Loudon Wainwright: other songwriters = “compare and despair”!

The magnificent Loudon Wainwright III is touring the UK in September and about to release the typically wry and entertaining ‘Lifetime Achievement’, a record mostly about reaching life’s three-quarter mark. On one track he dreams of going on a family holiday without the family. He beams in here from Shelter Island to look back on growing up in Westchester County, the first records he bought - Elvis, Holy Modal Rounders, the Boys of the Lough - hitchhiking to see Bob Dylan at Newport, his obsession with monster movies and the influential genius of Tom Lehrer.
Among many other highlights …
Hard-won stagecraft and how to deflate a heckler
Living with Donald Fagen in a “hippie crashpad” in 1967 unaware he was a musician
The various acts who’ve supported him - Jackson Browne, Steely Dan, Rufus Wainwright
How everyone ever hailed as “the new Bob Dylan” - him, John Prine, Steve Forbert, Elliott Murphy, Bruce Springsteen - should have an annual convention at Springsteen’s place
Living at the Chateau Marmont at the same time as Donald Sutherland
“Corpsing” onstage and how he’s shaken up his song-joke-song-joke stage formula.
… and the greatest record ever made.
Loudon Wainwright albums including Lifetime Achievement: www.amazon.co....
Loudon’s tour dates: www.songkick.c...
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