Search and Destroy: Loudon Wainright III

and both are on one cd via rhino.

from "old friend", album II

III as well.

The Atlantic Recordings on Rhino Handmade which has the first 2 records is really good.

Hey, push came to shove
We fell out of love
We tore each other apart
Love is grand but I can't understand
Why you broke my proverbial heart

We used to be in love but now we are in hate
You used to say I came too early
But it was you who came too late
Boy meets girl & they give it a whirl
And the very next thing you know
She thinks he's nuts & he hates her guts
Then the bad blood starts to flow

Well it sounds like sour grapes
And that's just what it is
I'm gonna get me a subscription to Argosy
And I'll get me a subscription to Ms
That's a whole lot of crap
About a tender trap
What it is is a suicide snare
All I want to do, is to forget you
And our lousy love affair"

I caught myself singing this on the train in today.

Fame and Wealth and I'm Alright have about four weak tracks between them. More Love Songs and Therapy have their moments, too. After *that* it gets dicey (I haven't heard his most recent stuff).

discog:
http://www.lwiii.com/lwdisco.html

Does anybody else have that tic of using acronyms for song names?
IDTTYWLM
IWIWAL
TSDHAV

Once his songs reach the studio they tend to lose a certain something. Case in point: 'Hank and Fred' from the new album. 24-karat gold when he played it solo in session for Andy Kershaw in 2003, total balls when played with a bunch of bored session musicians in 2005.

'Thanksgiving' off of the 'Therapy' album is definitely worth seeking out. That's one case where the live version just doesn't measure up to the album track.

i think he's more like a standup comedian, the way when they talk about their family its always *about their family* even if its not true. Sometimes this means he's clumsy because he tries too hard to tell a story maybe. i dont mind though. he doesnt really waste words. and when hes angry he's really angry. Dump the Dog is pissed off and desperate, the swimming song is really about getting laid. (i heard the mcgarrigle sisters singing this on the radio and that's the only reason i heard him in the first place.) even if i dont like him, in his songs he seems like a real person.

this fucking guy. seriously, he's got to be the most brutal songwriter ever. a friend made a comp of some of his more recent stuff (from the past decade or so) and I was surprised by how strong most of it was.

I really love The Swimming Song.

kinda feel at this point like i want to hear all of his albums, even shit ones.

yeah, i'm sure each one of his records has at least two or three great songs on it. mentioned upthread, but that "Hank and Fred" song (and unlikely meditation on Hank Williams and the death of Mr. Rogers) is wrenching in a way I can't really describe.

i'm dyin' ta hear his last one, The Charlie Poole Project. anybody heard this?
x'gau say:
High Wide & Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project [161, 2009]
Young folkies are attracted to their chosen past because it seems so raw. But though young folkie Wainwright twigged to this totemic mountaineer via the line "The beefsteak it was rare and the butter had red hair," now he's old enough to cook him. Poole didn't write that line or anything else he sang--he'd perform Paul Dresser's musty "The Letter That Never Came" as soon as W.C. Handy's hightailing "Ramblin' Blues" if he thought it was good for a drink. And in Wainwright's plentifully illustrated and annotated two-CD tribute, where nine of the 29 selections are new songs by Wainwright and/or producer Dick Connette, Poole stands as a touchstone of a bygone era. Wainwright is such a card that you don't think of him as a singer, but he puts more throat and thorax into the sentimental ballads than Poole had in him, and his barn burners are louder and faster without approaching Poole's rooted assurance or reckless abandon. These conscious misprisions are fine by me. In fact, I'm more likely to play the canny reconstruction than the certified original. I'm older than Poole ever was. A

The good old days are good and gone now
That's why they're good, because they're gone
But our conversation turns to kowtow
We kiss the past's ass all night long

from "old friend", album II

God this song... Fucking BANG ON.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGwL6t08B7g

i've tried ,not too hard, to get into this guy a few times, and i always come up a bit short. why is that? sometimes his lyrics tow the clever-stupid line like mid-period lou reed, albeit with a very different tone. sometimes it just seems too damned twee.

what should i try first? other than the 1st two LPs which i've got.

This is a fair criticism, bc his stuff hasn't been compiled appropriately. Those first two records are a bit difficult to dive into, and his best work is really spread out amongst his catalog.

There's a collection online I found called "Histories" (not History, which is a real record -- this is one disc of a three-disc greatest hits compiled by a fan) that turned my wife and me on to him in a HUGE way. The guy's lyrics (and melodies) are just amazing -- incredibly funny, devastatingly self-critical (check "White Winos" or "Father-Daughter Dialogue"). And catchy! Just as importantly, I find the music to his best songs to be really engaging. See if you can find that comp.

been meaning to get that box -- i do think that there are great songs spread out throughout his career. albums i've heard are mostly spotty, but each one has a few keepers. a friend made me a comp of the best of his last few records and it's great.

thx to tyler for rec'ing 'motel blues' in the 70s exhaustion thread. heavy

such a charmer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKqZZg2U6t4

oof great performance. such a chilling song, just a total takedown of the "sensitive singer-songwriter" movement of the 70s, and better than anything a lot of those dudes could ever write.

weirdly he didn't put that on his box set. the song is pretty devastating, but i think to rank him above e.g. james taylor is maybe to indulge in the fallacy that the clever and cynical is superior to the sentimental and earnest. (not that taylor's music is w/o irony.) anyway i gotta say LWIII isn't much of a melodist, at least not these days.

Yeah, I don't agree.

Bought tix to see him I'm September at a coffeehouse in a Unitarian church!

Just saw this last night in the front row with my wife, who I turned on to the guy and who can almost be brought to tears when she hears "The Picture." He's woodshedding material for Surviving Twin – a one man show about him and his father, who was a semi-famous columnist for Life Magazine in the 60s with a regular feature called The View from Here.

He read a bunch of columns (from memory) followed by new songs that were kind of responses. Between this and his last album, Older Than My Old Man Now, it's pretty clear as he gets older that he's coming to terms with how much he owes his talent—not just his foibles—to his dad. He also did a bunch of newish songs including "In C," which he played on piano about two feet in front of us and had everyone just completely stunned.

I'd say the whole thing was like Garrison Keillor were Keillor ever to, say, offer to sell his septuagenarian audience Bolivian flake cocaine in the graveyard out back behind the church.

Anyway, the whole thing was just stunning. There was a gaunt old man in the front pew across from us who sat on the edge of his seat with a look of childlike wonder on his face for about two hours straight – but I think we all probably looked that way.

Also, he asked for requests when he came out for an encore – I paused for a second before yelling "The Picture"...and he played it. Pretty much a perfect night.

Kathleen Edwards' cover of Swimming Song is my favorite thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sA2O3Lj-dY

such a charmer
🎥

oh, maybe it was “Motel Blues.”

Search: his acting work on both "Undeclared" and the third season of "MASH".

https://www.nytimes.com/1981/02/20/theater/stage-jewish-repertory-in-pinter-s-birthday-party.html

Loudon Wainwright 3d, the singer and songwriter, was a mulish Stanley, alternating between blind violence and regret provoked by Meg, his landlady, played by Ruth Miller as a sweetly frumpish dreamer.

My number three act of the past year, apparently

And yet not one of his songs is on the Year End Playlist.

I did listen to an NTI-created playlist a lot. Don’t see it posted on this thread, can’t remember how I found it.

Oh it’s on the POX thread.

I probably haven’t listened to any of his albums properly but any playlist I have listened to has been grebt.

Does he get covered often? Off the top of my head I can only think of Alex Chilton doing “Motel Blues,” Kathleen Edwards doing “The Swimming Song” and Rufus doing “One Man Guy.”

Would be nice to do a poll of his catalog but would probably only get a half-dozen voters

What I’ve heard of his big band album from this year has been good.

Oh, I guess they were just on Fresh Air to promote it.

Listening to this last now. They are doing live in studio versions of some of the songs as a socially distanced three piece. Sounds great.

The McGarrigles also covered Swimming Song.

I think Johnny Cash did one of his songs on one of the Rick Rubin albums.

... indeed he did, "The Man Who Couldn't Cry", closing track on "American Recordings".

Good calls.

silkworm did motel blues as well, it was how i first heard it

I did listen to an NTI-created playlist a lot. Don’t see it posted on this thread, can’t remember how I found it.

Nice! I'd totally forgotten about creating it, here it is for anyone who's interested: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4UWZCVklhUimXXGDcIbeW9?si=AOtt4tpwRTSUor8yPp4tBQ

Looking back, I've always blanched at the glut of white guy singer-songwriters from the 1970's -- but Wainright is just totally unique. His lyrics are poignant, wrenching, hilarious, sophisticated, and crude, usually within the same song, and often within couplets. Reveling in being a prick who has wreaked emotional havoc on everyone who loves him without ever indulging in pathos is perhaps his most endearing quality, but he's also more than a bit of showman while rarely being showy. And, not coincidentally, his tunes are memorable.

Agree on all points

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0CRMPBXshI

Memoir seems good

Hey, “Daughter” was written by Peter Blegvad. Who knew?

I have always loved that fact. Both because Blegvad deserves the success and because LW3 completely owns it.

Fresh Air recently replayed some of the above mentioned two-man performance of songs from the "little big band" album, here's the (downloadable) podcast of re-broadcast:https://www.npr.org/2021/05/28/1000915124/loudon-wainwright-iii-and-vince-giordano-play-from-the-great-american-songbook

(Paired v. compatibly w pod ov Rachel & Vilray, who also play old tunes and their own that fit--Rachel is also lead singer of Lake Street Dive, and here bounces jazz off melody lines w/o ever obscuring them or the words---would like to hear her w Loudie, but might not be room---he's really into it on this occasion!
Oh yeah, here's Rachel & Vilray: https://www.npr.org/2021/05/28/1000916316/rachael-vilray-share-a-mic-and-a-love-of-old-swing-standards)

Should have thought to look for the whole two-man thing, here it is, 50 minutes:
https://www.npr.org/2020/12/31/952281462/loudon-wainwright-iii-vince-giordano-in-concert

the swimming song is really about getting laid

I would go much further to say that The Swimming Song is about everything. I mostly hear it as a clever zen-like statement about doing your best in the face of whatever bullshit life throws at you. But it could also literally just be about swimming; it's as deep as you want it to be. One of the greatest songs ever written, makes me regret not getting into this guy sooner

Many of his songs certainly are about that topic, but I’ve never thought that with respect to “The Swimming Song.” I can always give another listen though.

yeah I mean it strikes me as an early and much better version of the "just keep swimming" song from Finding Nemo. It briefly resets the whole complicated nonsense of being a human being in the world down to its most basic essentials. I hear it and I think, oh, living is actually fairly simple, isn't it? You just keep kicking your legs and moving your arms, and you always could drown, but most of the time you don't. ok got it, I think I can handle that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxx2i9hkHKE