By Blair Jackson THE FOLK MUSIC GREAT IN A NEW MUSICAL DIMENSION Muses on family and love, socio-political observations and other “deep” thoughts while maintaining his characteristic wry sense of humor: Loudon Wainwright III’s latest album, Here Come the Choppers You gotta love a guy like Loudon Wainwright III. He's put out 21 albums since his debut in 1970, all of them filled with heartfelt musings on life, love, family and death, as well as a whole lot of other things that he finds funny and/or strange. Wainwright is actually one of the deeper cats out there, a straight-shooter who says what he means; he does not drown the listener in opacity and convoluted metaphor. And, yes, he can be funny. He's always surrounded himself with good musicians: Past records have included contributions from the likes of guitarists John Scofield, David Mansfield, Martin Carthy and Richard Thompson. He was married for many years to singer Kate McGarrigle, and she and her sister, Anna, appeared on a number of his albums, as did his angel-voiced New York friends The Roches. Kate McGarrigle and Loudon Wainwright III are the parents of current critic's darling Rufus Wainwright, who seems to be every bit as gifted and forthright as his dad. (If you don't want your psychic history explored in song, do not become part of this family.) Loudon Wainwright III has also nurtured a fairly successful acting career in recent years, appearing on Ally McBeal, in the Tim Burton film Big Fish and the forthcoming Cameron Crowe flick, Elizabethtown. Maybe you also spotted the singing cameos of Loudon, Rufus and his sister Martha in The Aviator. No wonder Wainwright moved from New York to L.A. — increasingly, that's where his “other” career is. Wainwright's latest album, Here Come the Choppers, is certainly among the best of his career. It's the usual folky hodgepodge of profound and witty observations and portraits. Who else could write songs about Hank Williams and the death of Mr. Rogers that might make you cry? A photo of his grandfather spurs him to speculate about his tough, ornery namesake in “Half Fist.” The title track is a surreal and paranoid vision of an L.A. constantly under surveillance — at least that's what the character in the song thinks. “My Biggest Fan” is a wry look at fame and fandom. And then there are more serious meditations like “When You Leave,” a sad but beautiful study of the emotional scarring suffered by children, spouses and lovers left behind when a relationship fizzles. As always, Wainwright's vocals and acoustic guitar picking are strong and sure, even as they shift in tone from song to song, sometimes verse to verse. What elevates this particular batch of tunes, though, is the sympathetic and imaginative accompaniment of his “band” for this outing: New York — based Americana/jazz guitar giant Bill Frisell, pedal/lap steel guitar master (and occasional Frisell associate) Greg Leisz, acoustic and electric bassist extraordinaire David Piltch and the undisputed king of L.A. session drummers, Jim Keltner. Lee Townsend, who has produced 19 albums by Frisell (and worked with a slew of other great jazz, folk and singer/songwriter types) helmed the sessions. He, Frisell and Leisz initially hooked up with Wainwright at the “Century of Song” festival that Townsend produced in Germany a few years back. Keltner had played on a LWIII record 30 years ago. Shawn Pierce, who has worked on a number of albums with Townsend, engineered the sessions. Tracking and initial overdubs were done at Mad Dog in L.A. Later, overdubs were cut at The Factory (formerly Little Mountain) in Vancouver — where Pierce lives — and mixing was done in the Vancouver studio Pierce shares with film and TV composer Patric Caird, MX Sound. The project was tracked and mixed entirely in Pro Tools|HD. “Everything was done very quickly,” comments Pierce. “We were in the A room at Mad Dog, which has a Neve console, for about four days. We tracked them together live on the floor, one song after another. Then we moved into the studio's large rehearsal space, hauled in a bunch of gear and did a lot of our overdubs there. There's no control room in that room, so we had to baffle everything off and use headphones, but we got some really good tracks there. It was a very interesting and amazing experience to track those musicians.” “The plan formulated by Lee Townsend was to familiarize the other players ahead of time by giving them my voice and guitar demos,” Wainwright wrote in his album notes. “Bill Frisell, natural leader that he is, wrote out some terrific charts. The band and I rehearsed for a day and then, in Nike-like fashion, we just did it.”
“With Bill, I used a [Neumann] KM-84 about a foot-and-a-half away from each cabinet, which we had isolated in the lounge. For some of the tracks, he was using two Fender Deluxe amplifiers, and for some he used a Deluxe on one channel and a Princeton on the other, and I captured it in stereo. Occasionally, I'd move the mics around a little bit if he wanted a tighter sound or maybe a little more full-bodied. Then I'd move the mics back.” Asked about how Frisell responds to playing a supportive role instead of being the leader, as he often is, Townsend notes, “He's the ultimate team player whether it's his album or not. He quietly elevates everything he gets involved in. That's why everyone wants to work with him.” To capture the sound off of Leisz's amps, Pierce used “a very simple [Shure] 57 right on the cone of the amp and a [Sennheiser] 421 a little off to the side, and I blended the signals. It sounded like the classic steel sound and it also worked for his lap steel.” The signal went through the preamps in the Neve console “with no EQ, no compression,” Pierce says. “We wanted to make the album as natural and unprocessed and uncompressed as we could. So I was always thinking about ways to capture the full richness of every single instrument and feature that and not have to carve it up in the mix later.” Pierce recorded Piltch's acoustic bass with a single TLM 103 placed right at the bridge, through a Neve preamp and a Distressor EL8 for some light compression. For the electric bass, he miked the amp with a 421, but ultimately only used the Evil Twin DI signal. Drum miking was standard: 57 on the snare, 421s on the toms, 414s overhead, but augmented with a Coles 4038 as a mono overhead. “That's something Lee really likes,” Pierce says of the Coles mic. “We ended up using it quite a bit in the mix. It gives the sound a nice texture and it mixes nicely into the stereo image of the drums. “Working with Keltner was amazing,” he continues. “In rehearsal, he sits there with the lyric sheet and really studies what's going on in the song and really listens to the song and thinks about how he can make his contribution. He had the lyric sheet hanging there and made little marks on it. He's not just laying down two and four; he plays very dynamically with a lot of feeling, which made it more challenging for me because he'd play it one way in rehearsal and then feel it differently every single time.” Later at The Factory, Wainwright did some vocal fixes (an AKG C-12A was the vox mic of choice, run through an API preamp and an 1176) and Chris Gestrin added some tasteful B-3 and Wurlitzer parts to a few songs. But much of what's on the album is what went down live at Mad Dog. Most songs only needed a few takes; a few are even first takes. “We didn't mess too much with it,” Pierce says. “My philosophy is, if it sounds good, step away; you don't need to turn knobs. It's all about microphone choice and placement and listening carefully when you're tracking. If it's sounding great, leave it alone.” “Everybody was extremely focused,” Townsend remarks, “and Loudon is such a lightning rod in the studio: The energy he puts out comes back to him. It was an amazingly consistent level of performance by everyone involved. It was really intense, but we also had a lot of fun.” Acoustic Guitar By Joe Henry LOUDON WAINWRIGHT THE 3rd AND THE GRAND CANYON When I was a young boy of six or seven, I attended “Banner Day” at Fulton County Stadium in Atlanta, home to the Braves baseball team. By showing up with a homemade banner (in our case, the likeness of club mascot Chief Knock-a-homa rendered on a bed sheet), my dad, my older brother and I were allowed entrance onto the field, where we (along with scores of others) paraded our offering around the warning track, while the star players did stretches and played pepper on the outfield grass. This access allowed me my first brush with celebrity, and revealed my heroes (Hank Aaron, Rico Carty, Felipe Alou) to be flesh and blood --human beings with tired eyes and stiff knees, trying to get with it on a lazy Sunday afternoon in 1968. When my proximity proved them to be struggling mortals, though, I was even more overwhelmed by their stature and power, their burdens and successes. To me, these were men who had already spent their 40 days in the desert and had emerged on the other side –caked with dust, but still standing, lifting their caps as we passed in acknowledgement of our gratitude. Like Jesus, they did what the rest of us couldn’t; and because they did, we wouldn’t have to –-so long as we were humble and accorded them the respect they deserved for having accepted God’s challenge on our behalf: to advertise life’s timeless beauty through some wickedly death-filled times. When I began, then, to be captivated by music a short time later, I started to see songwriters in the same light: not as regular people who just happened to have jobs that kept them out till late, but as people who’d been touched –-called upon by God, like it or not, to organize words and sound, and to speak in ways that others could not. Forgive me, but I still think so. Bob Dylan, I have it on pretty good authority, is not a Regular Person, anymore than were Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Jimmie Rodgers or Hank Williams. But each of them has stood in for us at one time or another, identifying us to each other –the better parts of our weakest selves- in ways we could accept. I have no trouble, by the way, as a musician and songwriter myself, maintaining this view while choosing to exclude myself from it. I can, after all, stand poised to take a picture at the mouth of the Grand Canyon and, even if I do regard myself as no less a part of nature’s wondrous evolution, I certainly won’t see myself in the viewfinder. I have made my own 40-day journey across the desert to get to this, my own private Arizona --and I’ve come by it honestly; but yea, though I stand at the door and knock, I’m a man on the cusp, with a wide hat and a camera. And I know a damn canyon when I see one…. *** I can’t tell you the precise moment when Loudon Wainwright the 3rd entered my consciousness, opened like a canyon on the horizon, and began to inform my sensibility. Like my good manners, sense of direction and taste for coffee, he seems to have arrived unannounced and before I was aware that he hadn’t always been there. When I was a teenager and began to write in earnest –or at least, began to circle the beast with that intention- I made myself aware of most everything as a listener. And while I ingested the work of many great songwriters in my formative years, there were, in truth, only four that I took to heart, to whom I dedicated myself wholly, embracing even their false starts and stumbles with unconditional love and acceptance: Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Randy Newman and Loudon Wainwright. They were the hospital corners of the bed that I ate, drank and slept in. It’s easy now with hindsight to recognize the natural unity of that quartet, though I doubt that I could at the time. They are all singular voices --all stubborn and cranky, artistically speaking; forward thinking and willfully anachronistic, simultaneously. And though much has been written about the first three, Loudon Wainwright seems, even now, not only the most underrated but also the least understood. Which is strange, given the fact that he is the only one of the four who I’m fairly certain has always been writing about himself. I don’t think I was fooled for long from seeing that Bob had a mask on, that Tom was creating a character that could walk around without him, and that Randy owed as much to the fiction of William Faulkner and Mark Twain as he did to the songs of Fats Domino and Cole Porter (the latter himself a man in disguise); but Loudon fooled many by being so fearlessly and disarmingly transparent. We looked right through him at what he wanted us to see, and didn’t always catch on to the deft artistry involved. Now, I am well on record as saying that I’ve never had much interest in the so-called “confessional” songwriters (you know who you are); the writers who insist that to be truthfully autobiographical makes one unarguably seductive and noteworthy. But Loudon has always been my exception. Loudon talks brazenly about himself in a way that reflects everything back onto us. No mean feat, that one. Fellini could do it. So could Richard Pryor. But no other songwriter I can think of has offered us so much by mining the finite space of his personal experience, as has Loudon Wainwright. And he has grown more fearless in that regard as time has gone on. After the full-production, goal-oriented albums of his Columbia and Arista years –-often wonderful recordings that the artist himself now sees as compromises to what were his own stark preferences-- Loudon returned, with a move to Rounder Records in the early 80’s, to cast his songs in a more stripped-down setting, much like he’d done on his debut albums for Atlantic. But where he sounds deliberately alone on the Rounder discs -the empty room around him giving full weight to his keening vocals and boldly rhythmic guitar playing- the first records might sound like blueprints for songs waiting to be more fully realized, if you didn’t know any better. Our mistake. We all could have assumed that young Loudon aspired to engage the full studio roar, since most every folkie in the wake of Bob Dylan’s electric epiphany was looking to plug into the same arc welder, lower the dark glasses, and send off a spray of white sparks into the air. Loudon even made a record in Nashville (Attempted Mustache) with the same producer and essentially the same band that Dylan had used on his groundbreaking Blonde on Blonde album. But in Loudon’s case --even though it is widely regarded as an essential piece in his canon-- the result was a flat, grainy, two-dimensional image compared to what had preceded it and, certainly, compared to what was to follow. In the same way that Loudon’s scope somehow became broader by funneling his look inward, his sound became bigger when he stripped it bare. “I don’t know why I’m a one-man guy, I don’t know why this is a one-man show,” he sings in what may well be his manifesto, “but these 3 cubic feet of bone and blood and meat are what I love and know.” True to his word, he splays himself open to an almost disturbing degree. If I was going to introduce a novice into the artistry of Loudon Wainwright, I would drop him or her down into what now appears may be the epicenter of his career –his seminal album from 1992, History. As advertised, this song cycle manages to touch on everything littering the writer’s path: love’s deception, the unspoken burden of manhood (that of being expendable), the passage of time, the loss of marriage, parental rage (and its inevitable aftermath), musical influence, familial estrangement, displacement, dysfunction, anticipation, disappointment, decay, isolation and despair; lives coming apart and coming together. And oh yeah- this album is as steeped in a palpable awareness of mortality as Time Out of Mind, or Mozart’s “Requiem” (propelled as the album was by the death of Loudon’s father). It was the best of times and it was the worst of times, and all brought to you courtesy of a first-person narrator that you’d have no trouble recognizing. Loudon even manages to deliver his two ex-wives as backing vocalists on the same song –one about letting go the muse that a lost love has so long embodied. Next to a used copy of The Brothers Karamazov, where else might you find that kind of return on your sixteen dollars? And how he manages all this in 3 to 4 minute folksongs is anybody’s guess. But for all the attention that Loudon gets for the humor in his writing, the barb on the hook is the deep melancholy that permeates even the funniest parts of his work, and the keen perspective it affords. Even when he is being funny (which is a considerable amount of the time), his verse is crisp, taut and economical. And when he’s dead serious (a considerable amount of the time), he manages to be revelatory in a strikingly conversational fashion. Consider this, the opening verse of History’s “A Father And A Son:” When I was your age, I was just like you, It’s staggering to realize how much information and emotional context he has just imparted. We know that there is a profound distance between the singer and the son he addresses; we know implicitly the depth of the estrangement that’s been traversing the generations; and we’re made to understand the abiding love and respect that the singer still carries for the mother of his son, his ex-, over whom there is implied no small amount of regret. The song goes on and, in the same deceptively simple tone, reveals what may be at the heart of this great divide between father and son: “I don’t want to die and you want to live/It takes a little bit of ‘take’ and a whole lot of ‘give.’” Can it all be so simple? Of course it is. (Read that: isn’t). And nobody else could have written it. Yes, the song goes on, and somehow, so does the singer. In the face of what at times must be mind-numbing indifference from the recording industry, Loudon Wainwright continues to tour alone and change labels with almost every other release --all while doing some of the best work of his career. His latest album, Here Come The Choppers! was produced by Lee Townsend and features the iconoclastic guitarist Bill Frisell, along with one of Bill’s brilliant band configurations: Greg Leisz on pedal and lap steel, mandolin and guitar; David Piltch on electric and upright bass; and Jim Keltner on drums. For the first time in ages, Loudon is not only being supported by a tough ensemble, but sounds like he’s leading one. The sound is deep, dark and rich, and appropriately raucous and tender by turns. And the album’s best moments stand shoulder to shoulder with the best work from his past. The album’s opener, “My Biggest Fan,” is as witty and sad as anything he’s ever written. It tells the story of a fan (big in both senses of the adjective), and in the telling we see not only the broken life of the obsessive, but get a glimpse of the obsessee as well, and the strange alliance uniting the two. “When You Leave” is sung from the point of view of a man whose children, whom he had abandoned years before, show up as adults; and when they do, they’re not too keen on having the relationship the singer now seems ready for. It’s as tough an indictment as it sounds, yet beautiful enough to leave the listener with a lingering sense of resolve --even if something as desirable as healing might be, for the time being, out of the question. “Half Fist” is a great song about Loudon’s paternal grandfather –Loudon Wainwright the 1st- who the singer never knew. From telltale photographs, Loudon the 3rd identifies a vague sense of regret, anger and self-doubt, then connects it through three generations of the name bearers. And then there is “Fred and Hank,” a secret jewel that is classically Loudonian, yet significantly (and appropriately) less nailed down than most anything he’s done before. As I understand it, Loudon was in Montgomery, Alabama, on the set of the film The Big Fish in which he appears, when he heard of the death of Fred Rogers (TV’s “Mr. Rogers”) on the radio. Feeling the brunt of this loss as possibly only a parent in his mid fifties might, he embraced his grief by driving to the gravesite of Montgomery’s favorite son, Hank Williams; and once there took on that loss too as perhaps only an American folk-oriented songwriter in his mid fifties might. The song that results is a tightrope walk, where the deaths of both men find an unlikely symbiotic balance, with ballast provided by the volatile, pivotal, creative and sometimes violent history of that town itself. What might sound like a novelty song if it was quickly described is, instead, a mysterious meditation on the turbulent waters of our culture, and the unlikely places that we find safe harbor. And nobody else could’ve written it. While Choppers as a whole might not be as thematically cohesive as some of Loudon’s albums, it probably wasn’t meant to be. But like many of them, its cumulative effect is one of a tally taken and of a slate being cleaned. Not carefully considered, but something more like a cluttered table being raked clear with a definitive sweep of an arm. The man connected to that arm might have been impulsively propelled to do so by some fear, doubt and anger he had yet to express; but when the noise silences the room, leaving us stunned, self-conscious and agape, our man (as always) simply throws his head back and laughs. Then begins to set a new table. Los Angeles Times A talent scout with even the slightest bit of foresight might well start drawing up a couple of recording contracts now, one for Lucy Roche, another for Alexandra Kelly. No, neither is generating a big buzz around town.
In fact, neither has made a record yet. Big deal, you say? Consider: In 1983, Wainwright recorded "Five Years Old" for his oldest daughter's birthday. Now 30, Martha Wainwright last month released her debut solo album to critical acclaim after wowing audiences for the last half-dozen years with her own shows as well as in performances with her older brother. That would be Rufus Wainwright, critically lauded singer-songwriter and first-born to Loudon and his first wife, singer-songwriter Kate McGarrigle. Rufus was even younger than Martha when he turned up as the central figure in a 1975 Loudon song humorously grappling with a new dad's jealousy over the bond between mother and son.
With Rufus and now Martha generating attention akin to that heaped on their mother and father when they were recording for major labels in the 1970s, the extended Wainwright clan is shaping up as a pop-music dynasty. Lucy Roche, 23, is Loudon's daughter with Suzzy Roche of the harmonizing Roches, while at 11, Alexandra is the youngest addition to his brood, his daughter with actress Ritamarie Kelly. Unlike many entertainers who try to warn their offspring away from the hazards of show business, Wainwright has no problems with his kids latching onto the "singer-songwriter" tag. "This is an honorable profession," he says. It's also, he notes soberly, frequently a solitary profession. He's not the only one who feels that way. In a separate interview recently, Martha said she's determined to form a band so she doesn't get pigeonholed as a solo acoustic performer. "It's a lonely life," she said. "I've seen my dad do it for 35 years. You're sitting in restaurants by yourself. You're alone a lot on the road." In any event, Loudon is far from ready to hand off the torch and cruise quietly into the sunset aboard the sailboat that's become one of his passions in recent years. Acting up The casual pop fan may still think of Loudon Wainwright as that guy who wrote "Dead Skunk," the 1973 quasi-novelty tune that was his only hit single. But over his career he's carved out a niche as perhaps pop's greatest authority on the family dynamic, particularly the dysfunctional side of relationships. He addresses family relations in the new album as he always has, but he also surveys his new surroundings in Los Angeles, where he moved two years ago to pursue acting opportunities. He became a TV dad four years ago in the Fox network's short-lived series "Undeclared," which is resurfacing shortly on DVD. Loudon, Rufus and Martha had cameo roles as singers in "The Aviator," and he has a part in Cameron Crowe's next film, "Elizabethtown." He plays Orlando Bloom's father in "The 40 Year Old Virgin," a film from "Undeclared" and "Freaks and Geeks" creator Judd Apatow. Having majored in acting at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon University) around the time that Albert Brooks, Steve Bochco, Ted Danson and others were there, Wainwright quips that if acting doesn't pan out, he can always fall back on his career in folk music. The new album's title song takes a hysterical view of the Los Angeles Police Department's stepped-up airborne nighttime patrols, wittily weaving in geographical reference points to bring home the sense of fear and vulnerability that's mushroomed since 9/11. So many sorties, look out below The album also includes his reaction to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, "No Sure Way," looking at the incomprehensible through the prism of a habitual subway ride from Brooklyn Heights into Manhattan shortly after the destruction of the World Trade Center. Arguably even more poignant is "Hank and Fred," another left-field tune he wrote while in Montgomery, Ala., in 2003 filming a small role in Tim Burton's "Big Fish." The Fred in the title is Fred Rogers of PBS' "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" fame, whom Wainwright unexpectedly links with a legendary musician who was buried in Montgomery half a century earlier, Hank Williams. Nat King Cole was born here "I really was driving back from the Y and heard on NPR that Fred Rogers had died. As the song says — we mocked King Friday XIII on 'Saturday Night Live' — I had been one of those who kind of ridiculed the way he looked, the sweaters and the sneakers, and the odd way he talked, the effeminate manner about him. "But when my older kids were younger kids, I became kind of a fan too," he says. "So much so that when I heard he'd died, it actually did become very difficult to drive. Steve Buscemi [who also was in "Big Fish"] and I drove out to visit Hank Williams' grave that day, and I said to him, 'Well, we visited Hank Williams' grave the day Fred Rogers died.' "And I kind of liked the sound of that. Sometimes that's how a song will start, with a line you like, then you dive into it and see what you can pull out of it." The fondness for Mister Rogers might sound strange coming from the man who wrote "Unrequited to the Nth Degree," a ditty about getting even with a lover who jilted him by reveling in thoughts of her grief after his death. But Wainwright's ability to wed the light with the dark, the sardonic with the unflinchingly honest, has been the hallmark of his best work. "I think when you can combine the two, that's really the most interesting," he says. "You're trying to engage the listener, and that's a way of messing with their heads." That's not how he started out. When he got his first record contract in 1971, he was part of the wave of folk-rooted singer-songwriters tabbed as "the new Dylans." Wainwright, however, may be the only one who wrote a song about that dubious honor, 1991's "Talking New Bob Dylan": Yeah, I got a deal, and so did John Prine The reference to "kid brothers" subtly lends the song an aspect of family, which has typically been at the heart of his music. He once said that the surprising thing to him isn't that he writes as much about parents, siblings, spouses and children as he does but that other musicians don't write about those relationships more. On "Here Come the Choppers" he reaches further back in his family lineage with songs about his paternal grandfather ("Half Fist") and grandmother ("Nanny"). "Maybe it's the fact that the end is looming or something," says Wainwright, who was born in North Carolina and raised in upper-class neighborhoods of Westchester County, N.Y., the privileged offspring of longtime Life magazine columnist Loudon Wainwright II. "At this point in life, I find myself looking back to the ancestors, not just to parents, who of course are the biggest giants in anyone's life, but to their parents," he says. "Who formed them? That's why you hear about people going off to Scotland and looking up family trees and coats of arms. You're trying to figure out who these people were." "It's not going to change anything," he adds in a typically fatalistic afterthought. "You're still going to die. But it becomes really important as you get a little older. Maybe the impulse is because we know we're soon going to join our ancestors." The Hollywood Reporter By Chris Morris A neighbor in Los Angeles' Miracle Mile district recently called the Wilshire Division police station to find out why an LAPD helicopter was incessantly buzzing above her building with searchlight ablaze. An officer on the line blandly told her, "We're trying to catch the bad guys." There must be a lot of bad guys in the mid-Wilshire area because whirlybird assaults worthy of Lt. Col. Kilgore in "Apocalypse Now" are virtually a nightly occurrence in the neighborhood. Singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III has made this unique L.A. phenomenon the subject of his tune "Choppers"; the song is featured on his Sovereign Artists release "Here Come the Choppers!" Wainwright, who lived in a Miracle Mile-adjacent area after he moved to Los Angeles in 2003, was struck almost immediately by the frequent chopper sorties. "It'd be quiet for a couple of days, and then it would start up again," he says. "It had a sort of martial feel to it." He responded to the racket with "Choppers," a droll, deadpan and highly detailed fantasy in which copters panic Miracle Mile residents as they ominously swoop down on such local landmarks as the La Brea Tar Pits and homely establishments like Koo Koo Roo Chicken and the now-defunct Mo' Meaty Meat Burgers. Like many of Wainwright's songs, "Choppers" cuts more than one way. "It was written when we were getting ramped up to go into Iraq," the musician says. "In another part of the world, there were helicopter attacks in earnest. The conceit of the song is that these benign things would come under attack." Recorded by producer Lee Townsend with an all-star band featuring guitarists Bill Frisell and Greg Leisz, "Here Come the Choppers!" contains other songs of more than local interest. As usual, Wainwright looks back on his family history with a combination of amusement and horror: "Half Fist" concerns his namesake grandfather, while "Nanny" is an affectionate portrait of his alcoholic grandmother. "I'm very interested in the family," Wainwright says. "Now I'm even looking into people who are dead and who have been dead for a long time. That's a thing that happens to people in their 50s — the clock's running down, and you're wondering, 'What's this all about?' You start putting together your genealogical box set." Familial acrimony also is very much a part of the Wainwright bloodline: Loudon's singer-songwriter son Rufus has made some stinging remarks about his father in interviews, and his daughter Martha recently recorded a blunt attack on him. Asked about the song, Wainwright says in mock astonishment: "That song is about me?! I thought it was about President Bush. That girl is gonna be so grounded!" He declines further comment. Wainwright continues to develop a parallel acting career: He recently appeared (as did Rufus and Martha) in Martin Scorsese's "The Aviator," and he has a featured role in Cameron Crowe's forthcoming "Elizabethtown," playing star Orlando Bloom's uncle. |
"Yes, it's kind of nice to see the kids getting into the family
business," Wainwright, 58, said recently with the mock bravado
of a financial tycoon, between bites of red beans and rice at a New
Orleans food stand at Farmers Market, while discussing his own new album,
"Here Come the Choppers." It's the 21st album of his 35-year
career, another strong collection of songs — some humorous, some
serious and some blending both.