Get to Know: Loudon Wainwright III (by Claire)

When it comes to live music, Loudon Wainwright is one of the greats. He’s funny and charming, able to banter with ease, soothe drunk hecklers with a well timed joke, then launch into his repertoire of songs that will alternately split your sides and break your heart, usually on opposite ends of the same chorus.

I once told Loudon Wainwright III that I loved him, right to his face. I was about 15 years old and I had just seen him in concert for the first time. After the show, he signed autographs in the front lobby of the Birchmere. I lined up with my dad and when we reached the table, Loudon was a slightly sweatier, more subdued version of his stage self: charming, quick to offer a quip and a broad smile. He looked at me and said “I bet your old man dragged you this show, huh?” and I blurted out “What! No! I love you.”

This outburst was… embarassing. Seriously. For both of us, and I’m not talking about my dad (who, to his credit, waited until we got to the car to say something along the lines of “Wow. You be straight crazy.”) Loudon looked at me like I had three heads, or, to be more precise, he looked at me like “Who is this big eyed, frizzy haired teenager and why isn’t she at a Hanson concert?” (I love Loudon, but I’m going to guess his pop music references are a little off)

But that’s what he does—he gets under your skin. He’s honest, incredibly vulnerable, periodically hilarious, and an impeccable songwriter. You feel like you know him, or like he knows you, and though both things are certainly false, his music creates a connection with the listener that is real.

“New Paint” on Album III

Loudon offers a pretty picture of early romance, when walks in the park and dancing are still par for the course, when lips are first kissed and parents first met. It’s a sweet song about early love with a nice girl—and, you know, waning youth and nascent feelings of mortality. In interviews, Loudon talks about how “New Paint” is proof that he has always been obsessed with mortality and age: he makes reference to it repeatedly throughout the song, until it becomes a sort of second chorus, and he wrote this song when he was 25.

When I was 19, there was a guy in my French class who was 30. One day he told a lengthy story about how when he was 25, he figured out that he wasn’t going to age backwards, and he started to rebel. He went out to bars every night, he threw punches, he bought a motorcycle. None of it mattered. He wasn’t old, not by a long shot (not even when he was telling this story, five years later), but he wasn’t going to get younger. I’m 25 now, and I understand how French class guy felt. I imagine Loudon was in a similar place, and based on later songs, I think it took him more than five years to move on to a new place. But that’s another post.

“The Swimming Song” on Attempted Mustache

In “The Swimming Song,” Loudon strikes a perfect balance between cheer and doom. It starts off upbeat with a twangy, bluegrassy feel, and focuses in on a typically pleasurable activity: Swimming. He swam in public and in private, did backstrokes and butterflies, wore a swim suit or went suitless. I think the line “At the latter I was informal/At the former I wore my suit” is a demonstration of his economy when it comes to words, and his intelligence when it comes to sound composition.

In the midst of all of this twang and splash, there is something dark creeping around the edges.  The second line is “This summer I might’ve drowned,” and later he calls himself  “A self-destructive fool” after chlorine gets in his eyes, and salt gets in his wounds. The song closes with him doing a cannonball when no one is looking. You could say it’s another meditation on mortality, but I think it’s something simpler: It’s hard for him to be happy, even when he’s supposed to be. The swimming settings highlight his unhappiness in happy situations.

“The Acid Song” on More Love Songs

Loudon Wainwright is hilarious. Seriously. You might already know this, since he was a consistently funny part of the Apatow crew on “Undeclared,” and made a brief humorous appearance in “Knocked Up.”  Here, Loudon drops acid at a bar with five of his friends after 12 acid-free years. Things almost immediately go wrong: They get kicked out of the bar, the sidewalk starts sweating, they blow the joint to go listen to the Grateful Dead. That’s when the dialogue starts: “Wow, I’m really glad we did this, this feels great. Just like the old days. Yeah I know my hair is on fire” and “Hey you want to hold some fruit? Hold some fruit! It breeds, it really does.” They hit the road again and head to the country, and Loudon gives a laugh out loud funny tutorial on how to drive on acid.

The song features all the classic fun Loudon vocal tics: The wailing stretched out words, the stuccato moments mid song, the scattered bits of dialogue. The whole song is hysterical without being an obvious comedy song or a trying-too-hard novelty song.

“White Winos,” on Last Man on Earth

A haunting song about the end of Loudon’s mother’s life, when he and his mother reflected on their shared past over several glasses of white wine. It manages to contain everything I love about Loudon: family history, heavy themes delivered with a sonic light touch, a bit of sardonic humor. All of this is housed in a song which has a repetitive flow that is reminiscent of a drawn out villanelle.

“Grey in L.A.,” on Strange Weirdos

If there were a Grumpy Old Man Song Hall of Fame, this one would definitely come out on top. It’s too sunny. The weather is too good. Your house is going to smell like a wet dog. Your car is killing the planet. LA is a sad sack cesspool. Everything is just the worst! But because it’s Loudon, the message is delivered in a light, catchy package. I hum it to myself on rainy days in San Francisco, when I want to pretend that a break from the perfect weather is a nice change of pace. (Sorry for the crappy video on this! If you find a better version, send it my way and I’ll swap it in—Charmcityjukebox@gmail.com)

First Show/Worst Show: Rahnia Mersereau

(Claire: More musical memories, this time from friend-of-the-blog Rahnia Mersereau! Interested in seeing your First Show/Worst Show on the Charm City Jukebox? Click here.)

First: My dad is a musician, so it’s difficult to remember the details of my first show. The first live music I ever saw was probably one of his bands, and I would’ve been too young to remember. I have vague memories of shows seen as a child at house parties & at venues I was too young to be in, but the first big live music event I remember is seeing the Grateful Dead.

It would’ve been the summer of ’91 or 92, in Northern California, if my child’s memory serves. I saw them, to be fair, from a great distance. My parents were too poor/cheap to buy tickets to the actual show, so we hung out in the village outside. I remember certain moments very clearly — throwing up from dehydration, climbing a huge mound of dirt that allowed us to see over the fence and towards the faraway stage, meeting my uncle Ronnie for the first (and last) time, having an odd conversation with a young boy who thought girls should be able to wander around with their shirts off when it was hot, like he did — and the Grateful Dead playing in the background. I am, to this day, of the firm opinion that the Grateful Dead catalog is best deployed as background music. It reminds me of sunny breezes and warm green grass, ripe hippies and wafting marijuana. It conjures a nostalgia that is pleasant, not painful, which is more than can be said for much of my childhood.

Worst: My sister asked me to go a show with her at Wonder Ballroom in NE Portland. She presented it as me going with her to see We The Kings and whoever might be opening for them. I figured sure, why not, I could use a night out of the house. Upon arriving, I found that I’d been duped into a large line-up of terrible pop-post-punk bands. Here’s the line-up. If you can stand it, here are some videos from that night:

http://youtu.be/ZBsxsxZ93jU
http://youtu.be/mdqJWElmdoY
http://youtu.be/jOTQXRFagvU

It was truly some of the most trite, uninventive music I’ve ever allowed to assail my ears. If that weren’t bad enough, the entire audience seemed to be 13 to 16 years old, plus their parents. I amused myself by watching the boy near the stairs who seemed glued to his father, but wanting to join the adolescent mosh pit forming near the stage. My sister and I pushed ourselves up and in, got carried away by the moving mass of bodies, moist with sweat and water tossed on the crowd. Normally, this sort of thing is utterly cathartic. I’d leave shows feeling relaxed, my ears pleasantly buzzing with new hearing damage. But for that sort of release, the Dionysian link to the sublime, you need something that taps into that part of you, that will let you surrender. This night left me frustrated, my ears ringing with terrible chord progressions and questionable musicianship.

First Show/ Worst Show: Andre Moshenberg

(Claire: It begins! Here’s our first First Show/Worst Show by Andre Moshenberg: Live music fanatic, maker of mixtapes, my dad. Interested in seeing your First Show/Worst Show on the Charm City Jukebox? Click here.)

First show: Keep in mind that I’m very old. My older brother took me to see The Band at Merriweather Post Pavilion. I’m guessing the summer of 1970 or 1971. So, I was 8 or 9 years old. I remember a bunch of hippies drinking and smoking on the lawn, I remember singing along to some of the songs but the most clear memory of the evening was some guy wearing a homemade Jethro Tull T-shirt. I’d never heard of them and I thought it was the coolest name.

Worst show: I was going to see Tom Morello, the Nightwatchman, at Sonar. I wasn’t sure what kind of crowd there would be but figured it would be pretty large due more to his time in Rage and Audioslave than his current material. So, my friend Glen and I walked into the big room at Sonar. I’d been there once before to see Gomez and didn’t think much of the room. The opening act came out to thunderous applause from the packed house. I thought it was weird that the crowd was so young but thought that was a good thing.

The band played forever. The crowd ate it up, screaming and jumping up and down like crazy. It was just odd that this terrible opening band was both playing so long and getting such a positive reaction from a crowd that was there for Morello. After what seemed like an eternity, they ended their set, the lights went up and the place emptied out. We discovered that night that there are two rooms at Sonar. Tom Morello was playing the smaller room. We had just stood through an entire Cobra Starship show. Worst show ever. Fortunately we did catch a bunch of the Nightwatchman show, which was great. But still…Cobra Starship…really?