I was, until last week, utterly unfamiliar with his work. I read an online article that quoted his upcoming song “My Meds” about the numbing amount of medications he takes, at the age of… 68?
I poked around and found a few songs that indicated to me that a lot of his earlier work was very much in the Tom Lehrer vein.
Last night he and a lot of his family ( Including the apparently wildly popular son Rufus ) performed his new album " Older Than My Old Man Now ". Near as I could tell by his remarks, they performed the entire album plus a few other songs.
To say it was a morose evening is fair. While his artistry is apparent, this album is quite sobering. Song after song filled with regrets, sadness, memories, pain and emptiness. Not sure when I went to hear someone perform whose work I was NOT already a fan of and so in that light it was a superb evening out. The musicians were all top-notch, there was a lot of love and humor on stage. ( Two of his ex-wives performed with him. )
I’m intrigued. Not irked at having spent an evening of serious music listening instead of howling with laughter over clever spoofy and satirical songs. Just curious to hear his earlier stuff.
Kinda glad we jumped and got the tickets on Thursday.
The same can be said for the majority of his output since his first album in 1970. But he applies a great deal of self-deprecating humor to that pathos and the political ditties that he wrote for NPR make Mark Russell look like Rebecca Black. I stopped following him closely in the mid Eighties but he’s still one of my favorite artists.
He’s a great songwriter - witty for sure, but often with that steak of melancholia too. Dead Skunk was his only hit, but that’s very much a novelty record, and not at all typical of his output.
One of the great things about following LWIII through such a long career is that you can see his concerns changing to reflect the fact that each album was written by a slightly older guy than the last one. Andy Kershaw, the British DJ once said that the great thing about being a long-term Loudon Wainwright fan is that he grows up alongside you, and always has a song to fit just where your own life is at the time.
He’s done a lot of autobiographical stuff about his family and his own shortcomings as a father and a husband, and both Rufus and Martha have responded with songs describing how his serial infidelity and eventual departure felt from their perspective as children at the time. In my view, Loudon sometimes lets himself off the hook a little too easily in the family songs, which makes it all the more fascinating to have Rufus and Martha join the conversation too.
If I had to pick one track to recommend to you, it would be Graveyard from his terrific 2001 album Last Man On Earth. It’s a typically well-crafted song about visiting his father’s grave, knowing he’ll come back there again and again and (if I’m interpreting it correctly) the fact that he’ll eventually be buried in the same cemetery himself. Every time I visit my own parents’ grave, that song’s refrain runs through my head: “I go to the graveyard, and I’ll be back again”.
Wainwright’s reputation as a comic songwriter is a misrepresentation. His first album was mostly Dylanesque* philosophical singer-songwriter music, with a couple of lighter songs thrown in. Same with his second, and his third wasn’t much different, except that “Dead Skunk” was the closest thing he had to a hit, and people thought he was a novelty act.
His songs have always been introspective, even if he lightened them with an occasional flash of humor. Even many of his humorous songs – something like “Tonya’s Twirls,” about skater Tonya Harding – has a surprising amount of emotional depth to it.
BTW, Wainwright’s ex-wives were Kate McGarrigal (best known for “The Log Driver’s Waltz”, though she wouldn’t have been at the concert – she died in 2010) and Suzzy Roche (of the Roches). Wainwright’s musical family tree includes three generations of performers, and it’s not unusual for some of the Roches to show up at Loudon’s concerts, for him to show up when they perform.
He’s still one of the best lyricists around.
*He coined the concept of the "New Bob Dylan Club, for him, Bruce Springsteen, John Prine, and Elliot Murphy, since all were given that sobriquet.
Suzzy Roche was there. He did make a LOT of references to his infidelities and didn’t flagellate a lot. But he flagellated a bit. Rueful and painful in his honesty with the ex’s, son and daughters on stage singing with him.
It was a bit like watching group therapy with a banjo and upright bass and gee-tahr behind them.
And even his older songs have resonances: a couple of years ago, he released Recovery, an album of songs from his first three albums. Without changing a word, the songs changed their meanings.
I’ve seen him twice in concert – once around 1971 when he was starting out, and then again about five years ago. He also showed up at a Maggie Roche concert and sang harmony, showing up at the the back of the hall as a surprise.
I was listening to a Fresh Air show on NPR last week where they played a song by one of the two, father or son, which was a guy singing (almost like a lullabye) to his kid about how he and mom were breaking up. Freaking depressing as hell!
Well hey - that’s the gig. Singer-songwriter doesn’t just mean you write songs and then sing 'em. You have to tell stories, and they have to feel real to your audience.
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It was a bit like watching group therapy with a banjo and upright bass and gee-tahr behind them.
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I guess he didn’t do One Man Guy then
Really? I never figured that, but it’s a shame Tom Lehrer never wrote his version of The Acid Song.
