Loudon Wainwright III
eTown Hall
1535 Spruce St
Boulder, CO 80302-4215
Oct 22, 2017
7:00 PM UTC
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About this concert
Loudon Wainwright IIILoudon’s long and illustrious career is highlighted by more than two dozen album releases, Movie and TV credits, and now his new autobiography, Liner Notes(2017 Penguin/Random House). In 2010 Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album for High Wide & Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project. His 2012 recording, Older Than My Old Man Now, was named one of NPR’s Top 10 Albums of the Year. In 2014, Haven’t Got the Blues (Yet), marks his the 26th career release to-date.Wainwright is perhaps best known for the novelty song “Dead Skunk (in the Middle of the Road)”, and for playing Captain Calvin Spalding, the “singing surgeon”, on the American television show, M*A*S*H.His songs have been recorded by Bonnie Raitt, Johnny Cash, Earl Scruggs, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Rufus Wainwright, and Mose Allison. He has collaborated with songwriter/producer Joe Henry, on the music for Judd Apatow’s hit movie Knocked Up. Loudon penned music for the British theatrical adaptation of the Carl Hiaasen novel Lucky You. He composed topical songs for NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered and ABC’s Nightline, and recorded several songs for the soundtrack of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire.As an actor, Wainwright has appeared in films directed by Martin Scorsese, Hal Ashby, Christopher Guest, Tim Burton, Cameron Crowe, and Judd Apatow.Heather Maloney“Going in, we said ‘lets make a bad ass indie rock record with a sound as big and dynamic as we can, without compromising one single heartfelt lyric."Singer-songwriter Heather Maloney did just that on her newest LP, Making Me Break. Working with Grammy-nominated producer Bill Reynolds (Band of Horses, Avett Brothers), the two crafted and delivered on an artistic vision to merge Maloney’s folk roots with indie rock.“The sounds I love in indie rock are so lush, and textured, and intricate, like someone spent a lot of time on this, so they must really care,” Maloney explains, citing influences such as Ben Howard, The Shins, and Io Echo. “And as a singer-songwriter raised on folk, I am drawn to lyrics that that are meaningful, intelligent, tell a story, paint pictures… that care. So I just wanted to make an album that cared musically and lyrically. Some sort of a bleeding heart meeting a distant, unaffected, sparkly rock band. That was the goal.”Maloney’s new music has a definite edge, but it also has a classically trained voice that delivers well-crafted lyrics over a technical arrangement—a combination we’ve recently seen getting mainstream appreciation once more. Suddenly, the term “singer-songwriter” carries serious weight again. Chalk it up to a revival of everything 90s and Maloney’s influence from “those bleeding hearts,” as she calls them, referring to artists’ like Fiona Apple, Tori Amos and Aimee Mann.“We wanted to make something more relevant, in a new zone.” Maloney wasn’t kidding – she teamed up with producer Bill Reynolds (who moonlights as the bassist for Band of Horses) and an all-star group of players with extraordinary talent, including engineer Jason Kingsland (Iron & Wine, Delta Spirit), guitarist Tyler Ramsey (Band of Horses), and guitarist and sax player Carl Broemel (My Morning Jacket).Throughout the new musical heights and depths on this record, Maloney’s voice and lyrics remain center stage, truthfully articulating the insights and emotions of growing up, without clichés nor quirks for their own sake.Maloney’s journey to finding herself as a singer-songwriter took some unexpected routes. She studied classical operatic, improvisational jazz vocals, and music theory for several years in New Jersey, in addition to a brief stint studying classical Indian vocals with a tutor. “My first shows were jazz, in New York City. I love jazz, but it didn’t feel like where I belonged. Neither did opera. I was grasping to find what felt like home,” she says. “I needed to do something kind of radical.”Maloney found herself at a silent meditation retreat center in Central Massachusetts. She lived and worked there for nearly 3 years, taking vows of silence from seven to ten days at a time. The silence, oddly enough, became conducive to finding one’s true voice. "The biggest motivating factor in writing was probably the experiences I was having in my meditation practice… There was the difficulty of it, the suffering of it, and wanting to channel that into something creative, and on the positive side, the insights that came out of my experiences. In my cottage away from the designated silent area, I just sang, and wrote, and cried. And for the first time, I felt I was using my voice in an authentic way.”This was the breakthrough Maloney had been waiting for, the first moment she had a reason to get up on stage. Armed with guitar and her fresh sense of purpose, Maloney traversed across the northeast – playing coffeehouses, libraries, and even meditation centers – before eventually getting signing with celebrated independent record label Signature Sounds (Lake Street Dive, Josh Ritter). Maloney’s self-titled label debut followed in 2013, launching her from the small stages of New England to nationwide audiences, sharing stages with renowned musicians like Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Shakey Graves, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Anais Mitchell, among others.In 2014, Maloney released a collaborative EP with Boston quartet Darlingside called Woodstock, on which she covers Joni Mitchell’s anthemic “Woodstock” - and absolutely nails it. A video of the session ended up on the New York Times website and gained momentum with praise from Graham Nash, who was among the first to cover Mitchell’s “Woodstock” in 1970. The ensuing nation-wide collaborative tour with Darlingiside gave birth to new experiences, emotions, and perspectives. Maloney began to find moments in the van, in hotel rooms and on days off at home to write the songs that would eventually become Making Me Break.Maloney feels this record is the closest she’s ever been to the sound that’s truly herself. “As an artist I’m constantly changing. But I think we cracked the code on blending the two worlds here,” says Maloney. For now, her distinctive voice has soared a long way from the silent confines of hushed meditation, and into a natural equilibrium of progressive Indie-Folk. Mission Accomplished.
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October 10th 2022
Loudon has not lost a step. There were a few pleasant surprises.
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Loudon Wainwright III Biography
“75 is a big number,” says Loudon Wainwright III.
He's referring to the age he recently turned, as well as “How Old Is 75?” one of the many beautifully reflective songs on his latest release Lifetime Achievement. Milestones aside, the truth is that Loudon has always been a keen observer of his own aging process, documenting it with an honesty that few songwriters would dare use.
“I've kind of been obsessed with my numbers all the way along the line, you know?” Loudon says. “I have a song that I wrote in 1972 called 'New Paint,' which is about a guy trying to pick up a girl in a park, saying 'If I was sixteen again.' I wrote that when I was twenty-five. I had 'Watch Me Rock, I'm Over Thirty.' I had a song, 'The Birthday Present,' that I sang a capella in a shower about hitting age 50. So 75 is a new number, but it's just another number.”
Maybe, but what makes it remarkable is that after thirty albums, countless concert appearances, a Grammy, many film and TV roles, and songs recorded by such artists as Johnny Cash, Mose Allison, Bonnie Raitt and his son Rufus, Loudon sounds as engaged and passionate as ever. His singular talent as our foremost six-string analyst and tragicomedian extraordinaire is not only undiminished, but hitting new heights of what NPR calls his “unmatched wit and wisdom” on Lifetime Achievement.
“I had a very romantic idea when I began that I would be dead by the time I was 25,” he admits with a smile. “Just because that sounded so cool and groovy and dangerous. I'm happy it didn't work out that way. When I think about the fact that I've been doing this for half a century, it's kind of incredible. The place I played at last night, I played fifty years ago. It's encouraging in a funny kind of way - that it's gone on this long and it's still a lot of fun. The performing part of it, and the mysterious thing of getting to write a new song. After the doldrums of the past two years, I had a creative burst in the last year, and that felt good. It was something to build a record on.”
The opener “I Been,” a rapid-fire list of ampersand-joined verbs (“I'm fussin' & frettin', I'm underpants wettin', after all I'm just a man”), acts as a breezy news update. It tells us right away that Loudon is the same flawed, lovable curmudgeon as ever, though now one with his eye on mortality, “telling the truth” and “figuring out a way to live one more day.” And it's that feeling that brings depth and lump-in-the-throat tenderness to songs like the a capella “One Wish,” the time displacement nostalgia of “Back In Your Town,” and the accordion-laced “It Takes 2,” which reframes one of his classic songs in the line, “'One Man Guy,' it's a lie, these days it takes two.” In “Family Vacation” the hell is not just Sartre's “other people,” but our “kith and kin.” It reminds us that his humorous songs can both make you burst out laughing and sting on contact (“Brother and sister, we're playing Twister It's a cover up to keep ourselves hid”). The bluegrass-flavored stomper “Little Piece of Me” examines a life spent on the road (“I leave a dollop here and a particle there and I'm stripteased down to my underwear”) and the title track gets honest about the true meaning of the singer-songwriter's long journey.
Of that track and the album's title, Loudon says, “At this point in my life, three score and ten plus, I'm thinking, 'What have I done? Have I wasted my time?' And I've wasted plenty of time. I have written a lot of songs too. Maybe I should've written more. Whatever. There's that thought. And you're also aware that the time is running out. I think that's what informed the title. So the idea is the big stuff. But the thing that I want, that we all want – and I hesitate to say this (laughs) - is love. The loving cup engraved in love.”
The album was recorded with love by two of his longtime producers, Dick Connette and Stuart Lerman. “They both have the invisible touch,” Wainwright says. “We started at Dick's studio in lower Manhattan and worked for two days, with just me singing the songs and playing the guitar. Then we went to Stuart's studio, Hobo Sound, in Weehawken, New Jersey, and we added things. The record has some production on it, but a lot of it is kind of acoustic-driven. When I bring in musicians and singers, I give them very little instruction. The people that we chose for this record we've worked with before - Chaim Tannenbaum, David Mansfield, John Gale, David Forman and Tony Scherr. They know exactly what we want. We know who the great players are, and we're just excited to have them in the studio and they don't disappoint.”
And Lifetime Achievement doesn't disappoint, especially for those of us who still like to experience albums in a more traditional way. “This could be something that somebody could get in their car and drive to their sister's house for dinner and have a 40-minute sonic experience,” Loudon muses. “That's how I think about it. That's why when we make these records, we spend a lot of time sequencing and thinking how songs fit together. People don't listen to music this way, I'm told, but it's the way that I like to listen to music.”
With a full tour itinerary for 2022 already in place, Loudon is looking forward to taking the new songs onto the stage. Looking back on a legacy the New York Times calls “rich, complicated and often surprisingly dark,” he says, “I remember when I made my first record for Atlantic in 1969. I was always saying, 'I want to make a voice and guitar record, and I want it to be a record – not only a recording, but a document that captures a moment.' I was 21 and very serious, and I thought I'd be dead in four years (laughs). So I wanted to make something that would last. A testament. Now, fifty years later, I guess I still want to make a testament. I want to write a group of songs and get them down in the best possible way. And I like to think they might last a while.”
Read MoreHe's referring to the age he recently turned, as well as “How Old Is 75?” one of the many beautifully reflective songs on his latest release Lifetime Achievement. Milestones aside, the truth is that Loudon has always been a keen observer of his own aging process, documenting it with an honesty that few songwriters would dare use.
“I've kind of been obsessed with my numbers all the way along the line, you know?” Loudon says. “I have a song that I wrote in 1972 called 'New Paint,' which is about a guy trying to pick up a girl in a park, saying 'If I was sixteen again.' I wrote that when I was twenty-five. I had 'Watch Me Rock, I'm Over Thirty.' I had a song, 'The Birthday Present,' that I sang a capella in a shower about hitting age 50. So 75 is a new number, but it's just another number.”
Maybe, but what makes it remarkable is that after thirty albums, countless concert appearances, a Grammy, many film and TV roles, and songs recorded by such artists as Johnny Cash, Mose Allison, Bonnie Raitt and his son Rufus, Loudon sounds as engaged and passionate as ever. His singular talent as our foremost six-string analyst and tragicomedian extraordinaire is not only undiminished, but hitting new heights of what NPR calls his “unmatched wit and wisdom” on Lifetime Achievement.
“I had a very romantic idea when I began that I would be dead by the time I was 25,” he admits with a smile. “Just because that sounded so cool and groovy and dangerous. I'm happy it didn't work out that way. When I think about the fact that I've been doing this for half a century, it's kind of incredible. The place I played at last night, I played fifty years ago. It's encouraging in a funny kind of way - that it's gone on this long and it's still a lot of fun. The performing part of it, and the mysterious thing of getting to write a new song. After the doldrums of the past two years, I had a creative burst in the last year, and that felt good. It was something to build a record on.”
The opener “I Been,” a rapid-fire list of ampersand-joined verbs (“I'm fussin' & frettin', I'm underpants wettin', after all I'm just a man”), acts as a breezy news update. It tells us right away that Loudon is the same flawed, lovable curmudgeon as ever, though now one with his eye on mortality, “telling the truth” and “figuring out a way to live one more day.” And it's that feeling that brings depth and lump-in-the-throat tenderness to songs like the a capella “One Wish,” the time displacement nostalgia of “Back In Your Town,” and the accordion-laced “It Takes 2,” which reframes one of his classic songs in the line, “'One Man Guy,' it's a lie, these days it takes two.” In “Family Vacation” the hell is not just Sartre's “other people,” but our “kith and kin.” It reminds us that his humorous songs can both make you burst out laughing and sting on contact (“Brother and sister, we're playing Twister It's a cover up to keep ourselves hid”). The bluegrass-flavored stomper “Little Piece of Me” examines a life spent on the road (“I leave a dollop here and a particle there and I'm stripteased down to my underwear”) and the title track gets honest about the true meaning of the singer-songwriter's long journey.
Of that track and the album's title, Loudon says, “At this point in my life, three score and ten plus, I'm thinking, 'What have I done? Have I wasted my time?' And I've wasted plenty of time. I have written a lot of songs too. Maybe I should've written more. Whatever. There's that thought. And you're also aware that the time is running out. I think that's what informed the title. So the idea is the big stuff. But the thing that I want, that we all want – and I hesitate to say this (laughs) - is love. The loving cup engraved in love.”
The album was recorded with love by two of his longtime producers, Dick Connette and Stuart Lerman. “They both have the invisible touch,” Wainwright says. “We started at Dick's studio in lower Manhattan and worked for two days, with just me singing the songs and playing the guitar. Then we went to Stuart's studio, Hobo Sound, in Weehawken, New Jersey, and we added things. The record has some production on it, but a lot of it is kind of acoustic-driven. When I bring in musicians and singers, I give them very little instruction. The people that we chose for this record we've worked with before - Chaim Tannenbaum, David Mansfield, John Gale, David Forman and Tony Scherr. They know exactly what we want. We know who the great players are, and we're just excited to have them in the studio and they don't disappoint.”
And Lifetime Achievement doesn't disappoint, especially for those of us who still like to experience albums in a more traditional way. “This could be something that somebody could get in their car and drive to their sister's house for dinner and have a 40-minute sonic experience,” Loudon muses. “That's how I think about it. That's why when we make these records, we spend a lot of time sequencing and thinking how songs fit together. People don't listen to music this way, I'm told, but it's the way that I like to listen to music.”
With a full tour itinerary for 2022 already in place, Loudon is looking forward to taking the new songs onto the stage. Looking back on a legacy the New York Times calls “rich, complicated and often surprisingly dark,” he says, “I remember when I made my first record for Atlantic in 1969. I was always saying, 'I want to make a voice and guitar record, and I want it to be a record – not only a recording, but a document that captures a moment.' I was 21 and very serious, and I thought I'd be dead in four years (laughs). So I wanted to make something that would last. A testament. Now, fifty years later, I guess I still want to make a testament. I want to write a group of songs and get them down in the best possible way. And I like to think they might last a while.”
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