September 2, 2025 • 50 mins
In 2022, at 75 years-old, Loudon Wainwright III released Lifetime Achievement—an aptly titled album from a songwriter whose debut came more than fifty years earlier.
Over the decades, Loudon has built a reputation for his confessional style, writing candidly about the struggles and absurdities of family life, failed relationships, and the scars of parental abandonment. While his subject matter can be heavy, he often balances it with wit and humor. You’ll hear that today when he performs “Fam Vac” and “Back in Your Town” from Lifetime Achievement.
In this conversation with Bruce Headlam, Loudon reflects on how he leaned into his upper-class upbringing when he first began performing professionally, what it was like collaborating with guitar virtuoso Richard Thompson in the 1980s, and the magical feeling of stepping on stage for the very first time.
You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite Loudon Wainwright III songs HERE.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
In twenty twenty two, at seventy five years old, loud
and Wainwright the Third released Lifetime Achievement, an aptly titled
album from a songwriter whose debut came more than fifty
years earlier. Over the decades, Loudan has built a reputation
for his confessional style, writing candidly about the struggles and
absurdities of family life, failed relationships, and the scars of
(00:41):
parental abandonment. While his subject matter can be heavy, he
often balances it with wit and humor. You'll hear that
today when he performs Famvack and Back in Your Town
from Lifetime Achievement. In this conversation with Bruce Headlam, Louden
reflects on how he leaned into his upper class upbringing,
when he first began performing professionally, what it was like
(01:02):
collaborating with guitar virtuoso Richard Thompson in the eighties, and
the magical feeling of stepping on stage for his very
first time. This is broken record, real musicians, real conversations.
Here's Bruce Headlam with loud and Wainwright the Third.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
I need a family vacation.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
I made a family vacation alone.
Speaker 5 (01:53):
I'm gonna pack up the card of the Viking, the kayak,
leave the fucking family.
Speaker 6 (02:01):
And all.
Speaker 7 (02:04):
Vacation away from the family, Vacation.
Speaker 8 (02:10):
Away from the fray.
Speaker 9 (02:14):
When it comes to your so cold loved ones, sometimes
you gotta get away.
Speaker 7 (02:24):
Maybe I'll go to the mountains, or else I'll get
down to the shore.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (02:33):
I guess there's a chance I might miss my people,
but right now I can't stand them no more. When
I'm barbecue in there on my webber, I might be focused.
Speaker 8 (02:49):
On my family.
Speaker 7 (02:53):
Then I'll throw down some hot dogs, burgers, and some chicken.
Speaker 6 (02:58):
I'll burn them all in effigy.
Speaker 10 (03:13):
When I get back from my family vacation, tan.
Speaker 7 (03:18):
And relaxed will be the shaping them in.
Speaker 5 (03:23):
You.
Speaker 9 (03:23):
I'll be patient and love and not dimensioned detached when
I'm dealing with.
Speaker 7 (03:30):
My kids and my kids, we all need a family vacation.
Speaker 6 (03:38):
You got to keep the ashpot cut Bay Tall Story
got it right when he wrote each.
Speaker 10 (03:47):
Unhappy family, it's unhappy in it's own way.
Speaker 8 (03:58):
Oh, I ran away from my parents, Still run away
from my kids.
Speaker 10 (04:13):
As for brother and sister, we're playing twister.
Speaker 6 (04:19):
That's the cover up.
Speaker 11 (04:21):
Keep ourselves hid from each other.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
I need a family vacation.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
My family needs a vacation from me.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
Because you're dearest and nearest. They're the most dangerous.
Speaker 6 (04:43):
They're the ones that make you crave.
Speaker 12 (04:50):
Let's rite your dearest.
Speaker 8 (04:52):
And nearest, they're the most dangerous.
Speaker 13 (04:56):
They're the ones that make you fucking crazy.
Speaker 12 (05:07):
Sean Paul Sartres said it hell is other people.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
All right, you got Tolstoy, Sartra and a Yiddish expression.
Sound man, you really pack it in. We don't have
to be too official off the top, but we are
here with Loud and Wayne right the third. Do you
still go by Loud and Wayne right the third?
Speaker 9 (05:42):
I answer to Loud and Wayne right the third, but
I'll also answer to Loudie or loudun or.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Well, we're gonna use Loud and Wayne right the third.
I think it's more official. And we're talking about your
new album, Lifetime Achievement. Do you go into every album
with a particular idea of something you want to do?
Was there an idea or something that motivated this album?
Speaker 6 (06:04):
No?
Speaker 12 (06:04):
I what I do is I write these songs.
Speaker 9 (06:06):
You know, I'm trying to write songs, and then when
I gather together, I'm always thinking when is it going
to be time to make a record. This is the
first studio record that I've made, I think, since twenty fourteen.
So you gather a bunch, I gather a bunch of
songs together. A lot of the songs are on topics
that I've explored before in songs, But it's you kind
(06:30):
of think, is this enough material to make a record?
And then what kind of a record do I want
to make? But I don't think I'm going to make
a record about family alienation and the pandemic.
Speaker 12 (06:43):
Okay, here we go.
Speaker 9 (06:44):
It didn't really work that way, although the record is
kind of about that too.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Now You've got a song called how Old is seventy five? Yeah,
and you know, some of the reviews have been, you know,
your winter album looking back with remorse and loss. I
didn't get that at all. I found this like a
very upbeat, optimistic album, particularly from someone who's known for
or confessional song and self lacerating wit songs that cut
(07:15):
to the bone. This did not seem an album that
is where you're overwhelmed by past failures. This seemed you're
very much in the moment.
Speaker 9 (07:25):
Yeah, I'm feeling pretty good these days, and the song's
death is referenced in the song in the album, as
is aging and diminishment.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
To be fair, you've been talking about those since you
were thirty.
Speaker 9 (07:40):
Yeah, But the first line in my first song on
my first record was in Delaware when I was younger.
So I've been obsessed with this thing and now it's
kind of is here. But no, I don't think it's
a downer this record.
Speaker 12 (07:56):
We tried to be careful about that.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
In the first song, there's a great line, I want
to talk the truth about the fountain of youth to
our eager audience out there. So what's the truth about
the fountain of youth?
Speaker 9 (08:07):
Well, I think the line is I want to I
want to tell the truth and find the fountain of you.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Oh okay.
Speaker 9 (08:14):
That's another song that just talks about what I've been
doing all this time. It's been you know, I've been
making records for fifty plus years and wondering how much
longer it can go on. But at the moment it's
feeling could go on. I think I'm going to make
it to my seventy sixth birthday.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
I don't think anybody's written as many songs about family
as you have, or certainly as many by win that competition,
You win that competition. Many many great songs, you know,
your Mother and I and Lullaby The Days We Die, Yeah,
hitting you, hitting you when you leave? There are a lot.
(08:53):
Are you conscious when you're writing the songs? Are you
conscious of other people's reactions, your family's reactions.
Speaker 9 (09:03):
Kind of like, oh, he's gonna hate this one.
Speaker 12 (09:08):
Well, I'm aware of it.
Speaker 9 (09:09):
Yes, So I'm conscious of it certainly.
Speaker 12 (09:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 9 (09:11):
I mean, you know, but it's it is as you say,
it's it's I've been doing it for a long long time.
It's my it's the waterfront I cover, you know, I
want one of the big ones.
Speaker 12 (09:22):
Certainly.
Speaker 9 (09:22):
You know, we've had some tense Thanksgiving dinners over the years,
but I think my family, uh has come to expect this,
and the members of my family, uh, you know, three
out of my four kids are songwriters, and my my
other daughter is a is A is a wonderful prose writer.
(09:45):
And they they've all written about me and referenced me
and talked about their take on the whole thing. So
it's it's it's it's just part of the whole deal.
And uh, I feel okay about it now.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Growing up, it seemed to me that you wanted to
be a performer. You went to acting school.
Speaker 12 (10:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Now you did play guitar, starting quite young, I think.
Did your dad give you a guitar that?
Speaker 9 (10:12):
Yeah, my dad, who was a journalist for Life magazine,
He also loved music, and he had a friend in
the nineteen fifties quite a well known songwriter and singer
called Terry Gilksson. He wrote, you know, memories are made
of this, that big Dean Martin head and other things.
(10:33):
But he was a drinking buddy of my dad's. He
gave my dad a nylon string, beautiful little Mexican guitar,
and then my dad bequeathed it to me. So that
was my actual first guitar. Got it when I was
about thirteen.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
And did you immediately take to folk music?
Speaker 9 (10:49):
You know in the early sixties, you know, and the
folk boom happened. You know, I saw people like Ramblin,
Jack Elliott and Pat Sky and Dave van Ron and
of course Bob Dylan who were playing steel string guitars
and at the Newport Folk Festival and stuff. Then I
still hadn't written anything myself, but I I got myself
(11:10):
a Martin Dreadnought and you know, started to emulate those
guys who were all just a few years older than me.
Actually right, I mean Jack Elliott's not a few years
older than me. He's in his nineties. But yeah, he
sure was always springy and youthful.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
So it was songwriting just a way to get you
up on stage.
Speaker 9 (11:31):
I mean I wanted to be on stage ever since
I was seven, you know, and I was showing off
from my parents and stuff. But when I got on
stage with a guitar, it's something seemed to click, and
I was off and running, I suppose.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
But you didn't emulate those guys. You didn't try to
be a beatnik. No, you were out there in like
a Brooks Brothers se right.
Speaker 9 (11:51):
You know, you have to figure out a way to
be noticed in the world, and in show.
Speaker 12 (11:57):
Business in particular.
Speaker 9 (11:58):
I'd say, So, I wore what I wore in boarding school,
you know, a Books Brothers blazer and gray flannel pants,
bell bottoms. I had short hair on my first couple
of albums. Yeah, that was the look that I created
to separate me from the pack, and it worked kind of.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Yeah, did you worry? People would say, why do we
want to listen to this kid from a private school
in Westchester.
Speaker 9 (12:26):
I didn't worry about it. I understood that I had
to write about I mean, I wasn't going to write
about writing being a hobo on the rails, or like
Jack Elliott, you know, invent myself into something that I wasn't.
I decided to more or less take what I was,
which was a guy that grew up in Westchester and
went to boarding school, and you know, emphasize it and
(12:49):
write about it. And then when I got married, I
wrote about that. And you know, I've just been writing
about my swing in life all this time.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
One thing that comes through in your autobiography Liner Notes,
which I'm going to recommend everybody because it's a wonderful book,
is how competitive you were. I mean, you were a
big swimmer, so I think maybe some of that comes
from sports, but you were competitive with everybody. You say,
at some point when somebody else gets trashed, you feel
(13:23):
a little bit better. I mean another singer, I don't
mean just a person walking down the street. Where does
that competition come from?
Speaker 9 (13:30):
Well, my father, you know, the aforementioned father was was
successful in the world of journalism, and and and he
was competitive, And you know, I don't want to blame
it on my parents.
Speaker 12 (13:47):
I mean, I.
Speaker 9 (13:50):
Yeah, this need to achieve or succeed is in me,
you know. And and as far as my you know,
people would say, boy, it must be great when you
and Steve Goodman and John Prine and Leo Kotkey can
all go out and you know, have a cocktail or something,
and I mean, we would do that and.
Speaker 12 (14:08):
That's all and stuff.
Speaker 9 (14:09):
But I don't know about them, but I was always
thinking does he sell more records than me? And is
that song better than my song? And uh, you know,
I I'm I'm not happy to admit it. I'm I'm
ashamed to to admit it. But I do have a
competitive streak.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
It's not a bad thing.
Speaker 9 (14:28):
It it spurs you on, you know, to to do
the best work that you can, you know, and uh,
you know, I'm again I'm not I'm not proud of
it necessarily, but it's an engine. It provides you with
an engine.
Speaker 12 (14:46):
And uh, but it it's it's.
Speaker 9 (14:49):
It's it's murder on your family life and it leads
to isolation and depression. So I would not advise being
competitive danger the kids out there.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Yeah, yeah, stay in school, don't be too competitive.
Speaker 12 (15:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
You in your autobiography, I'm remembering now you put your
finger on I think one of the most terrifying moments
in documentary film. And you talk about it, and it's
in Don't Look Back.
Speaker 9 (15:16):
Yeah, Dylan documented, Yeah, yeah, Oh that's a great moment.
Uh and and and scary too. They're in London, I guess,
and they're in a hotel room and Dylan is there,
you know, at the height of you know, his whole thing.
Bobby Nowrth is kind of lurking in the corner. The
(15:36):
guy from the Animals, Alan Price, is there, and Donovan
is there, and the guitar is being passed around, and Donovan,
who's great, you know, sings try and Catch the Wind
or something like that, you know, which was a big
radio record, probably all more records than any Bob Dylan single.
But a little twee, a little a little twee and soft,
(15:59):
and so Dylan and Newarth, you know, kind of nodding
and saying that's a pretty good song man. And then
Dylan takes the guitar and plays It's all all over,
baby Blue. It's all over now, baby Blue, And you
can just see the look on Donovan's face. It just like,
oh my goodness, it was just so powerful.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
And he smiles through it. But you can just see them.
Why don't you just break the guitar from my head?
Speaker 9 (16:25):
Yeah, it's killing, Yeah, I mean it's you know, jazz musicians,
you know, saxophone players in the forties used to they
were called cutting sessions, you know, and Lester Young and
Charlie Parker and you know does Hey Gillespie and these
guys would They're all they were all competitive with each other.
I mean they so it's it's not I don't and
(16:46):
again I don't think it's a bad thing.
Speaker 12 (16:48):
Really.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
We'll be back with more from Loud and Wing right
the third and Bruce Hadlam after the break.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
What did you take from your father as a writer?
Do you are there similarities in what you do?
Speaker 9 (17:03):
Do you think I've come to realize that there were.
You know, I was competitive with my father and and stuff,
which again I don't advise for parents and children, but
I got a lot from him. He died in nineteen
eighty eight. And the way that I write songs are
there's a journalistic element to them. They're they're descriptive, there's
(17:27):
a beginning, of the middle and an end.
Speaker 12 (17:28):
I'm always trying to.
Speaker 9 (17:29):
Be very clear about what it is that I'm saying.
And I think I got that from my dad, I hope,
So anyway, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Do you have any of his habits? Do you carry
around a notebook and scribble down thing?
Speaker 12 (17:43):
I carry around my file of facts.
Speaker 9 (17:47):
You know, people can't see this, but it's a pretty
beat up old file of facts I got from the
nineteen eighties in the hope that I'll see something or
hear something and jot something down and it could lead
to a song, and it has done.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
How often does something like that happen?
Speaker 12 (18:03):
A song?
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Just an idea of thought that you'll jot down.
Speaker 9 (18:07):
Well know, I've got it in the bag. I mean,
you know, that's where the mystery comes in. How does
the song start, or any any piece of work. It's
mysterious to me, despite the fact that I've been doing
it for a long long time. I liken it to fishing.
You know, I've got a line in the water. Whether
(18:29):
I get a bite or can get it in the
boat once I get a bite depends.
Speaker 12 (18:33):
But it's it's mysterious.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Yeah, what's the old line it's called fishing, not catching.
Speaker 12 (18:39):
Yeah, I like that.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
And then do you sit down with your guitar and
just flip through the book and see what happens?
Speaker 9 (18:46):
Yeah, I mean it's all very disorganized in random, you know.
Or I'll write something down, or I'll find something in
the book that I've forgotten about, and or i'll you know,
quite often for me, a song can start from the first.
Speaker 12 (19:02):
Line, you know.
Speaker 9 (19:04):
You know, an example from the new album would be
I need a family vacation, I mean a family vacation alone.
So that's a good starting place for a guy like me.
You know, the first line is often a kind of springboard.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Where does that impulse come from? I mean, your father
wrote about his family Life Magazine. I don't think he
wrote about it quite in the way you write about it, right. Well,
he was Life Magazine.
Speaker 9 (19:35):
Yeah yeah, I mean, yeah, he had constraints on him
because Life Magazine was fairly conservative actually, but I think
by nature he was a little more conservative. He was
a different generation, you know, the afore mentioned Bob Dylan.
I mean, you know, he kind of freed it up.
I mean, you could write about your life. I mean,
(19:56):
he was always oblique so you never knew exactly what
the hell he was talking.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
You could listen to every Bob Dylan song and not
know anything about Bob Dylan.
Speaker 10 (20:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
I suspect he likes it that way.
Speaker 9 (20:06):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I definitely have a con professional straight
streak propensity, as it were.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
But have you ever felt you've gone too far with
the song?
Speaker 10 (20:19):
Uh?
Speaker 9 (20:19):
Yeah, I have, and then I go ahead and go
too far anyway. I mean, although there are there are
some songs that I don't sing anymore that I you know,
that I know have upset people or that they've they've
told me that, and I'm trying to you know, I'm
working on it.
Speaker 12 (20:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Can you give me an example of one that you
just don't you just don't perform for that reason.
Speaker 12 (20:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 9 (20:47):
I mean there's a song called It's About. It's a
song called that Hospital and it's about it's about a
hospital in northern Westchester where some key events happened, and
I just realized that I shouldn't do that song anymore.
On the other hand, I think I'll think, oh, this
is uh just as close to the bone, and then
(21:09):
I'll think that's a good thing, you know. I want
to push it for my audience, you know. And again
when I'm writing about my experiences in my family or
my marriages, or with my kids or this is not
foreign territory, people know exactly.
Speaker 12 (21:25):
What I'm talking about.
Speaker 9 (21:28):
People will come up and say, boy, that song about
you and your sister or you and your kid. You
mentioned that song hitting you. You know, they'll actually thank me.
You know. They don't give me any extra money, but
they will thank me.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
When you write a song like that, are you stating
the way you feel? Or in writing it, are you
are you working through those feelings?
Speaker 12 (21:53):
Well?
Speaker 9 (21:53):
Working through make it somehow implies that you know, you've
that there's a therapeutic aspect to it. I don't think
there is. I mean, you know, and it could be
argued that that focusing on marital familial problems, you know,
(22:14):
could make it worse. But it's interesting, you know, writing
about my loved ones. They're the most important people in
my life. They're the biggest people in my life. They're
the people that I were all part of each other.
So it's always struck me that that's who I should
be writing about.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
And one of my favorite lines from your book is
in reference not to your work, but in reference to
your father and mother, you're imagining how they came together,
your father being a upper middle class guy, your mother
from Georgia. You'd a beautiful line which was, it's basically
about how men, at some point after they feel comfortable,
(22:57):
feel the need to tell everybody what a piece of
shit they are. And the line was, the confession of
weakness to a woman is so often a search for
sweet absolution. Boy, Yeah, you're good.
Speaker 12 (23:13):
Yeah you surprised.
Speaker 9 (23:14):
That's good, And that's certainly was the case in my
with my parents. You know, I can, I think I
might go. You know somehow I think of the imagine
you imagine your parents before before you were on the scene,
or even maybe the night after the moment after you
were conceived, you know, lying in bed, and undoubtedly my
(23:35):
father would be smoking a cigarette and you know, just
unloading and talking about how he felt. And my mother
was a good listener. In the end, the marriage didn't
work out for that could have been one of the problems.
Speaker 12 (23:48):
He didn't listen well enough.
Speaker 9 (23:49):
Or you know, she didn't get a chance to to
unload her emotional baggage.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Do you feel your confessional nature's in part looking for
absolution is it a way of making amends to put
it in song.
Speaker 9 (24:06):
There's plenty of amends to be made. I guess just
writing about it maybe is saying, Okay, here it is,
let's look at it for three minutes. Maybe that's part
of some kind of an amend's process. But again, it
can create distance too, so an isolation.
Speaker 12 (24:25):
So I really don't know.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Your father was also I'm surprised to read a successful
short story writer which he had to give up. Yeah, yeah,
family reasons. But tell me a bit about that.
Speaker 9 (24:38):
Well, you know, every young writer imagines and hopes to
be in the New Yorker magazine. And my dad has
had three of his short stories published in The New
Yorker in the late forties, and they are one in particular.
It's brilliant and completely holds up a story he wrote
(24:58):
about the boarding school that he went to that I
actually went to too, the same school, And so when
he writes about it, I can I can picture it
in my own mind. Anyway, the stories were in New
York or he was twenty two or twenty three, whatever
he was, and boy, that's the beginning of something big.
(25:19):
But he had a wife and three small kids, me
and my brother and sister at that point, and they
moved up to New York and he had to get
a job, and so he started to work for Life
magazine and he stayed at the magazine for his pretty
much life. So he never got to really focus on
(25:42):
writing fiction. Then he tried to write a lot of
you know, nonfiction books, and he had problems with that too.
You know, the book was looming for him.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
So you know, it was common among journalists they think
they've got to do their magnum opus.
Speaker 9 (25:57):
Yeah, they just had and it was torture for him.
But he was so successful as a journalist, as an editor,
as a columnist. You know, his columns are are all
so brilliant, and a few of them are I had
I printed in my book because I just wanted.
Speaker 12 (26:15):
To share the work.
Speaker 9 (26:16):
I mean, the quality of the writing is so great.
And then later I constructed a kind of theatrical show
called Surviving Twin where I actually.
Speaker 12 (26:24):
Performed some of his columns.
Speaker 9 (26:28):
So it looked like, you know, it's such a pity
that he couldn't have enjoyed his success. But he was
tortured about the book.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
You know, the people he was writing with probably at
that time, were people like John Cheever, and you're often
sort of thought of as this chiever character. You went
to private school. Yeah, well, from the sounds of it,
you didn't like it. You went to boarding school.
Speaker 12 (26:49):
Didn't like it, but it sure had an impact on me.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Oh what was the impact?
Speaker 9 (26:53):
Yeah, it had a big effect on me. I mean
my first I referenced that's in Delaware when I was younger.
My very first song on my first record was about
that boarding school. I'm kind of I have some gratitude
about that boarding school. First of all, it was a
good school. It is a good school Andrews It's in Delaware.
But at the time I was a miserable young man.
(27:14):
I probably would have been miserable anywhere. So I'm not
blaming my old boarding school.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
You just you just wanted your parents to pay for it, right.
Speaker 9 (27:24):
Well, I didn't want to go, but my father again,
he my father went to the same school. He was miserable.
He thought I should go.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
And did his father go to that school as well?
Speaker 12 (27:35):
He didn't go to that school. He went to uh.
Speaker 9 (27:39):
Trinity Palling I think or something. My son Rufus went
to boarding school, different school. He went to Millbrook and
he succeeded and found himself kind of at Millbury. I mean,
this is what I think. I think it was a
I think he wouldn't. He would say that it was
a good experience for him.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
So I mentioned I started this by saying, you know,
you're compared to Chiever because of your background, but to me,
you're more like Updyke. And this is why when I.
Speaker 12 (28:07):
My girlfriend's going to love this because she loves John.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Up She likes John Updike. Okay, well, I've only really
read the Rabbit books. But my issue with Updyke is
he's kind of giving the game away of being a man.
He tells things about men and their wormy little desires
and their awful behavior that I feel would be best
(28:32):
not put out into the world. And you've got some
of that, you've you you know, I think of songs
like four by ten one Man, Guy Less, so one
of my favorite songs of yours, which is just called Men.
I'm interested in what that part of it is like
for you to be a guy and kind of, you know,
(28:54):
because guys are sort of taught not to yeah, not
to emote, not to reveal ourselves or traditionally men well
in songs.
Speaker 9 (29:04):
You know, my songs are written to be performed, you know.
I mean, I make RECs, but but I I'm always
thinking about what what's this going to do to the
three hundred people or if if it's good, maybe three
thousand people that are sitting out there in the dark
and talking about that stuff. You know, I feel safe.
(29:27):
I mean, I know that there there could be an
ooh factor, you know, but who don't don't do that,
or don't say that, or don't reveal that. But I
just as a guy who wanted to who wanted to
be a performer from an earth, I just know that
it has I can feel that it's that that it's
doing something to the audience. It might be making them
(29:48):
a little uncomfortable. I've had a tendency to do it.
I don't quite know why, except that it seems to
work for me.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
That's interesting. Even on this album, when you're writing these songs,
you're thinking, how's this going to work live? How's it
going to affect people?
Speaker 9 (30:04):
I think so when I'm actually you know, I'm always
thinking of that group of people and in the audience
and will it have an effect on them? And it
can be different effects. You know, some of the songs
are funny, some of them are not funny at all.
Some of them can do both. They can swerve into
(30:27):
they have jokes planted in them, comic relief, if you
will use the theatrical term. But it's all about taking
that three minutes or if it's a whole show, that
ninety minutes, and just taking them somewhere or dragging them
somewhere in some case.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
But that does sound like you conceive of your performances
almost as theater.
Speaker 12 (30:49):
I think it is.
Speaker 9 (30:49):
You know, it's a way you're in the dark. You know,
people are in the dark and they're watching you on
stage and you're you're performing for them.
Speaker 12 (30:58):
It's an act.
Speaker 9 (30:59):
But again it can create there's some magic.
Speaker 12 (31:03):
There can be magic.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
There is that magic you feel when you're on stage.
Is that kind of feeds your performance?
Speaker 9 (31:11):
Yeah, yeah, it's it's a great it's a great feeling
the moment. You know, when I was a kid and
I was in school plays, it was I was never
was happier just just showing off, just being there.
Speaker 12 (31:24):
I mean, I knew that that's as good as it gets.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
And so songs like Your Mother and I, which is
one of your most famous songs as a heartbreaking song,
hitting You, which is about hitting your daughter, realizing you've
hit her too hard.
Speaker 9 (31:41):
Right, losing it in an anger, was giving her a whack.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
That would be the story. But underlying the song is
something I think that terrifies all parents, is that you've
broken something that can't be fixed. Yeah, when you get
to those kind of lines, does that can you feel
that reaction.
Speaker 12 (32:03):
The song? Yeah?
Speaker 9 (32:04):
Yeah, yeah, again people coming up after the show and
saying that's song, you know, and you have the person
kid that's getting whacked, But then you have the parent
that did it and just thinks, oh my god, I'm
going to pay for this.
Speaker 12 (32:20):
You know?
Speaker 9 (32:20):
That was that was I lost it, you know, And
so it's a it's a subject which is which is
pretty powerful.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Yeah. Speaking of your songs like Your Mother and I
and other romantic songs or anti romantic songs. You mentioned
in the you come up with a syndrome in your book,
Sir Walter Raleigh syndrome. Yeah, I'd love for you to explain.
Speaker 9 (32:42):
That the Sir Walter Raleigh syndrome. You know, Sir Walter Raleigh. Famously,
I guess it was Elizabeth the first or some Elizabeth
or other you know, was walking along with the queen
or and there's a mud puddle and he lays down
his cape so that she doesn't get her you know.
(33:04):
And again it's generational, you know, my mother urged it,
you know, this thing for just making sure that women
are you know, opening the door and giving them the
chair and paying the check always. You know that that's
a role that some men do or have, and I
(33:25):
certainly have it. But of course what it does is
it creates a kind of a resentment. You know, hey,
why doesn't she walk around the damn mud puddle, you know,
or get the these capes? You know, I have to
go to the dry cleaner again with these capes.
Speaker 12 (33:41):
Give me a break, you know.
Speaker 9 (33:42):
So it's a kind of a syndrome and it's probably
not good for either the Queen or Sir Walter Rawley.
But in this case, I was identifying with Sir Walter Raleigh.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
And you've seen that.
Speaker 12 (33:58):
It's played out in my own life.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
Tell me about I think it's just a beautiful song
on the album, which is back in your Town.
Speaker 12 (34:06):
Back in your Town.
Speaker 9 (34:07):
Yeah, thank you. That's that's that's a bit older. That's
about fifteen years older, fifteen years old. You know, I
had a Now she's a great friend of mine, Tracy McLeod.
She know, we lived together for a couple of years
and she's English and she so it's about going going
back to London and actually walking past her house in
(34:32):
Saint John's Wood where we live together, and just that
feeling of God she's up there, and just being in
you know, the power of going back to that place.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
You've a line about feeling like a refugee and a louse.
Speaker 9 (34:46):
Yes, yeah, yeah, So it's always tricky to come up
with a word to rhyme with house, but you know
you got this mouse. There aren't many but laos in
this case seemed to work.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
You have other songs like a Little Piece of Me,
which is about traveling. Are they all instigated by specific episodes?
I could see somebody writing back in your town and saying, well,
that wasn't really about anybody. That's just that feeling you
get in another city. But for you, that was that
very specific feeling.
Speaker 9 (35:19):
Well again, in the process of writing it, I think
of the specifics. I think of the town, I think
of that person. I can picture that straight. You know,
I know exactly where that looking up into that window
is so And again we talked about what my dad's influence,
you know, specificity in the process for hopefully it's generic,
(35:41):
hopefully everybody can identify with it, but I work with
the specifics of things.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
I also thought, listening to that song, you have your
dad's journalistic tendency, which is you never want to use
the same word twice. So it's place, or it's town,
then it's place, then it's berg, which rhymes with cerb,
which means you can do that line about almost getting
hit by a bus.
Speaker 12 (36:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
The only thing that gives away that the song is
the double decker bus. I thought, well, it must be English.
Speaker 12 (36:09):
I feel like I should play the song for you.
Play it please, for the people.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
Gosh, I'm back in your town.
Speaker 6 (36:28):
I'm walking around.
Speaker 5 (36:32):
Crossing the street on sure on my feet, and I'm
carefully looking around.
Speaker 4 (36:42):
Because I'm back in your town.
Speaker 3 (36:47):
Yes, and not.
Speaker 12 (36:49):
Back in this bird.
Speaker 4 (36:53):
Oh heaven sure, I better.
Speaker 8 (36:58):
I look to the right.
Speaker 4 (37:00):
A double decker just mate.
Speaker 9 (37:03):
Hit me when I step off the curve.
Speaker 4 (37:09):
I'm back in this boot.
Speaker 10 (37:13):
Just sit back in that place.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Last time I left the hardy trees.
Speaker 12 (37:24):
Now that out to.
Speaker 4 (37:25):
Turn and ask me what of I learned?
Speaker 9 (37:29):
Go ahead and take a look on my face.
Speaker 5 (37:35):
I'm back in that place.
Speaker 12 (37:39):
You leave someone behind and.
Speaker 4 (37:42):
You think you won't mind until you go back and
find you still can't your.
Speaker 8 (37:51):
Background start and enough mind.
Speaker 11 (37:54):
I was smart at my feeling you thought it wasn't there,
still there.
Speaker 4 (38:22):
I walked right past your house, feeling like a refuge
and alas.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
You were at all, But you were not alone.
Speaker 12 (38:37):
You were there with your kids and your spouse.
Speaker 4 (38:43):
I walked right past your house, so now feeling bereft,
I'm feeling like I never even left. Every thanks changed,
but it's the same. It's still all here, but nothing
(39:06):
is left.
Speaker 6 (39:10):
I'm feeling breath.
Speaker 12 (39:13):
You leave someone behind and.
Speaker 4 (39:15):
Didn't think you won't bad until you go back and
fine you still care.
Speaker 13 (39:23):
You're back where starting and I mine.
Speaker 4 (39:27):
I'm smarted by feeling you thought it wasn't there. I'm
back in your town.
Speaker 11 (39:40):
I'm walking around, crossing the street.
Speaker 4 (39:46):
I'm sure on my feet, and I'm carefully looking around.
I'm back in your town.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
One last break and we back with Loud and Wayne
right the third.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
Before we go, I do want to ask you about
a couple of our favorite people that you've worked with,
And the first is Richard Thompson. Oh yeah, you did?
I think two albums with him in the eighties. Tell
me about that.
Speaker 12 (40:30):
Wow.
Speaker 9 (40:30):
Rich In nineteen eighty five or four, I talked about
all my old gal friends, Susy Roach and I split
up and I decided to go to England and actually
went over there and bought a flat up in West Hampstead.
And I had met Richard probably around nineteen seventy eight,
(40:54):
and it'd been a huge Prior to that, i'd been
a huge fan of his work, but we did some
festivals and things together in seventy eight. And so when
I got over there, I was getting ready to make
a record and I was talking to my friend Paul Charles,
(41:15):
and I said, what about if I asked Richard to
produce it? And Paul said yeah, and I asked him
and we we He did it. It's a record called
I'm all Right. And I should say that you know,
in the in the late seventies, you know, I kind
(41:35):
of got was making some kind of overproduced, kind of
crappy records. They weren't totally crappy, but they were there.
Certainly there was an element of overproduction so Richard and
I talked about and he suggested that we really if
we do production, we're gonna do production that where the
song is served by the production and not worry about
(41:57):
getting it on the radio and stuff. So and that's
what we did with that record. And then we did
another record called More Love Songs. Again there's drums on it,
and there's a bass on it, and there's stuff on it,
but it doesn't get in the way of the songs.
And of course this Richard's guitar playing, which is kind
of ridiculously marvelous. So those records are I feel good
(42:22):
about those records that they got nominated for Grammys, and
people liked him a lot, and so I was very
happy to work with rich And occasionally we get to
do shows. He last year, I.
Speaker 12 (42:35):
Guess it was because of the pandemic. It was a
couple of years ago.
Speaker 9 (42:39):
He celebrated his seventieth birthday at a big show at
Albert Hall in London, and I got to go and
sing and play with him. And I love rich He's
the greatest.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
I mean, I'm interested in you guys sitting with guitars
because he is a brilliant guitarist. You are really underrated.
As a guitar player and as an instrumentalist. I think, well,
I play rhythm guitar.
Speaker 9 (43:06):
You know, it's all about what's going on with the
right hand, because I can't really play any licks like
I've played with great guitar players Richard Thompson, Bill Frizzell,
John Schofield. I mean, you know these guys, But I
feel pretty good about my my rhythm guitar playing. It's
(43:26):
pretty solid.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
Now there's some beautiful instrumentation on this news. This new album,
Lifetime Achievement Back in your Town's got a beautiful treatment
a little piece of me. I think it's got some Well,
you also played banjo.
Speaker 9 (43:40):
I play some banjo on the record, but that's how
I'm Tannebaum playing the other banjo. My other great guitar
player who's all over this record is David Mansfield, who's
a great you know, he's up there in that strata
with those guys.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Right Also, I would say, Richard Thompson, if there were
a list of artists who have turned broken relationships into
great art, I would say you two would be in
the top five easily. You know, he's one of the
great breakup albums. Of all time.
Speaker 12 (44:09):
Are you talking about shoot Out the Lights?
Speaker 1 (44:11):
Yeah, yeah, yeah that Yeah, that's.
Speaker 12 (44:14):
A great, great record. And he and he, uh, of.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Course Richard Richard does he and his wife Linda. We
should mention sure.
Speaker 9 (44:21):
Linda just had a birthday, okay, a couple of days ago. Uh, yeah,
Linda and rich I mean that they made those wonderful
records and uh talk about breakup albums. I I saw
some of the shows that they did to support Shootout
the Lights, and boy, that was Stringberg on stage at
(44:41):
the bottom line. I mean it was ferociously and it's
so compelling, you know. Of course, Richard, if you ask him,
is this one about? What's this one about? And which
what girl?
Speaker 4 (44:53):
And what?
Speaker 12 (44:55):
You know?
Speaker 9 (44:55):
He says he denies that it's autobiographical, but that's that's
his option.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
The other person I wanted to ask about was Joe Henry.
Speaker 12 (45:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
Oh, well, great great songwriter.
Speaker 9 (45:10):
Great great songwriter, a great producer. We did a couple
of records together, and uh, great guy, uh all around
working with Joe. Uh. When Joe works, he gets together
his group of players and and it's in the room
and it's live. Greg Lease, David Pilch, Jay Bellarrose, this
(45:33):
amazing drummer that Joe.
Speaker 12 (45:35):
Likes to use.
Speaker 9 (45:35):
That the t bone Burnette has now poached and taken away.
But Joe, Joe, Joe's about getting the guys in the
room and just making it real in the room, and
then then capturing the recording. And he makes beautiful records
with with a lot of different people and writes wonderful songs.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
Is that a Is that a way you like to record?
Speaker 9 (45:57):
It's fun to do it that way. I've done it
that way, and when Joe's at the helm, I feel confident.
When we did this last record, Lifetime Achievement, I went
into the studio by myself with my guitar and laid
down all my stuff beforehand, and then we added stuff.
That's another way that I've worked, you know, where you
just get the core of what I do, which is
(46:19):
me playing the guitar. And then Stewart and Dick Knnett,
you know they worked with well, let's put Mansfield over
here and Tannenbaum over here and maybe bring in a
drummer secretly, and.
Speaker 1 (46:32):
You led the drums after you laid down the rhythm.
Speaker 12 (46:35):
Track on this record we did.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
Yeah, that's interesting. Joe's also Joe Henry's also a way
of mentioning you guys worked on the Knocked Up soundtrack
which had Daughter, which is a great song of yours,
which we haven't talked about. In fact, you do act
all the time. You're in all kinds of things always.
Speaker 9 (46:53):
Well, uh yeah, I get acting jobs and and Joe
and I did do the Strange Weirdos record which is More,
which was kind of a soundtrack record for the Judd
Apatow movie of Knocked Up, and Joe produced that record Daughter,
which is from that album, which I have to say
(47:15):
and admit to you that I did not write a
lot of people think I wrote it. It was written
by the I'm so effusive with my praise today with
the wonderful, incredible songwriter Peter Blagvad. He wrote Daughter, and
I sang it and we recorded it. But a lot
(47:36):
of people think that I wrote Daughter. I wish I had,
but I didn't.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
Just take it. When I was just reading things about
this album, about what you're doing now, I came across
the NPR review of the album, and I don't know
if you read that or not, but there was there
was a paragraph that jumped out at me, which was
well before owning up to privilege was a thing. Wainwright
(48:04):
had made a career out of being honest about his
white Anglo Saxon Protestant upbringing, freely admitting that male wasps
like him got away with far too much. Now I
guess that's accurate.
Speaker 9 (48:19):
It feels a little sounds a little updikey.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
A little updikey, a little hostile. You know, the world
has changed in the way we think about families and
men and women and relationships has changed. Could you be
the same singer songwriter coming up today?
Speaker 12 (48:39):
I mean, could I get away with it? Or would I?
Speaker 9 (48:42):
Yes, that's what you mean in a way, Yes, probably not.
I mean there's so much.
Speaker 12 (48:47):
That you can't get away with today.
Speaker 9 (48:50):
You know, I'm thinking. I have a song on my
second album as a song called Motel Blues, which you know,
Joe Henry recorded it on the record that we did
call Recovery with his band.
Speaker 1 (49:04):
It's a good song, great song.
Speaker 9 (49:07):
It's about being lonely and about trying to lure a
woman up to my room to be because I'm lonely
and that's what it's.
Speaker 1 (49:19):
About, and come and save my life, right.
Speaker 9 (49:22):
It's a come up to my motel room, saved my life,
and then it then it says, come up to my
motel room, sleep with me.
Speaker 12 (49:30):
So could just do that now?
Speaker 9 (49:32):
I don't know, but uh or what I've written that now,
I like to think that I would have because it's
what happened, and it doesn't happen now. Now it's come
up to my motel room and show me how to
work the Wi Fi.
Speaker 12 (49:48):
You know.
Speaker 9 (49:50):
So it's not really an issue for me now, but
as a twenty two year old lonely touring musician, you know,
it was what was going on.
Speaker 12 (49:58):
So I wrote about it.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
Listen, thank you so much.
Speaker 12 (50:01):
Oh, I've enjoyed talking with you, just.
Speaker 1 (50:03):
Great talking and a great album. Another great album. Thank
you so much, thank you.
Speaker 2 (50:10):
In the episode description, you'll find a link to a
playlist of our favorite Loud and Win Right the third tracks,
as well as his latest.
Speaker 12 (50:16):
Album, Lifetime Achievement.
Speaker 2 (50:18):
Be sure to check out YouTube dot com slash Broken
Record Podcast to see all our video interviews, and be
sure to follow us on Instagram at the Broken Record Pod.
You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken
Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose with Marketing
and help from Eric Sandler and Jordana McMillan. Our engineer
is Ben Holliday. Broken Record is production of Pushkin Industries.
(50:39):
If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider
subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription
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ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple
podcast subscriptions, and if you like this show, please remember
to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app
Our theme music ex by Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Richard
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
In twenty twenty two, at seventy five years old, loud
and Wainwright the Third released Lifetime Achievement, an aptly titled
album from a songwriter whose debut came more than fifty
years earlier. Over the decades, Loudan has built a reputation
for his confessional style, writing candidly about the struggles and
absurdities of family life, failed relationships, and the scars of
(00:41):
parental abandonment. While his subject matter can be heavy, he
often balances it with wit and humor. You'll hear that
today when he performs Famvack and Back in Your Town
from Lifetime Achievement. In this conversation with Bruce Headlam, Louden
reflects on how he leaned into his upper class upbringing,
when he first began performing professionally, what it was like
(01:02):
collaborating with guitar virtuoso Richard Thompson in the eighties, and
the magical feeling of stepping on stage for his very
first time. This is broken record, real musicians, real conversations.
Here's Bruce Headlam with loud and Wainwright the Third.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
I need a family vacation.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
I made a family vacation alone.
Speaker 5 (01:53):
I'm gonna pack up the card of the Viking, the kayak,
leave the fucking family.
Speaker 6 (02:01):
And all.
Speaker 7 (02:04):
Vacation away from the family, Vacation.
Speaker 8 (02:10):
Away from the fray.
Speaker 9 (02:14):
When it comes to your so cold loved ones, sometimes
you gotta get away.
Speaker 7 (02:24):
Maybe I'll go to the mountains, or else I'll get
down to the shore.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (02:33):
I guess there's a chance I might miss my people,
but right now I can't stand them no more. When
I'm barbecue in there on my webber, I might be focused.
Speaker 8 (02:49):
On my family.
Speaker 7 (02:53):
Then I'll throw down some hot dogs, burgers, and some chicken.
Speaker 6 (02:58):
I'll burn them all in effigy.
Speaker 10 (03:13):
When I get back from my family vacation, tan.
Speaker 7 (03:18):
And relaxed will be the shaping them in.
Speaker 5 (03:23):
You.
Speaker 9 (03:23):
I'll be patient and love and not dimensioned detached when
I'm dealing with.
Speaker 7 (03:30):
My kids and my kids, we all need a family vacation.
Speaker 6 (03:38):
You got to keep the ashpot cut Bay Tall Story
got it right when he wrote each.
Speaker 10 (03:47):
Unhappy family, it's unhappy in it's own way.
Speaker 8 (03:58):
Oh, I ran away from my parents, Still run away
from my kids.
Speaker 10 (04:13):
As for brother and sister, we're playing twister.
Speaker 6 (04:19):
That's the cover up.
Speaker 11 (04:21):
Keep ourselves hid from each other.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
I need a family vacation.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
My family needs a vacation from me.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
Because you're dearest and nearest. They're the most dangerous.
Speaker 6 (04:43):
They're the ones that make you crave.
Speaker 12 (04:50):
Let's rite your dearest.
Speaker 8 (04:52):
And nearest, they're the most dangerous.
Speaker 13 (04:56):
They're the ones that make you fucking crazy.
Speaker 12 (05:07):
Sean Paul Sartres said it hell is other people.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
All right, you got Tolstoy, Sartra and a Yiddish expression.
Sound man, you really pack it in. We don't have
to be too official off the top, but we are
here with Loud and Wayne right the third. Do you
still go by Loud and Wayne right the third?
Speaker 9 (05:42):
I answer to Loud and Wayne right the third, but
I'll also answer to Loudie or loudun or.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Well, we're gonna use Loud and Wayne right the third.
I think it's more official. And we're talking about your
new album, Lifetime Achievement. Do you go into every album
with a particular idea of something you want to do?
Was there an idea or something that motivated this album?
Speaker 6 (06:04):
No?
Speaker 12 (06:04):
I what I do is I write these songs.
Speaker 9 (06:06):
You know, I'm trying to write songs, and then when
I gather together, I'm always thinking when is it going
to be time to make a record. This is the
first studio record that I've made, I think, since twenty fourteen.
So you gather a bunch, I gather a bunch of
songs together. A lot of the songs are on topics
that I've explored before in songs, But it's you kind
(06:30):
of think, is this enough material to make a record?
And then what kind of a record do I want
to make? But I don't think I'm going to make
a record about family alienation and the pandemic.
Speaker 12 (06:43):
Okay, here we go.
Speaker 9 (06:44):
It didn't really work that way, although the record is
kind of about that too.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Now You've got a song called how Old is seventy five? Yeah,
and you know, some of the reviews have been, you know,
your winter album looking back with remorse and loss. I
didn't get that at all. I found this like a
very upbeat, optimistic album, particularly from someone who's known for
or confessional song and self lacerating wit songs that cut
(07:15):
to the bone. This did not seem an album that
is where you're overwhelmed by past failures. This seemed you're
very much in the moment.
Speaker 9 (07:25):
Yeah, I'm feeling pretty good these days, and the song's
death is referenced in the song in the album, as
is aging and diminishment.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
To be fair, you've been talking about those since you
were thirty.
Speaker 9 (07:40):
Yeah, But the first line in my first song on
my first record was in Delaware when I was younger.
So I've been obsessed with this thing and now it's
kind of is here. But no, I don't think it's
a downer this record.
Speaker 12 (07:56):
We tried to be careful about that.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
In the first song, there's a great line, I want
to talk the truth about the fountain of youth to
our eager audience out there. So what's the truth about
the fountain of youth?
Speaker 9 (08:07):
Well, I think the line is I want to I
want to tell the truth and find the fountain of you.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Oh okay.
Speaker 9 (08:14):
That's another song that just talks about what I've been
doing all this time. It's been you know, I've been
making records for fifty plus years and wondering how much
longer it can go on. But at the moment it's
feeling could go on. I think I'm going to make
it to my seventy sixth birthday.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
I don't think anybody's written as many songs about family
as you have, or certainly as many by win that competition,
You win that competition. Many many great songs, you know,
your Mother and I and Lullaby The Days We Die, Yeah,
hitting you, hitting you when you leave? There are a lot.
(08:53):
Are you conscious when you're writing the songs? Are you
conscious of other people's reactions, your family's reactions.
Speaker 9 (09:03):
Kind of like, oh, he's gonna hate this one.
Speaker 12 (09:08):
Well, I'm aware of it.
Speaker 9 (09:09):
Yes, So I'm conscious of it certainly.
Speaker 12 (09:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 9 (09:11):
I mean, you know, but it's it is as you say,
it's it's I've been doing it for a long long time.
It's my it's the waterfront I cover, you know, I
want one of the big ones.
Speaker 12 (09:22):
Certainly.
Speaker 9 (09:22):
You know, we've had some tense Thanksgiving dinners over the years,
but I think my family, uh has come to expect this,
and the members of my family, uh, you know, three
out of my four kids are songwriters, and my my
other daughter is a is A is a wonderful prose writer.
(09:45):
And they they've all written about me and referenced me
and talked about their take on the whole thing. So
it's it's it's it's just part of the whole deal.
And uh, I feel okay about it now.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Growing up, it seemed to me that you wanted to
be a performer. You went to acting school.
Speaker 12 (10:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Now you did play guitar, starting quite young, I think.
Did your dad give you a guitar that?
Speaker 9 (10:12):
Yeah, my dad, who was a journalist for Life magazine,
He also loved music, and he had a friend in
the nineteen fifties quite a well known songwriter and singer
called Terry Gilksson. He wrote, you know, memories are made
of this, that big Dean Martin head and other things.
(10:33):
But he was a drinking buddy of my dad's. He
gave my dad a nylon string, beautiful little Mexican guitar,
and then my dad bequeathed it to me. So that
was my actual first guitar. Got it when I was
about thirteen.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
And did you immediately take to folk music?
Speaker 9 (10:49):
You know in the early sixties, you know, and the
folk boom happened. You know, I saw people like Ramblin,
Jack Elliott and Pat Sky and Dave van Ron and
of course Bob Dylan who were playing steel string guitars
and at the Newport Folk Festival and stuff. Then I
still hadn't written anything myself, but I I got myself
(11:10):
a Martin Dreadnought and you know, started to emulate those
guys who were all just a few years older than me.
Actually right, I mean Jack Elliott's not a few years
older than me. He's in his nineties. But yeah, he
sure was always springy and youthful.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
So it was songwriting just a way to get you
up on stage.
Speaker 9 (11:31):
I mean I wanted to be on stage ever since
I was seven, you know, and I was showing off
from my parents and stuff. But when I got on
stage with a guitar, it's something seemed to click, and
I was off and running, I suppose.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
But you didn't emulate those guys. You didn't try to
be a beatnik. No, you were out there in like
a Brooks Brothers se right.
Speaker 9 (11:51):
You know, you have to figure out a way to
be noticed in the world, and in show.
Speaker 12 (11:57):
Business in particular.
Speaker 9 (11:58):
I'd say, So, I wore what I wore in boarding school,
you know, a Books Brothers blazer and gray flannel pants,
bell bottoms. I had short hair on my first couple
of albums. Yeah, that was the look that I created
to separate me from the pack, and it worked kind of.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Yeah, did you worry? People would say, why do we
want to listen to this kid from a private school
in Westchester.
Speaker 9 (12:26):
I didn't worry about it. I understood that I had
to write about I mean, I wasn't going to write
about writing being a hobo on the rails, or like
Jack Elliott, you know, invent myself into something that I wasn't.
I decided to more or less take what I was,
which was a guy that grew up in Westchester and
went to boarding school, and you know, emphasize it and
(12:49):
write about it. And then when I got married, I
wrote about that. And you know, I've just been writing
about my swing in life all this time.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
One thing that comes through in your autobiography Liner Notes,
which I'm going to recommend everybody because it's a wonderful book,
is how competitive you were. I mean, you were a
big swimmer, so I think maybe some of that comes
from sports, but you were competitive with everybody. You say,
at some point when somebody else gets trashed, you feel
(13:23):
a little bit better. I mean another singer, I don't
mean just a person walking down the street. Where does
that competition come from?
Speaker 9 (13:30):
Well, my father, you know, the aforementioned father was was
successful in the world of journalism, and and and he
was competitive, And you know, I don't want to blame
it on my parents.
Speaker 12 (13:47):
I mean, I.
Speaker 9 (13:50):
Yeah, this need to achieve or succeed is in me,
you know. And and as far as my you know,
people would say, boy, it must be great when you
and Steve Goodman and John Prine and Leo Kotkey can
all go out and you know, have a cocktail or something,
and I mean, we would do that and.
Speaker 12 (14:08):
That's all and stuff.
Speaker 9 (14:09):
But I don't know about them, but I was always
thinking does he sell more records than me? And is
that song better than my song? And uh, you know,
I I'm I'm not happy to admit it. I'm I'm
ashamed to to admit it. But I do have a
competitive streak.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
It's not a bad thing.
Speaker 9 (14:28):
It it spurs you on, you know, to to do
the best work that you can, you know, and uh,
you know, I'm again I'm not I'm not proud of
it necessarily, but it's an engine. It provides you with
an engine.
Speaker 12 (14:46):
And uh, but it it's it's.
Speaker 9 (14:49):
It's it's murder on your family life and it leads
to isolation and depression. So I would not advise being
competitive danger the kids out there.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Yeah, yeah, stay in school, don't be too competitive.
Speaker 12 (15:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
You in your autobiography, I'm remembering now you put your
finger on I think one of the most terrifying moments
in documentary film. And you talk about it, and it's
in Don't Look Back.
Speaker 9 (15:16):
Yeah, Dylan documented, Yeah, yeah, Oh that's a great moment.
Uh and and and scary too. They're in London, I guess,
and they're in a hotel room and Dylan is there,
you know, at the height of you know, his whole thing.
Bobby Nowrth is kind of lurking in the corner. The
(15:36):
guy from the Animals, Alan Price, is there, and Donovan
is there, and the guitar is being passed around, and Donovan,
who's great, you know, sings try and Catch the Wind
or something like that, you know, which was a big
radio record, probably all more records than any Bob Dylan single.
But a little twee, a little a little twee and soft,
(15:59):
and so Dylan and Newarth, you know, kind of nodding
and saying that's a pretty good song man. And then
Dylan takes the guitar and plays It's all all over,
baby Blue. It's all over now, baby Blue, And you
can just see the look on Donovan's face. It just like,
oh my goodness, it was just so powerful.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
And he smiles through it. But you can just see them.
Why don't you just break the guitar from my head?
Speaker 9 (16:25):
Yeah, it's killing, Yeah, I mean it's you know, jazz musicians,
you know, saxophone players in the forties used to they
were called cutting sessions, you know, and Lester Young and
Charlie Parker and you know does Hey Gillespie and these
guys would They're all they were all competitive with each other.
I mean they so it's it's not I don't and
(16:46):
again I don't think it's a bad thing.
Speaker 12 (16:48):
Really.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
We'll be back with more from Loud and Wing right
the third and Bruce Hadlam after the break.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
What did you take from your father as a writer?
Do you are there similarities in what you do?
Speaker 9 (17:03):
Do you think I've come to realize that there were.
You know, I was competitive with my father and and stuff,
which again I don't advise for parents and children, but
I got a lot from him. He died in nineteen
eighty eight. And the way that I write songs are
there's a journalistic element to them. They're they're descriptive, there's
(17:27):
a beginning, of the middle and an end.
Speaker 12 (17:28):
I'm always trying to.
Speaker 9 (17:29):
Be very clear about what it is that I'm saying.
And I think I got that from my dad, I hope,
So anyway, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Do you have any of his habits? Do you carry
around a notebook and scribble down thing?
Speaker 12 (17:43):
I carry around my file of facts.
Speaker 9 (17:47):
You know, people can't see this, but it's a pretty
beat up old file of facts I got from the
nineteen eighties in the hope that I'll see something or
hear something and jot something down and it could lead
to a song, and it has done.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
How often does something like that happen?
Speaker 12 (18:03):
A song?
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Just an idea of thought that you'll jot down.
Speaker 9 (18:07):
Well know, I've got it in the bag. I mean,
you know, that's where the mystery comes in. How does
the song start, or any any piece of work. It's
mysterious to me, despite the fact that I've been doing
it for a long long time. I liken it to fishing.
You know, I've got a line in the water. Whether
(18:29):
I get a bite or can get it in the
boat once I get a bite depends.
Speaker 12 (18:33):
But it's it's mysterious.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Yeah, what's the old line it's called fishing, not catching.
Speaker 12 (18:39):
Yeah, I like that.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
And then do you sit down with your guitar and
just flip through the book and see what happens?
Speaker 9 (18:46):
Yeah, I mean it's all very disorganized in random, you know.
Or I'll write something down, or I'll find something in
the book that I've forgotten about, and or i'll you know,
quite often for me, a song can start from the first.
Speaker 12 (19:02):
Line, you know.
Speaker 9 (19:04):
You know, an example from the new album would be
I need a family vacation, I mean a family vacation alone.
So that's a good starting place for a guy like me.
You know, the first line is often a kind of springboard.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Where does that impulse come from? I mean, your father
wrote about his family Life Magazine. I don't think he
wrote about it quite in the way you write about it, right. Well,
he was Life Magazine.
Speaker 9 (19:35):
Yeah yeah, I mean, yeah, he had constraints on him
because Life Magazine was fairly conservative actually, but I think
by nature he was a little more conservative. He was
a different generation, you know, the afore mentioned Bob Dylan.
I mean, you know, he kind of freed it up.
I mean, you could write about your life. I mean,
(19:56):
he was always oblique so you never knew exactly what
the hell he was talking.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
You could listen to every Bob Dylan song and not
know anything about Bob Dylan.
Speaker 10 (20:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
I suspect he likes it that way.
Speaker 9 (20:06):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I definitely have a con professional straight
streak propensity, as it were.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
But have you ever felt you've gone too far with
the song?
Speaker 10 (20:19):
Uh?
Speaker 9 (20:19):
Yeah, I have, and then I go ahead and go
too far anyway. I mean, although there are there are
some songs that I don't sing anymore that I you know,
that I know have upset people or that they've they've
told me that, and I'm trying to you know, I'm
working on it.
Speaker 12 (20:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Can you give me an example of one that you
just don't you just don't perform for that reason.
Speaker 12 (20:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 9 (20:47):
I mean there's a song called It's About. It's a
song called that Hospital and it's about it's about a
hospital in northern Westchester where some key events happened, and
I just realized that I shouldn't do that song anymore.
On the other hand, I think I'll think, oh, this
is uh just as close to the bone, and then
(21:09):
I'll think that's a good thing, you know. I want
to push it for my audience, you know. And again
when I'm writing about my experiences in my family or
my marriages, or with my kids or this is not
foreign territory, people know exactly.
Speaker 12 (21:25):
What I'm talking about.
Speaker 9 (21:28):
People will come up and say, boy, that song about
you and your sister or you and your kid. You
mentioned that song hitting you. You know, they'll actually thank me.
You know. They don't give me any extra money, but
they will thank me.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
When you write a song like that, are you stating
the way you feel? Or in writing it, are you
are you working through those feelings?
Speaker 12 (21:53):
Well?
Speaker 9 (21:53):
Working through make it somehow implies that you know, you've
that there's a therapeutic aspect to it. I don't think
there is. I mean, you know, and it could be
argued that that focusing on marital familial problems, you know,
(22:14):
could make it worse. But it's interesting, you know, writing
about my loved ones. They're the most important people in
my life. They're the biggest people in my life. They're
the people that I were all part of each other.
So it's always struck me that that's who I should
be writing about.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
And one of my favorite lines from your book is
in reference not to your work, but in reference to
your father and mother, you're imagining how they came together,
your father being a upper middle class guy, your mother
from Georgia. You'd a beautiful line which was, it's basically
about how men, at some point after they feel comfortable,
(22:57):
feel the need to tell everybody what a piece of
shit they are. And the line was, the confession of
weakness to a woman is so often a search for
sweet absolution. Boy, Yeah, you're good.
Speaker 12 (23:13):
Yeah you surprised.
Speaker 9 (23:14):
That's good, And that's certainly was the case in my
with my parents. You know, I can, I think I
might go. You know somehow I think of the imagine
you imagine your parents before before you were on the scene,
or even maybe the night after the moment after you
were conceived, you know, lying in bed, and undoubtedly my
(23:35):
father would be smoking a cigarette and you know, just
unloading and talking about how he felt. And my mother
was a good listener. In the end, the marriage didn't
work out for that could have been one of the problems.
Speaker 12 (23:48):
He didn't listen well enough.
Speaker 9 (23:49):
Or you know, she didn't get a chance to to
unload her emotional baggage.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Do you feel your confessional nature's in part looking for
absolution is it a way of making amends to put
it in song.
Speaker 9 (24:06):
There's plenty of amends to be made. I guess just
writing about it maybe is saying, Okay, here it is,
let's look at it for three minutes. Maybe that's part
of some kind of an amend's process. But again, it
can create distance too, so an isolation.
Speaker 12 (24:25):
So I really don't know.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Your father was also I'm surprised to read a successful
short story writer which he had to give up. Yeah, yeah,
family reasons. But tell me a bit about that.
Speaker 9 (24:38):
Well, you know, every young writer imagines and hopes to
be in the New Yorker magazine. And my dad has
had three of his short stories published in The New
Yorker in the late forties, and they are one in particular.
It's brilliant and completely holds up a story he wrote
(24:58):
about the boarding school that he went to that I
actually went to too, the same school, And so when
he writes about it, I can I can picture it
in my own mind. Anyway, the stories were in New
York or he was twenty two or twenty three, whatever
he was, and boy, that's the beginning of something big.
(25:19):
But he had a wife and three small kids, me
and my brother and sister at that point, and they
moved up to New York and he had to get
a job, and so he started to work for Life
magazine and he stayed at the magazine for his pretty
much life. So he never got to really focus on
(25:42):
writing fiction. Then he tried to write a lot of
you know, nonfiction books, and he had problems with that too.
You know, the book was looming for him.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
So you know, it was common among journalists they think
they've got to do their magnum opus.
Speaker 9 (25:57):
Yeah, they just had and it was torture for him.
But he was so successful as a journalist, as an editor,
as a columnist. You know, his columns are are all
so brilliant, and a few of them are I had
I printed in my book because I just wanted.
Speaker 12 (26:15):
To share the work.
Speaker 9 (26:16):
I mean, the quality of the writing is so great.
And then later I constructed a kind of theatrical show
called Surviving Twin where I actually.
Speaker 12 (26:24):
Performed some of his columns.
Speaker 9 (26:28):
So it looked like, you know, it's such a pity
that he couldn't have enjoyed his success. But he was
tortured about the book.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
You know, the people he was writing with probably at
that time, were people like John Cheever, and you're often
sort of thought of as this chiever character. You went
to private school. Yeah, well, from the sounds of it,
you didn't like it. You went to boarding school.
Speaker 12 (26:49):
Didn't like it, but it sure had an impact on me.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Oh what was the impact?
Speaker 9 (26:53):
Yeah, it had a big effect on me. I mean
my first I referenced that's in Delaware when I was younger.
My very first song on my first record was about
that boarding school. I'm kind of I have some gratitude
about that boarding school. First of all, it was a
good school. It is a good school Andrews It's in Delaware.
But at the time I was a miserable young man.
(27:14):
I probably would have been miserable anywhere. So I'm not
blaming my old boarding school.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
You just you just wanted your parents to pay for it, right.
Speaker 9 (27:24):
Well, I didn't want to go, but my father again,
he my father went to the same school. He was miserable.
He thought I should go.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
And did his father go to that school as well?
Speaker 12 (27:35):
He didn't go to that school. He went to uh.
Speaker 9 (27:39):
Trinity Palling I think or something. My son Rufus went
to boarding school, different school. He went to Millbrook and
he succeeded and found himself kind of at Millbury. I mean,
this is what I think. I think it was a
I think he wouldn't. He would say that it was
a good experience for him.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
So I mentioned I started this by saying, you know,
you're compared to Chiever because of your background, but to me,
you're more like Updyke. And this is why when I.
Speaker 12 (28:07):
My girlfriend's going to love this because she loves John.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Up She likes John Updike. Okay, well, I've only really
read the Rabbit books. But my issue with Updyke is
he's kind of giving the game away of being a man.
He tells things about men and their wormy little desires
and their awful behavior that I feel would be best
(28:32):
not put out into the world. And you've got some
of that, you've you you know, I think of songs
like four by ten one Man, Guy Less, so one
of my favorite songs of yours, which is just called Men.
I'm interested in what that part of it is like
for you to be a guy and kind of, you know,
(28:54):
because guys are sort of taught not to yeah, not
to emote, not to reveal ourselves or traditionally men well
in songs.
Speaker 9 (29:04):
You know, my songs are written to be performed, you know.
I mean, I make RECs, but but I I'm always
thinking about what what's this going to do to the
three hundred people or if if it's good, maybe three
thousand people that are sitting out there in the dark
and talking about that stuff. You know, I feel safe.
(29:27):
I mean, I know that there there could be an
ooh factor, you know, but who don't don't do that,
or don't say that, or don't reveal that. But I
just as a guy who wanted to who wanted to
be a performer from an earth, I just know that
it has I can feel that it's that that it's
doing something to the audience. It might be making them
(29:48):
a little uncomfortable. I've had a tendency to do it.
I don't quite know why, except that it seems to
work for me.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
That's interesting. Even on this album, when you're writing these songs,
you're thinking, how's this going to work live? How's it
going to affect people?
Speaker 9 (30:04):
I think so when I'm actually you know, I'm always
thinking of that group of people and in the audience
and will it have an effect on them? And it
can be different effects. You know, some of the songs
are funny, some of them are not funny at all.
Some of them can do both. They can swerve into
(30:27):
they have jokes planted in them, comic relief, if you
will use the theatrical term. But it's all about taking
that three minutes or if it's a whole show, that
ninety minutes, and just taking them somewhere or dragging them
somewhere in some case.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
But that does sound like you conceive of your performances
almost as theater.
Speaker 12 (30:49):
I think it is.
Speaker 9 (30:49):
You know, it's a way you're in the dark. You know,
people are in the dark and they're watching you on
stage and you're you're performing for them.
Speaker 12 (30:58):
It's an act.
Speaker 9 (30:59):
But again it can create there's some magic.
Speaker 12 (31:03):
There can be magic.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
There is that magic you feel when you're on stage.
Is that kind of feeds your performance?
Speaker 9 (31:11):
Yeah, yeah, it's it's a great it's a great feeling
the moment. You know, when I was a kid and
I was in school plays, it was I was never
was happier just just showing off, just being there.
Speaker 12 (31:24):
I mean, I knew that that's as good as it gets.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
And so songs like Your Mother and I, which is
one of your most famous songs as a heartbreaking song,
hitting You, which is about hitting your daughter, realizing you've
hit her too hard.
Speaker 9 (31:41):
Right, losing it in an anger, was giving her a whack.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
That would be the story. But underlying the song is
something I think that terrifies all parents, is that you've
broken something that can't be fixed. Yeah, when you get
to those kind of lines, does that can you feel
that reaction.
Speaker 12 (32:03):
The song? Yeah?
Speaker 9 (32:04):
Yeah, yeah, again people coming up after the show and
saying that's song, you know, and you have the person
kid that's getting whacked, But then you have the parent
that did it and just thinks, oh my god, I'm
going to pay for this.
Speaker 12 (32:20):
You know?
Speaker 9 (32:20):
That was that was I lost it, you know, And
so it's a it's a subject which is which is
pretty powerful.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Yeah. Speaking of your songs like Your Mother and I
and other romantic songs or anti romantic songs. You mentioned
in the you come up with a syndrome in your book,
Sir Walter Raleigh syndrome. Yeah, I'd love for you to explain.
Speaker 9 (32:42):
That the Sir Walter Raleigh syndrome. You know, Sir Walter Raleigh. Famously,
I guess it was Elizabeth the first or some Elizabeth
or other you know, was walking along with the queen
or and there's a mud puddle and he lays down
his cape so that she doesn't get her you know.
(33:04):
And again it's generational, you know, my mother urged it,
you know, this thing for just making sure that women
are you know, opening the door and giving them the
chair and paying the check always. You know that that's
a role that some men do or have, and I
(33:25):
certainly have it. But of course what it does is
it creates a kind of a resentment. You know, hey,
why doesn't she walk around the damn mud puddle, you know,
or get the these capes? You know, I have to
go to the dry cleaner again with these capes.
Speaker 12 (33:41):
Give me a break, you know.
Speaker 9 (33:42):
So it's a kind of a syndrome and it's probably
not good for either the Queen or Sir Walter Rawley.
But in this case, I was identifying with Sir Walter Raleigh.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
And you've seen that.
Speaker 12 (33:58):
It's played out in my own life.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
Tell me about I think it's just a beautiful song
on the album, which is back in your Town.
Speaker 12 (34:06):
Back in your Town.
Speaker 9 (34:07):
Yeah, thank you. That's that's that's a bit older. That's
about fifteen years older, fifteen years old. You know, I
had a Now she's a great friend of mine, Tracy McLeod.
She know, we lived together for a couple of years
and she's English and she so it's about going going
back to London and actually walking past her house in
(34:32):
Saint John's Wood where we live together, and just that
feeling of God she's up there, and just being in
you know, the power of going back to that place.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
You've a line about feeling like a refugee and a louse.
Speaker 9 (34:46):
Yes, yeah, yeah, So it's always tricky to come up
with a word to rhyme with house, but you know
you got this mouse. There aren't many but laos in
this case seemed to work.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
You have other songs like a Little Piece of Me,
which is about traveling. Are they all instigated by specific episodes?
I could see somebody writing back in your town and saying, well,
that wasn't really about anybody. That's just that feeling you
get in another city. But for you, that was that
very specific feeling.
Speaker 9 (35:19):
Well again, in the process of writing it, I think
of the specifics. I think of the town, I think
of that person. I can picture that straight. You know,
I know exactly where that looking up into that window
is so And again we talked about what my dad's influence,
you know, specificity in the process for hopefully it's generic,
(35:41):
hopefully everybody can identify with it, but I work with
the specifics of things.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
I also thought, listening to that song, you have your
dad's journalistic tendency, which is you never want to use
the same word twice. So it's place, or it's town,
then it's place, then it's berg, which rhymes with cerb,
which means you can do that line about almost getting
hit by a bus.
Speaker 12 (36:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
The only thing that gives away that the song is
the double decker bus. I thought, well, it must be English.
Speaker 12 (36:09):
I feel like I should play the song for you.
Play it please, for the people.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
Gosh, I'm back in your town.
Speaker 6 (36:28):
I'm walking around.
Speaker 5 (36:32):
Crossing the street on sure on my feet, and I'm
carefully looking around.
Speaker 4 (36:42):
Because I'm back in your town.
Speaker 3 (36:47):
Yes, and not.
Speaker 12 (36:49):
Back in this bird.
Speaker 4 (36:53):
Oh heaven sure, I better.
Speaker 8 (36:58):
I look to the right.
Speaker 4 (37:00):
A double decker just mate.
Speaker 9 (37:03):
Hit me when I step off the curve.
Speaker 4 (37:09):
I'm back in this boot.
Speaker 10 (37:13):
Just sit back in that place.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Last time I left the hardy trees.
Speaker 12 (37:24):
Now that out to.
Speaker 4 (37:25):
Turn and ask me what of I learned?
Speaker 9 (37:29):
Go ahead and take a look on my face.
Speaker 5 (37:35):
I'm back in that place.
Speaker 12 (37:39):
You leave someone behind and.
Speaker 4 (37:42):
You think you won't mind until you go back and
find you still can't your.
Speaker 8 (37:51):
Background start and enough mind.
Speaker 11 (37:54):
I was smart at my feeling you thought it wasn't there,
still there.
Speaker 4 (38:22):
I walked right past your house, feeling like a refuge
and alas.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
You were at all, But you were not alone.
Speaker 12 (38:37):
You were there with your kids and your spouse.
Speaker 4 (38:43):
I walked right past your house, so now feeling bereft,
I'm feeling like I never even left. Every thanks changed,
but it's the same. It's still all here, but nothing
(39:06):
is left.
Speaker 6 (39:10):
I'm feeling breath.
Speaker 12 (39:13):
You leave someone behind and.
Speaker 4 (39:15):
Didn't think you won't bad until you go back and
fine you still care.
Speaker 13 (39:23):
You're back where starting and I mine.
Speaker 4 (39:27):
I'm smarted by feeling you thought it wasn't there. I'm
back in your town.
Speaker 11 (39:40):
I'm walking around, crossing the street.
Speaker 4 (39:46):
I'm sure on my feet, and I'm carefully looking around.
I'm back in your town.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
One last break and we back with Loud and Wayne
right the third.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
Before we go, I do want to ask you about
a couple of our favorite people that you've worked with,
And the first is Richard Thompson. Oh yeah, you did?
I think two albums with him in the eighties. Tell
me about that.
Speaker 12 (40:30):
Wow.
Speaker 9 (40:30):
Rich In nineteen eighty five or four, I talked about
all my old gal friends, Susy Roach and I split
up and I decided to go to England and actually
went over there and bought a flat up in West Hampstead.
And I had met Richard probably around nineteen seventy eight,
(40:54):
and it'd been a huge Prior to that, i'd been
a huge fan of his work, but we did some
festivals and things together in seventy eight. And so when
I got over there, I was getting ready to make
a record and I was talking to my friend Paul Charles,
(41:15):
and I said, what about if I asked Richard to
produce it? And Paul said yeah, and I asked him
and we we He did it. It's a record called
I'm all Right. And I should say that you know,
in the in the late seventies, you know, I kind
(41:35):
of got was making some kind of overproduced, kind of
crappy records. They weren't totally crappy, but they were there.
Certainly there was an element of overproduction so Richard and
I talked about and he suggested that we really if
we do production, we're gonna do production that where the
song is served by the production and not worry about
(41:57):
getting it on the radio and stuff. So and that's
what we did with that record. And then we did
another record called More Love Songs. Again there's drums on it,
and there's a bass on it, and there's stuff on it,
but it doesn't get in the way of the songs.
And of course this Richard's guitar playing, which is kind
of ridiculously marvelous. So those records are I feel good
(42:22):
about those records that they got nominated for Grammys, and
people liked him a lot, and so I was very
happy to work with rich And occasionally we get to
do shows. He last year, I.
Speaker 12 (42:35):
Guess it was because of the pandemic. It was a
couple of years ago.
Speaker 9 (42:39):
He celebrated his seventieth birthday at a big show at
Albert Hall in London, and I got to go and
sing and play with him. And I love rich He's
the greatest.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
I mean, I'm interested in you guys sitting with guitars
because he is a brilliant guitarist. You are really underrated.
As a guitar player and as an instrumentalist. I think, well,
I play rhythm guitar.
Speaker 9 (43:06):
You know, it's all about what's going on with the
right hand, because I can't really play any licks like
I've played with great guitar players Richard Thompson, Bill Frizzell,
John Schofield. I mean, you know these guys, But I
feel pretty good about my my rhythm guitar playing. It's
(43:26):
pretty solid.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
Now there's some beautiful instrumentation on this news. This new album,
Lifetime Achievement Back in your Town's got a beautiful treatment
a little piece of me. I think it's got some Well,
you also played banjo.
Speaker 9 (43:40):
I play some banjo on the record, but that's how
I'm Tannebaum playing the other banjo. My other great guitar
player who's all over this record is David Mansfield, who's
a great you know, he's up there in that strata
with those guys.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Right Also, I would say, Richard Thompson, if there were
a list of artists who have turned broken relationships into
great art, I would say you two would be in
the top five easily. You know, he's one of the
great breakup albums. Of all time.
Speaker 12 (44:09):
Are you talking about shoot Out the Lights?
Speaker 1 (44:11):
Yeah, yeah, yeah that Yeah, that's.
Speaker 12 (44:14):
A great, great record. And he and he, uh, of.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Course Richard Richard does he and his wife Linda. We
should mention sure.
Speaker 9 (44:21):
Linda just had a birthday, okay, a couple of days ago. Uh, yeah,
Linda and rich I mean that they made those wonderful
records and uh talk about breakup albums. I I saw
some of the shows that they did to support Shootout
the Lights, and boy, that was Stringberg on stage at
(44:41):
the bottom line. I mean it was ferociously and it's
so compelling, you know. Of course, Richard, if you ask him,
is this one about? What's this one about? And which
what girl?
Speaker 4 (44:53):
And what?
Speaker 12 (44:55):
You know?
Speaker 9 (44:55):
He says he denies that it's autobiographical, but that's that's
his option.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
The other person I wanted to ask about was Joe Henry.
Speaker 12 (45:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
Oh, well, great great songwriter.
Speaker 9 (45:10):
Great great songwriter, a great producer. We did a couple
of records together, and uh, great guy, uh all around
working with Joe. Uh. When Joe works, he gets together
his group of players and and it's in the room
and it's live. Greg Lease, David Pilch, Jay Bellarrose, this
(45:33):
amazing drummer that Joe.
Speaker 12 (45:35):
Likes to use.
Speaker 9 (45:35):
That the t bone Burnette has now poached and taken away.
But Joe, Joe, Joe's about getting the guys in the
room and just making it real in the room, and
then then capturing the recording. And he makes beautiful records
with with a lot of different people and writes wonderful songs.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
Is that a Is that a way you like to record?
Speaker 9 (45:57):
It's fun to do it that way. I've done it
that way, and when Joe's at the helm, I feel confident.
When we did this last record, Lifetime Achievement, I went
into the studio by myself with my guitar and laid
down all my stuff beforehand, and then we added stuff.
That's another way that I've worked, you know, where you
just get the core of what I do, which is
(46:19):
me playing the guitar. And then Stewart and Dick Knnett,
you know they worked with well, let's put Mansfield over
here and Tannenbaum over here and maybe bring in a
drummer secretly, and.
Speaker 1 (46:32):
You led the drums after you laid down the rhythm.
Speaker 12 (46:35):
Track on this record we did.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
Yeah, that's interesting. Joe's also Joe Henry's also a way
of mentioning you guys worked on the Knocked Up soundtrack
which had Daughter, which is a great song of yours,
which we haven't talked about. In fact, you do act
all the time. You're in all kinds of things always.
Speaker 9 (46:53):
Well, uh yeah, I get acting jobs and and Joe
and I did do the Strange Weirdos record which is More,
which was kind of a soundtrack record for the Judd
Apatow movie of Knocked Up, and Joe produced that record Daughter,
which is from that album, which I have to say
(47:15):
and admit to you that I did not write a
lot of people think I wrote it. It was written
by the I'm so effusive with my praise today with
the wonderful, incredible songwriter Peter Blagvad. He wrote Daughter, and
I sang it and we recorded it. But a lot
(47:36):
of people think that I wrote Daughter. I wish I had,
but I didn't.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
Just take it. When I was just reading things about
this album, about what you're doing now, I came across
the NPR review of the album, and I don't know
if you read that or not, but there was there
was a paragraph that jumped out at me, which was
well before owning up to privilege was a thing. Wainwright
(48:04):
had made a career out of being honest about his
white Anglo Saxon Protestant upbringing, freely admitting that male wasps
like him got away with far too much. Now I
guess that's accurate.
Speaker 9 (48:19):
It feels a little sounds a little updikey.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
A little updikey, a little hostile. You know, the world
has changed in the way we think about families and
men and women and relationships has changed. Could you be
the same singer songwriter coming up today?
Speaker 12 (48:39):
I mean, could I get away with it? Or would I?
Speaker 9 (48:42):
Yes, that's what you mean in a way, Yes, probably not.
I mean there's so much.
Speaker 12 (48:47):
That you can't get away with today.
Speaker 9 (48:50):
You know, I'm thinking. I have a song on my
second album as a song called Motel Blues, which you know,
Joe Henry recorded it on the record that we did
call Recovery with his band.
Speaker 1 (49:04):
It's a good song, great song.
Speaker 9 (49:07):
It's about being lonely and about trying to lure a
woman up to my room to be because I'm lonely
and that's what it's.
Speaker 1 (49:19):
About, and come and save my life, right.
Speaker 9 (49:22):
It's a come up to my motel room, saved my life,
and then it then it says, come up to my
motel room, sleep with me.
Speaker 12 (49:30):
So could just do that now?
Speaker 9 (49:32):
I don't know, but uh or what I've written that now,
I like to think that I would have because it's
what happened, and it doesn't happen now. Now it's come
up to my motel room and show me how to
work the Wi Fi.
Speaker 12 (49:48):
You know.
Speaker 9 (49:50):
So it's not really an issue for me now, but
as a twenty two year old lonely touring musician, you know,
it was what was going on.
Speaker 12 (49:58):
So I wrote about it.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
Listen, thank you so much.
Speaker 12 (50:01):
Oh, I've enjoyed talking with you, just.
Speaker 1 (50:03):
Great talking and a great album. Another great album. Thank
you so much, thank you.
Speaker 2 (50:10):
In the episode description, you'll find a link to a
playlist of our favorite Loud and Win Right the third tracks,
as well as his latest.
Speaker 12 (50:16):
Album, Lifetime Achievement.
Speaker 2 (50:18):
Be sure to check out YouTube dot com slash Broken
Record Podcast to see all our video interviews, and be
sure to follow us on Instagram at the Broken Record Pod.
You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken
Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose with Marketing
and help from Eric Sandler and Jordana McMillan. Our engineer
is Ben Holliday. Broken Record is production of Pushkin Industries.
(50:39):
If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider
subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription
that offers bonus content and ad free listening for four
ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple
podcast subscriptions, and if you like this show, please remember
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Our theme music ex by Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Richard
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