Loudon Wainwright III is probably referring to formal considerations when he says HE’S NOT A WRITER. You know, he doesn’t write sonnets, sestinas or villanelles. But one only has to start with the title of his twentieth-something album, Recovery, and work their way back through this collection of songs (from his first four albums), to discover the tireless wit and grit of an always original voice. The things Loudon wrote and said at 25, revamped and re-recorded here, sound different coming out of the 61 year old, even though the words are the same, and that’s a very neat trick. The title also references returning to and continuing the healthy thrust of his first collaboration with producer/singer/songwriter Joe Henry (Strange Weirdos: Music from and Inspired by the film Knocked Up), and their cohorts, a band of all-stars including Greg Liesz (guitars---that’s his pedal steel) and keyboardist/composer Patrick Warren.

Since he was signed to Atlantic Records at the age of 23, Wainwright has enjoyed a varied career as an actor, from TV’s M.A.S.H. in the 70’s to Knocked Up in the new millennium, to in-house singer-songwriter for Jasper Carrott on London TV in the 80’s and occasional columnist (see interview). First and foremost, however, he is a songwriter, recording artist and constantly-in-demand live performer, He had a famous dad, famous couple of ex-wives and now he has famous kids. If you know Loudon’s music, and son Rufus’ and daughter Martha’s, then you know they like to talk about all that. Recently, shaking had a chance to do its own talking with Loudon Wainwright III about Recovery, and the things that move him to write songs.

 

Shaking: Why at this juncture in your career did you decide to revisit your earliest stuff on your new record, Recovery?    

 

L.W.: I’ll answer that with something I seem to be saying more and more as I get older. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I was working with the producer Joe Henry (on Strange Weirdoes, Music from and Inspired by the film Knocked Up) and a band and it was fun. We did a recording of “Motel Blues,” which was written by a 23 year old guy and was now being sung again by a 61 year old guy and the results were interesting.  

Shaking: Since so much of your stuff is autobiographical, were you trying to construct your story with the song selection on Recovery or were there other motives?  

L.W.: No, it wasn’t thought out that way. Joe Henry was a fan of the early stuff that was mostly just me and a guitar. And the thought was what would these songs sound like with this band? What would it be like to recover or as I like to say now, reclaim, these songs?  

Shaking: You say somewhere that the title of the new record can be taken  different ways. One aspect might be discovery, like digging up old bones, and hopefully for people who don’t know Loudon Wainwright it will have that function, but another thing you said, is less clear to me. You say there’s the connotation in the word “Recovery” of getting better. Are you commenting on artistic bettering, maybe better players on the songs, improved arrangements, production or something more personal?  

L.W.: I’m not sure what I meant by that. Anytime you try to do something again, you hope that you’re doing something different with it. The more you do something, the better you get at it. I’ve been doing this for forty years.  So I’d like to think I’m getting better, so maybe I meant all of that.   

Shaking: I read your autobiography on your web site recently, and in reference to “School Days,” (which is the first song on Recovery) you said, “like most overly dramatic twenty-somethings, I thought I’d burn out quickly.” Are  you surprised you didn’t? And how much do you think having to raise a family had to do with that?  

L.W.: Although I was guilty of some excess, I’m by nature a fairly conservative person. I recognized that this was a job I like and you want to keep doing what you like.  So I decided to be careful and work hard. I’m not disappointed that I didn’t die at 25.              

Shaking:  It seems like between your songs appearing on the soundtrack of Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale, and such great songs as your cover of Peter Blegvad’s “Daughter,” and in fact, the entire soundtrack of Knocked Up, Loudon Wainwright’s name has been more visible in the last five years or so, is this a resurgence? 

L.W.: There seems to be a bit more of that. I’d like to think that’s true, but my career has held fairly steady for forty years. It’s nice to have songs featured in a cool movie like The Squid and the Whale and Knocked Up was a bump for sure. I guess there may be more of that now since some of the people who liked me when they were in college are making movies right now.  Judd Apatow told me that as a teenager, he was a fan of mine. 

Shaking: Recently, I saw the phrase literate singer-songwriter in connection to a particular phase of 1970’s popular music. The context was a discussion of Jackson Browne. Joni Mitchell, David Ackles, Randy Newman and you were also mentioned. Now the same people might put Aimee Mann, Joe Henry and Ben Folds in such a group. In that respect, you might be a bridge. But I’m wondering if you ever made a positive identification with any of that stuff, the next Dylan, or being one of the charter members of the literate singer-songwriter era? 

L.W.: Well, you know, to be included in the company of some of the people you mention is nice, but I never wrote songs like Bob Dylan’s and I don’t think of myself as a writer. I wasn’t a particularly good English student. My compositions weren’t so great. I never wrote poetry. But if somebody deems the songs literary or poetic, that’s fine. My father was a writer who wrote for Life magazine, so there is that connection genetically and I like to read.  

Shaking:  Are there any writers of fiction, poetry or creative non-fiction that have influenced your writing?  

L.W.: It’s always a tricky thing to drop names. But I’m finally going to do it. I’m going to read Moby Dick, and get through the pages about every fucking whale.

 Is that something you’re going to do this summer? You might be running out of time.

L.W.: I’m going to start it this summer but it might take me into the fall (ha ha).

Shaking:  Do you think of writing, songwriting, as a way to describe and dramatize your life experience first…song as memoir, if you will, that gives you the chance to talk about love, marriage, divorce, growing old, loving the kids, hating the kids, or are you just trying to tell stories that are sometimes about you and yours and sometimes not? 

L.W.: I’m just trying to write a song about the things that interest me and those are usually the characters and events in my life that affect me the most, and they are important. That’s my chosen beat. That’s the waterfront that I cover. I can’t just write a love song. Some people can. For instance, Irving Berlin was able to write one great love song after another but my life is marriage and divorce and kids.  

Shaking:  Are you the author of the essay, “How Do You Believe in a Mystery,” for the book This I Believe? Or was that your father?

 L.W.: I wrote that, yes. NPR asks people to do that for the radio and I did.

Editor’s note:  Loudon, who has written op-ed pieces and magazine articles here and there, read the essay on NPR’s Morning Edition on June 19, 2006,  and a portion of his take on songwriting and creativity is reproduced here: 

“When I write what I consider to be a good song, when I realize it’s going to hang together, when I somehow manage to get it into the boat, so to speak, I invariably find myself looking upwards and thanking something or even, dare I say it, Someone…I believe in the power of imagination, in the mysterious gift of creation---creation with a small “c”, that is creation as in one’s work, hauling in the day’s catch.”  

Finally, we asked Loudon if he’s ever turned reviews good or bad into songs, any temptation there? Loudon suggested with listen to “Saw Your Name in the Paper,” a song he recorded in 1971 for Album II and reclaimed for Recovery. It’s particularly cogent given the success of Rufus and Martha Wainwright. The song, which once sounded as industry sniping as Elvis Costello’s “Radio Radio,” recast now in Wainwright’s sixty-one year old voice, sounds more like fatherly wisdom and why not? We’ll leave you, dear readers, with some of Wainwright’s words, because they are after all, what the guy is about.

From “Saw Your Name in the Paper,” (Album II: 1971 and Recovery: 2008)

Maybe you’ll get famous, maybe you’ll get rich

It’s alright, don’t be afraid, lots of us got that itch

Lots of us really need it, we really need it bad

Lots of us are desperate, lots of us are sad

 

From “I’m a One Man Guy,” (I’m Alright: 1985 and reclaimed by son Rufus on Poses: 2001)

I’m gonna bathe and shave and dress myself and eat solo every night

Unplug the phone, sleep alone, stay way out of sight

Sure it’s kind of crazy, yeah it’s sort of sick

Being your own and only is a selfish, dirty trick

 

From “A Father and A Son,” (BBC Sessions: 1998)

When I was your age I was a mess

On a bad day I still am, I guess

I think I know what you’re going through

Everything changes but nothing is new…

You’re starting up and I’m winding down

Ain’t it big enough for us both in this town?

Say it’s big enough for us both in this town