Loudon Wainwright III – a legend returns

Groove Tube with Jimi McDonnell – tribunegroove@live.ie

Loudon Wainwright III’s work should be prescribed listening for any aspiring songwriter. The American singer plays Róisín Dubh on Saturday, November 5, for a gig that could be winter’s hottest ticket.

Since releasing his first album 46 years ago, Loudon Wainwright has toured all over the world and built up a loyal following with his poignant, personal and often achingly funny songs. His most recent work was Surviving Twin, a one-man theatre and music piece which ran in Broadway and more, recently, Kilkenny. Speaking from New York, he gives an insight into what punters can expect.

“What I’ll do in Galway, and all these dates on the tour coming up, will be that I’ll sing songs some of which are old, others that are more recent. Then I’ll combine and connect them to selections from Surviving Twin.”

Surviving Twin is based on the writings of Loudon Wainwright’s father, who was a journalist for Life Magazine.  Why did Loudon decided to do a theatrical piece at this point in his career?

“For a long time, I didn’t think I was going to be a songwriter,” he says. “I mean I played the guitar and sang songs, but I thought I was going to be an actor when I was a young man. I went to drama school in the late 1960s, then I dropped out of that and became a kind of hippy for a while, got into music.

“But I’ve always been interested in the theatre, and performing – I do a bit of acting on the side anyway. For years, I thought about taking my songs and presenting them in a more theatrical fashion, you could say.”

And what songs they are, including those on 2014’s Haven’t Got the Blues (Yet). One gem is in A Hurry, a song about a man who’s asking for spare change at a train station.  How did that one come about?

“I grew up 40 miles outside of New York City and my dad was a commuter,” recalls Loudon. “He took the train into town every day, and I’ve taken that one a lot. I’m sure one morning I saw a guy with an empty coffee cup, asking for money – and that’s how these things start.”

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.