Unapologetic Wainwright ages with grace, plays faves
By CHRIS PAGE
Get Out

Some Valley residents will drive to Queen Creek to hear folk singer Loudon Wainwright III perform Saturday night only because his son is grand piano crooner Rufus Wainwright.

Or because they saw Wainwright play a hilarious loser-type father on the short-lived Fox TV sitcom “Undeclared” a few years back, or more recently the mayor of a Stepford-idyllic small town in Tim Burton’s big-screen “Big Fish.”

Or maybe they just remember his song “Dead Skunk” — a pop hit (his only real chart success) — back in 1972.

But most will be drawn by Wainwright's painfully true, achingly funny odes to life in middle age. In 2001's “Last Man on Earth,” he spun an album’s worth of songs about divorce, disconnect and living with loneliness.

There’s even a Web site dedicated to one man’s detailing of how Wainwright’s music saved his marriage.

The singer/songwriter thinks it’s because people want to give back, to relate personal stories in return for him sharing his.

“There’s nothing unusual about my life,” Wainwright, 58, says. “I’ve been divorced, my parents have passed away, I have difficulties with children and flying in airplanes. There’s nothing different about my life. And I write about my life. That’s just my style.”

On other topics:

On balancing music and acting: “Over the last few years, I’ve kind of come back to acting. It’s great, less traveling.”

On record labels: “I’m kind of a Mickey Rooney. I’ve been with many labels. I don’t know who the Ava Gardner of those labels will be.”

On his son, Rufus: “He’s certainly made a mark for himself … I can hear similarities. The timbre of my voice is, in particularly the way I sang 20 years ago, is similar to Rufus.”

On aging and his voice: “It‘s funny, I just heard a track from my second album (1971’s ‘Album II’) and I was blown away by how different and high and unpleasant my voice used to be. My voice has radically changed. I guess my testicles dropped in 1980.”

On “President’s Day,” an anti-Bush song available for free on his Web site (www.lwiii.com): “I wanted to get it out, and obviously time was of the essence. It’s not the kind of thing you’re going to listen to on Nov. 5 ... I sang it one night in Denver at an outdoor show, and people were angry and jostled me and said I should be ashamed. We’re polarized, that’s for sure. But I’m glad I wrote it. I like singing it.”

On his live show: “I don’t feel obliged to do anything ... there are songs I want to do. You’re going to get what you’re going to get, and you’re going to like it.”