Loudon Wainwright III Older Than My Old Man Now (CD)

(Proper Records) 15 tracks, digisleeve incl. booklet

As the title of the new album suggests, Loudon is now older than his father—his father being, of course, the late Loudon Wainwright Jr., the respected columnist and senior editor of Life Magazine.
“My contemporary singer-songwriter colleagues have recently started writing memoirs and autobiographies,” Wainwright notes. “I decided to tell the story of my eventful life in a three-and-a-half-minute song.”
He is referring specifically to the title track of the album, “The Here & the Now,” which features jazz guitarist John Scofield and all four of Wainwright's children—Rufus and Martha Wainwright, Lucy Wainwright Roche, and Lexie Kelly Wainwright—as well as two of his three mothers, Suzzy Roche and Ritamarie Kelly, on backing vocals. But the album as a whole reflects the phase he is currently in his life and, as he so ironically puts it, the “death and decay” that inevitably accompanies it.
One track that gets straight to the point, “The Days That We Die,” brings together three generations of Wainwright men in a remarkable way.
“My father wrote the lyrics, and I sing along with my eldest son Rufus,” says Wainwright. “That's my grandson Arcangelo Albetta – Martha's child – with me in the beach photo that's part of the CD cover. Not only that, but Loudon Wainwright I is also mentioned in the title song, so there are actually five generations represented on the album!”
Wainwright's father, who died in 1988, also wrote the recitation that introduces the album's title track. “Please believe me when I say that collaborating with my long-dead ancestor at this late stage was a damn big feeling,” says his son, who also took the first line of “Double Lifetime” from one of the notebooks his father always carried with him to write in.
Another important family member who is no longer alive is Wainwright's ex-wife Kate McGarrigle (the mother of Rufus and Martha), who is represented with “Over The Hill” — “the only song we wrote together, back in 1975.” Martha Wainwright accompanies her father vocally on this track, as does multi-instrumentalist and singer Chaim Tannenbaum, his “musical sidekick and sounding board” for over 40 years. Suzzy Roche returns to sing on “10,” and even Wainwright's Labrador-Pitbull-Chow mix Harry, who has appeared in several of his songs (in the lyrics) in recent years, can be heard on “Ghost Blues” and the album's bonus download track “No Tomorrow.”
But “Older Than My Old Man Now,” produced by Dick Connette (producer of Wainwright's 2009 Grammy-winning album “High Wide & Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project”), features other high-profile contributors alongside the family.
“A voice that sings a lot about death and decay can be a bit exhausting, so Dick and I brought in other singers to help us with the heavy lifting,” says Wainwright. "The venerable Chris Smither sings with me on ‘Somebody Else,’ for which Rob Moose, a former member of High Wide & Handsome, wrote the string arrangement. Barry Humphries, aka Dame Edna Everage, sings with me on the duet ‘I Remember Sex’. A few years ago, he and I had a love affair in two episodes of Ally McBeal, and I've been smitten with him ever since. In my opinion, there is no greater living and performing legend than Barry Humphries. And he's even older than me!"