved.
A glance at Loudon’s Spotify page reveals a live album, Late Night Calls, as the most recent release, lifted from a 1972 radio broadcast. “That’s a bootleg,” Wainwright fumes. “I have nothing to do with that complete rip-off. That infuriates me. I wouldn’t listen to it, it’d be too depressing. I hate the idea that someone is just getting something for nothing, but also that there’s no quality control. It pisses me off – I consider it thievery. Being the person who did the performing and writing, I feel violated.”
For him the important things are easily calculated: it still comes down to playing and writing music.
“The exciting part is writing the songs and the fun part is doing the shows. As long as those two elements are in play, and I’m getting paid, I’m perfectly happy.”
Loudon Wainwright III is currently touring the US
Monday, 7 December 2015
Friday, 28 August 2015
Loudon Wainwright III - Surviving Twin: a father and son collaboration...
Loudon Wainwright III’s ‘Surviving Twin’ Is a Father-Son Collaboration
Loudon Wainwright III: Surviving Twin
Off Off Broadway, Special Event, Musical, Solo Performance
SubCulture, 45 Bleecker St.
646-504-6512
Loudon Wainwright III: Surviving Twin
Off Off Broadway, Special Event, Musical, Solo Performance
SubCulture, 45 Bleecker St.
646-504-6512
Laura Collins-Hughes
15 June 2015
The first song Loudon Wainwright III ever wrote for his son, Rufus, is more than 40 years old by now, an address to his child in utero.
Its giddy playfulness is right there in the title, “Dilated to Meet You,” and when the elder Mr. Wainwright performed it on a ukulele Wednesday night at SubCulture in his new solo show, “Surviving Twin,” the passage of time made its last lines bittersweet: “We really think you’ll like it here. We hope that you like us.”
Every parent’s longing, right? Kind of breaks your heart. But “Surviving Twin” is a sentimentality-free zone, and as soon as the song was done, Mr. Wainwright jumped into an anecdote. “When we told my grandmother that her first great-grandson would be called not Loudon IV but rather Rufus, she said, ‘Rufus? Rufus? That’s a dog’s name!’ ” He paused, just long enough. “She was right, of course.”
It’s a funny moment, but there’s a sting to it, the aggression mixed right in. So it goes in “Surviving Twin,” a bristling, acerbic, ultimately affecting family album of a show, with father-son resentments, hostilities and resemblances laid out for all to see, alongside the love and self-loathing.
Directed by Daniel Stern, it’s billed as “a posthumous collaboration” between Mr. Wainwright, the singer-songwriter, and his father, Loudon Wainwright Jr., the Life magazine columnist, who died in 1988. There’s some masterful writing in those columns, interwoven here with Loudon III’s songs and a batch of Loudon Jr.’s letters from the 1940s, before Loudon III was born.
The trouble with posthumous collaboration, if you happen to be the dead half of the partnership, is that it’s up to the living half to give you your due. At 68, Mr. Wainwright seems to be trying to gain some understanding of his father and himself, but he doesn’t appear to have much sympathy for either of them.
Death hasn’t halted this son’s competition with his father, which may have something to do with the angry yet absent way he performed the early parts of the show Wednesday night. Then again, he may simply have been in a mood. He warmed into the performance, though not before he’d rendered one long, lovely piece of his father’s prose nearly lifeless.
But “Surviving Twin” becomes quite moving, precisely because the relationships it depicts are so far from the anodyne ideal. “If families didn’t break apart, I suppose there’d be no need for art,” Mr. Wainwright sings, and in the moment, that feels absolutely true.
The first song Loudon Wainwright III ever wrote for his son, Rufus, is more than 40 years old by now, an address to his child in utero.
Its giddy playfulness is right there in the title, “Dilated to Meet You,” and when the elder Mr. Wainwright performed it on a ukulele Wednesday night at SubCulture in his new solo show, “Surviving Twin,” the passage of time made its last lines bittersweet: “We really think you’ll like it here. We hope that you like us.”
Every parent’s longing, right? Kind of breaks your heart. But “Surviving Twin” is a sentimentality-free zone, and as soon as the song was done, Mr. Wainwright jumped into an anecdote. “When we told my grandmother that her first great-grandson would be called not Loudon IV but rather Rufus, she said, ‘Rufus? Rufus? That’s a dog’s name!’ ” He paused, just long enough. “She was right, of course.”
It’s a funny moment, but there’s a sting to it, the aggression mixed right in. So it goes in “Surviving Twin,” a bristling, acerbic, ultimately affecting family album of a show, with father-son resentments, hostilities and resemblances laid out for all to see, alongside the love and self-loathing.
Directed by Daniel Stern, it’s billed as “a posthumous collaboration” between Mr. Wainwright, the singer-songwriter, and his father, Loudon Wainwright Jr., the Life magazine columnist, who died in 1988. There’s some masterful writing in those columns, interwoven here with Loudon III’s songs and a batch of Loudon Jr.’s letters from the 1940s, before Loudon III was born.
The trouble with posthumous collaboration, if you happen to be the dead half of the partnership, is that it’s up to the living half to give you your due. At 68, Mr. Wainwright seems to be trying to gain some understanding of his father and himself, but he doesn’t appear to have much sympathy for either of them.
Death hasn’t halted this son’s competition with his father, which may have something to do with the angry yet absent way he performed the early parts of the show Wednesday night. Then again, he may simply have been in a mood. He warmed into the performance, though not before he’d rendered one long, lovely piece of his father’s prose nearly lifeless.
But “Surviving Twin” becomes quite moving, precisely because the relationships it depicts are so far from the anodyne ideal. “If families didn’t break apart, I suppose there’d be no need for art,” Mr. Wainwright sings, and in the moment, that feels absolutely true.
Loudon Wainwright III Performs 'Posthumous Collaboration' With His Dad
Loudo talks to NPR's John Schaefer about Surviving Twin and his last album, Haven't Got the Blues (Yet).
"Oddly enough," says Wainwright, "I feel closer to my father now — and he's been dead for over 25 years — than I ever have."
'Surviving Twin': Theater Review
The sardonically humorous singer-songwriter delivers a moving meditation on father/son relationships, combining his own songs with spoken-word excerpts from his famed magazine columnist father's writings.
Frank Scheck
11 June 2015
Loudon Wainwright III has always told stories in his songs, usually of the sardonically humorous and deeply personal variety. He mines both qualities to excellent effect in his one-man show, described as a "posthumous collaboration" with his father, famed Life Magazine columnist Loudon Wainwright Jr., whose "The View From Here" essays ran in the publication from 1963 until his death in 1988. Alternately poignant and bittersweet, Surviving Twin is both a moving homage and a pointed musical meditation on the complexities of familial relationships.
Directed by actor Daniel Stern, the piece is simple in its theatricality. Appearing on a nearly bare stage, the singer performs monologues composed of excerpts from his father's columns, interspersed with thematically related songs from throughout his career, in which he accompanies himself on guitar, banjo ukulele and piano. It also features video projections of decades of family photographs and home movies.
It's clear from the spoken-word segments that Wainwright has inherited his father's literary talent, one that has also been passed down to his own children, singer-songwriters Rufus andMartha Wainwright and Lucy Wainwright Roche.
He begins with the title song, from his 2001 album Last Man on Earth, in which he sings about his conflicted, near Oedipal relationship with his father: "But how can you murder someone/In a way that they don't die?/I didn't want to kill him/That would be suicide." That's followed by an excerpt from a column entitled "Life With — and Without Father," in which Wainwright Jr. comments about his relationship with his own father, and then the song "Half Fist," in which the singer reflects on his grandfather, "the first Loudon," who died four years before he was born.
"They say he was an SOB, who liked to smoke and drink/In the photos he looks handsome … trapped is what I think."
Wainwright III, who has no shortage of acting credits, does very well by the monologues, which are not merely recited but performed. One highlight is "Disguising the Man," in which his father describes buying his first tailored, Saville Row suit. The singer also plays the role of the tailor, gently guiding his father through the laborious fitting process, and then dons a sharp three-piece suit before casually revealing that "this is the actual suit that Mr. Perry made for my father … it's 50 years old."
Later, he delivers "Another Sort of Love Story," dating from 1971, in which his father talks about having to have his beloved old dog — half Irish setter and half golden retriever — put to sleep. That's followed by the new song "Man & Dog," a comedic reflection on owning a dog in the city.
Another piece, "Father's Day," about the pleasures and pains of fatherhood, is followed by the hilariously titled number "Dilated to Meet You," addressed by the singer to his then unborn son:
"Even though there's trouble, even though there's fuss/We really think you'll like it here, we hope that you like us."
The piece is not without its flawed aspects: the correlations between the spoken and sung segments are not always resonant; the pacing sometimes drags despite its brief, 80-minute running time; and there is an inevitable air of self-indulgence. But at its best, Surviving Twin displays a moving love and respect, tinged with sharp-edged observations, from one generation for another. And with Father's Day just around the corner, it provides the perfect opportunity for some father/son bonding.
Loudon Wainwright III has always told stories in his songs, usually of the sardonically humorous and deeply personal variety. He mines both qualities to excellent effect in his one-man show, described as a "posthumous collaboration" with his father, famed Life Magazine columnist Loudon Wainwright Jr., whose "The View From Here" essays ran in the publication from 1963 until his death in 1988. Alternately poignant and bittersweet, Surviving Twin is both a moving homage and a pointed musical meditation on the complexities of familial relationships.
Directed by actor Daniel Stern, the piece is simple in its theatricality. Appearing on a nearly bare stage, the singer performs monologues composed of excerpts from his father's columns, interspersed with thematically related songs from throughout his career, in which he accompanies himself on guitar, banjo ukulele and piano. It also features video projections of decades of family photographs and home movies.
It's clear from the spoken-word segments that Wainwright has inherited his father's literary talent, one that has also been passed down to his own children, singer-songwriters Rufus andMartha Wainwright and Lucy Wainwright Roche.
He begins with the title song, from his 2001 album Last Man on Earth, in which he sings about his conflicted, near Oedipal relationship with his father: "But how can you murder someone/In a way that they don't die?/I didn't want to kill him/That would be suicide." That's followed by an excerpt from a column entitled "Life With — and Without Father," in which Wainwright Jr. comments about his relationship with his own father, and then the song "Half Fist," in which the singer reflects on his grandfather, "the first Loudon," who died four years before he was born.
"They say he was an SOB, who liked to smoke and drink/In the photos he looks handsome … trapped is what I think."
Wainwright III, who has no shortage of acting credits, does very well by the monologues, which are not merely recited but performed. One highlight is "Disguising the Man," in which his father describes buying his first tailored, Saville Row suit. The singer also plays the role of the tailor, gently guiding his father through the laborious fitting process, and then dons a sharp three-piece suit before casually revealing that "this is the actual suit that Mr. Perry made for my father … it's 50 years old."
Later, he delivers "Another Sort of Love Story," dating from 1971, in which his father talks about having to have his beloved old dog — half Irish setter and half golden retriever — put to sleep. That's followed by the new song "Man & Dog," a comedic reflection on owning a dog in the city.
Another piece, "Father's Day," about the pleasures and pains of fatherhood, is followed by the hilariously titled number "Dilated to Meet You," addressed by the singer to his then unborn son:
"Even though there's trouble, even though there's fuss/We really think you'll like it here, we hope that you like us."
The piece is not without its flawed aspects: the correlations between the spoken and sung segments are not always resonant; the pacing sometimes drags despite its brief, 80-minute running time; and there is an inevitable air of self-indulgence. But at its best, Surviving Twin displays a moving love and respect, tinged with sharp-edged observations, from one generation for another. And with Father's Day just around the corner, it provides the perfect opportunity for some father/son bonding.
Sunday, 10 August 2014
Loudon Wainwright - Haven't Got The Blues (Yet) review and more
26th album from US songwriting colossus is yet another triumph
After close to half a century in the business of writing and releasing original material, and now finding himself at the noble age of 67, it is perhaps quite expected that the recent works of lauded songwriter Loudon Wainwright III have been thoughtfully and eloquently examining the passing of years, and a stare-out contest with mortality in his autumn years. Well if the shtick is good enough for the ageing likes of Dylan et al, then Wainwright can certainly flip the whole manoeuvre and make it all more entertaining and drenched in his trademark poetic pathos and human insight.
Stylistically, Wainwright is thrillingly throwing every damn thing to the wind without a care on this record – we get Blues, Dixieland jazz, raw acoustic laments, country, and then whatever else he fancies; making it a varied and engaging listen from the off.
‘Haven’t Got The Blues (Yet)’ opens with ‘Brand New Dance’s vintage New Orleans rock 'n' roll boogie with some typically witty turns of phrase concerning the plights of advancing years and the joys of elderly seating rights on public transport. The gentle jazz standard setting of ‘I’ll be Killing You This Christmas’ pokes heartfelt and barbed jabs at the dumb NRA and US pro-gun lobby by way of immense grace and eloquence, with its quiet considered thoughts of protest, and a clever sly humour that will no doubt be totally lost on its targets.
Elsewhere the excellent title-track, with its study of varying degrees of mental anguish, is typical in its Wainwright humour/pathos cocktail (“I haven’t got the blues yet but I am somewhat depressed…I own several pairs of shoes should I choose to get dressed”). He is still refreshingly different, clever and original. His characterisation of the worldy street-smart poetic smart-arse continues to suit him perfectly. He is lyrically honest and eloquent about his personal failings and weaknesses, and Wainwright’s writing continues to be deadly sharp; full of wit and humour, wonderfully expressed pain and colourful experience to put younger songwriters to shame. At this stage of his career there’s no reason why Wainwright should be turning out material of such strength and precision, but ‘Haven’t Got The Blues (Yet)’ is an excellent album of weighty material that stands up to, or even betters, many of his lauded ‘70s or ‘80s work on every level. A talent and an album to treasure.
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