Loudon clear

Wainwright's middle-aged angst is true

by Jim Macnie

A couple of months ago at a New York gig to tout the tunes from his new Little Ship record, Loudon Wainwright III mentioned that he had recently moved back to the States after spending several years in London. "Yeah, I'm up in Katonah, now," he smirked, referencing the posh bedroom community an hour above Manhattan, "just a few miles down the road from where I grew up, actually. Katonah -- that's an old Indian word for dysfunctional." The place fell out.

Loudon ain't no etymologist, he's a guitar-strumming wiseacre with a sharp eye and a knack for making his personal shortcomings seem the frailties of an entire generation. After three decades of reflexive self-examination, he has amassed a songbook rife with tunes that deconstruct the myriad bugaboos which mar domestic bliss. Explaining the hows and whys of impaired family dynamics is Wainwright's stock in trade -- dysfunction, to a degree, is his meal ticket.

It's something with which the 51-year-old folkie is quite familiar. His privileged suburban childhood had its own repressive rules and flawed characters. There have been two wives (Kate McGarrigle and Suzzy Roche), four kids, and several girlfriends in his life. Parenting comparatively young, he penned wry ditties about birth ("Dilated To Meet You" and "Rufus Is a Tit Man"), toddlerville ("Saturday Morning Fever" and "The Animal Song"), and the sound of amore tumbling into the toilet ("Reciprocity" and "On the Rock"). The tales are told in plainspeak, not psychobabble, and culpability is claimed more often than excuses are made.

About a decade ago, Wainwright titled one of his discs Therapy, and got on with the tasks of appraising his career and investigating his childhood. It was droll, wry, and keen. Since then, his stroll through middle age has proven even more fertile, song-wise. Inevitabilities like parents dying and kids becoming adults have engendered musings galore. Some are acerbic, some are maudlin and some cleverly split the difference between the two.

History ruminates about his dad's passing, and takes another slap at the romance of romance ("I see people in love and I just want to puke / There's pedals on the rose, but thorns on the stem"). Grown Man takes a stab at explaining why the aging process is not exactly the same as the maturation process. On their way to answerville, both records literally hitch their muse to life-and-death issues. Doctors and hospitals and peeing into cups and overnight vigils all crop up. "Living's a battle and you're losing the fight," one frank MD tells the singer.

I was surprised to see several 20somethings at the Bottom Line. Singing about wrinkles, bald spots, hangovers, and the shirking of parental responsibilities ain't exactly the way to make hay with the Foo Fighters crowd. But at least one table of young'uns roared -- as did the entire room -- during Wainwright's point-blank take on physical debilitation entitled "When You Look Like Shit."

From Joni to Jewel, there have been folk-pop icons whose introspection has allowed listeners to feel the sorrow or thrill to the passion of a singer's emotional quintessence. Some, like Jackson Browne, have turned to outside stimuli, such as political inequities and other social issues. But Wainwright has burrowed in even deeper -- his social concerns all take place between the bedroom, the kitchen and the back yard.

One epiphany on Little Ship (Virgin) takes place while the singer is matching his socks, and stuffing his bureau drawer with T-shirts. Other songs ask what families are for and mockingly explain the rigors of being a dad ("Being a dad isn't so bad, 'cept that you've gotta feed 'em / You've got to shoe 'em and clothe 'em and try not to loathe 'em, and bug 'em and hug em and heed 'em"). Pretense goes out the window when Wainwright dives into his subject. He assures that angst knows no age limits, and demonstrates how brooding can be both hilarious and grim. Never dodging the crucial center of valuable analysis, he always shoots for the sad-but-true center.

I kind of fibbed about the social issues thing. Perhaps as a way to momentarily get out of his own head, Wainwright has recently accepted songwriting assignments from All Things Considered and Nightline. Editors there dig his critical acumen, and the way his highly subjective reportage on contemporary phenomena such as the Hubbel telescope, Tonya Harding, and smokers gathered outside of butt-banned buildings ("The New Street People") skewers its subjects with aplomb.

Confessional songwriters have been critically cuffed around over the years, blamed for navel-gazing ditties that turn first-person references into circumspect effluvia. But when Wainwright fixates on a theme, the obsession kicks in and the specifics have nowhere to hide. Trouncing most definitions of privacy, he manages the kind of candor that shines an edifying light on all of us guilty parties everywhere.

Loudon Wainwright will perform at Lupo's on Thursday, May 21.