Loudon Wainwright's 'Charlie Poole Project.'

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Loudon Wainwright's Charlie Poole 'Project'

TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. I'm a big fan of Loudon Wainwright's songs
and his singing. Many of his songs are autobiographical. Most are about
contemporary life, whether it's about family relationships or politics.

So I was surprised by his double CD paying tribute to the music of Charlie
Poole, the old-time country-music banjo player and singer. Poole was also quite
a drinker and died after a long binge in 1931 at the age of 39.

The CD is called "High Wide and Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project." It
features Wainwright performing songs that were recorded by Poole and his band,
the North Carolina Ramblers, as well as a few songs inspired by Poole. Guests
on the CD include Wainwright's children, Rufus and Martha.

The idea for his album was proposed by Wainwright's friend Dick Connette, who
produced the new CDs and wrote some new songs for the project. I spoke with
Loudon Wainwright in August of 2009. Let's start with his recording of one of
Charlie Poole's best-known tracks, "Moving Day."

(Soundbite of song, "Moving Day")

Mr. LOUDON WAINWRIGHT III (Musician): (Singing) Landlord said this morning to
me, give me your key, this flat ain't free. I can't get no rent out of you.
Pack up your rags and skidoo. I said wait until my Bill comes home. He's my
honey from the honeycomb. He'll have money 'cuz he told me so this morning.

Because it's moving day, moving day. Rip the carpet up off the floor, take your
oil stove and out the door. It's moving day. Pack your folding bed and get
away. If you spend every cent, you can live out in a tent because it's moving
day.

Because it's moving day, moving day. Rip the carpet up off the floor, take your
oil stove and out the door. It's moving day. Pack your folding bed and get
away. If you spend every cent, you can live out in a tent because it's moving
day.

Bill came in all covered in snow. I said hello, give me some dough. Here's the
landlord waiting for rent. Bill says I ain't got a cent. Here's two chickens I
brought home for stew. Landlord, take them for the rent that's due. Landlord
said my chicken coop was robbed this morning.

And so it's moving day, moving day. Rip the carpet up off of the floor. Take
your oil stove and out the door. It's moving day. Pack your folding bed and get
away. If you spend every cent, you can live in a tent because it's moving day.

GROSS: Loudon Wainwright, welcome back to FRESH AIR. Love the CD. It's a
pleasure to have you here. So how were you introduced to Charlie Poole's music?

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: In the early '70s, I was – there was a singer-songwriter guy
called Patrick Sky who was a friend of mine, and he sang me a little piece of
"Hungry Hash House Blues," which had the line: the beefsteak, it was rare, and
the butter had red hair. And I was laughing and thinking at the same time,
where did that come from?

And then he told me about Charlie Poole, and I found a record that came out on
a great label called County Records, and then I heard Poole for the first time
and was very taken by his singing and his general persona that came across on
these records. And then I found out a little bit more about him and became a
huge fan.

GROSS: Tell us something about his life, which is so different than yours.

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: Yeah, well, it's different, and there's similarities. I mean,
he lived - I think he was born in 1893, and he died in 1931. He was an
alcoholic. He was from a town called Spray, North Carolina, which is no more.
It's part of a township called Eden. It was a mill town when he was a young
man, but he found a way out of that world with music.

He - very interesting banjo player. He kind of created a banjo style that led
to Scruggs picking and three-finger picking. But he led a traveling, rambling
life. His group was called the North Carolina Ramblers, and they toured
everywhere in the South. They even got up to New York to make some records.

He had a hit record called "The Deal" - don't let the deal go down - sold over
100,000 copies for Columbia Records, which was a massive hit. I mean, that
would be like an Eagles thing or a Michael Jackson thing.

So - but my mother was born in South Georgia, and I ramble a bit myself, so
there are - I feel a kind of connection with Poole, even though I grew up in
Westchester, New York and didn't work in a mill.

GROSS: And your father was a famous columnist for Life magazine. So you were
definitely not at the mill. One of the things I really like about this set of
CDs is that, you know, you are known as a singer-songwriter, and you're a great
songwriter, but this, this takes you into different territory, which is other
people's songs from another era, because these are songs from the late 1800s,
early 1900s. It's a mix of songs. There's sentimental songs and vaudeville
songs and novelty songs, and you know, blues kind of songs and country songs,
and they bring out all different sides of you, and some of those sides I would
necessarily know about.

So I want to play an example of one of the really sentimental songs that you
do, because there's some lovely, old-fashioned sentimental songs, mostly about
mothers, mother's last kiss, you know, mother's grave.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: A lot of mother songs, but they're really lovely, and I want to play one
called "My Mother and My Sweetheart." Just talk a little bit about singing this
kind of old-fashioned, sentimental song, and you - I should say you are someone
who's known for your songs about dysfunction, family dysfunction, and for songs
that have, you know, great contemporary, like, wit and skepticism, cynicism. So
this sentimentality kind of goes against the grain for you, I think.

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: I think it does. I mean, I - maybe that's why I was drawn to
it. As you say, it's mostly other people's songs. So I'm just being a singer
most of the time on this record, which in and of itself is a kind of relief,
you know, that it isn't the Loudon Wainwright III trip again.

But as far as the sentimental stuff goes, it's all over this record. And you
know, like a lot of people, my mother was a huge thing for me, and so on both
an Oedipal and an actual level - I guess I'm being redundant - so I like the
mother songs, and we have a couple of them on the record.

GROSS: Are we going to have to go into the Oedipal stuff?

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: We don't have to do that, Terry. We don't have to Oedipal
today. Let's just say mom stuff.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: Let's get to the music.

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: All right.

GROSS: So this is a lovely song, "My Mother and My Sweetheart." It's written by
E.P. Moran and J. Fred Holf. This is Loudon Wainwright, from his new CD, "High,
Wide and Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project."

(Soundbite of song, "My Mother and My Sweetheart")

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: (Singing) A crowd of young fellows one night at a club, were
telling of sweethearts they had. All of them jolly, except one young man, who
seemed downhearted and sad. Come, Ned, won't you join us? His comrades then
asked, for surely some girl has loved you. Raising his head, he so proudly then
said: Why, boys, I'm in love with two.

One has hair of silvery gray, The other's is just like gold. One is gay and
youthful, while the other is bent and old. But dearer than life are they both
to me, from neither would I part. One is my mother, God bless her, I love her,
the other is my sweetheart.

GROSS: That's Loudon Wainwright, from his double-CD, "High, Wide and Handsome:
The Charlie Poole Project." Wainwright will be back after a break. This is
FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is singer and songwriter Loudon Wainwright. His double-CD pays
tribute to the old-time country-music banjo player and singer, Charlie Poole.
It's called "High Wide and Handsome."

The Charlie Poole tribute has some original songs that you wrote as tributes to
Charlie Poole or in the manner of the kind of song that he performed, and one
of the songs is called "Rowena," and I think it's really in the spirit of the
sentimental songs on this CD, and there's a great story behind it that I'd like
you to tell.

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: Yeah. "Rowena" is Rowena Long Taylor, who was my maternal
grandmother. When my mother died in 1997, I found myself doing what a lot of
people do, and that is going through filing cabinets and boxes and her stuff,
and I found some letters that her father, Walter Taylor, wrote. They were - I
guess you could call them courting letters.

He was trying to woo Rowena Long and wrote these letters, and the interesting
thing was that there weren't any replies from her in this box of letters or
this envelope of letters. It was all his letters, and he was really trying to
get her to marry him, but I was struck by the letters. They were, again, that
old-fashioned quality. I mean, there were expressions in it like: Yours to hand
this a.m., and the whole world has gone back on me.

So I kind of took some of those things, and we put them in the song, and that's
basically the story.

GROSS: And just one more thing before we hear the song. Did you write a
different kind of melody for this song because the words were from another era?
Did you write a melody that you felt suited another era?

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: I didn't. I wrote the melody myself, and I don't think of
myself as a good enough musician to kind of pigeonhole an area and write to it.
I just, you know, picked up the guitar and wrote what I thought would work with
the lyrics.

GROSS: Well, I love this song. This is "Rowena," and this is from Loudon
Wainwright's new CD, "High, Wide and Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project."

(Soundbite of song, "Rowena")

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: (Singing) Rowena, my darling, please don't let me down. A few
words from you can lift me off the ground. Your letters are treasures. You
don't know their worth. Days I don't receive one, I fall back to earth.

Rowena, my darling, just a word or two. It means the world to me, those few
words from you. But when you don't send them, why can't you see? It's as if the
whole world had gone back on me.

Tonight when I'm sleeping, I will dream of you, wishfully thinking. What else
can I do? Then in the morning, it's always the same. When dreaming is done,
then I call out your name.

Tonight when I'm sleeping, I will dream of you, wishfully thinking. What else
can I do? Until tomorrow, I can only hope for my heart's deliverance in an
envelope.

Rowena, my dear, yours to hand this a.m. I'm holding your letter, in heaven
again. A few words from me now, to make sure you know. As ever, I'm yours, yes,
and I love you so.

GROSS: That's Loudon Wainwright, a song he co-wrote with Dick Connette, and
that's featured on "The Charlie Poole Project: High, Wide and Handsome."

That's really so lovely. Don't you wish that your grandparents knew that you
had taken your grandfather's letters to your grandmother and made a song out of
them?

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: I do. My mother's twin sister, Mary Taylor, her married name is
Bassio(ph), is still alive, and as soon as I wrote that song, I sent it to her.
So she got to hear it, at least.

GROSS: You describe those letters as courting letters. Did you ever write love
letters?

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: Maybe love postcards. I don't know if I ever wrote a love
letter. I might have. I can't – I might have.

GROSS: "The Charlie Poole Project" CDs that you've done have such a nice range
of songs, and we've heard, like, a really lovely sentimental song that you
wrote. We heard one that Charlie Poole used to sing a lot, but there's novelty
songs on here, too, and I thought it would be fun to hear one of the novelty
songs, especially since you first became famous for a novelty song in 1972,
"Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road."

So were you influenced by any of the Charlie Poole novelty songs before you
wrote that?

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: Well, I think I was. I mean, I love novelty songs and people
who can write funny songs or people who do funny songs, and Charlie Poole did a
lot of novelty songs, some of which are on this record, others, you know,
aren't. But, you know, when I mentioned earlier "The Hungry Hash House Blues,"
that's a novelty song, and – but you know, whether it's Tom Lehrer or Charlie
Poole or Allan Sherman, I mean...

GROSS: Allan Sherman.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: I love Allan Sherman. Are you kidding me?

GROSS: "My Son, the Folk Singer"?

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: Oh man, I love that stuff, and all that stuff, you know, and I
still try to write novelty songs and do and love to make audiences laugh when I
do my shows.

So the Poole novelty songs, we paid real close attention to and picked some of
what we thought were the best.

GROSS: So I've chosen to play "The Man Who Rode the Mule Around the World."
Tell us why you like this one.

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: Oh man, I don't know. It's just so ridiculous as – and that's a
feature of any great novelty song. It has to be a little bit ridiculous. I'm
not even quite sure what it means, but Dick probably would know more about it
than I do, but we just liked it. So we recorded it.

GROSS: Okay, here it is, from Loudon Wainwright's new CD, "High, Wide and
Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project."

(Soundbite of song, "The Man Who Rode the Mule Around the World")

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: (Singing) I promised to meet her when the clock struck twenty-
three, down in the village just four miles out of town. She runs the local
tavern and the liquor's always free, but the pickles sell for nineteen cents a
pound.

Oh, she's my daisy, she's black-eyed and she's crazy, the prettiest girl I
thought I ever saw. Now her breath smells sweet, but I'd rather smell her feet,
for she's my freckle-faced consumptive Sara Jane.

He's the man who rode the mule around the world. He's the man who rode the mule
around the world. I rode in Noah's ark, and I'm as happy as a lark. I'm the
man who rode the mule around the world. I was born about 10,000 years ago...

GROSS: That's Loudon Wainwright, from his double-CD, "High, Wide and Handsome:
The Charlie Poole Project." Loudon, I'm glad you said you didn't really
understand what that song was about because I certainly don't, either, but it
sure is fun.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: Yeah.

GROSS: When you were in your teens or 20s, did you think you would be an old-
timey musician, as opposed to writing your own songs - or a folk musician,
singing traditional ballads?

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: I mean, often you find my things in the folk section. I've
never really thought of myself as a folk singer, although when I was in
boarding school and the folk boom happened, I definitely got into it. I mean, I
was a fan of – in addition to being a huge fan of people like Bob Dylan, I was
a huge fan of the Holy Modal Rounders and the New Lost City Ramblers, the Jim
Kweskin Jug Band, you know, these bands that use this old-timey source, along
with jazz and blues, and made it kind of contemporary.

So I wasn't in a lot of rock and roll bands. I was in jug bands and things when
I was in school. So that particular niche is – I love that stuff. So it kind of
makes sense that I would make this record, I suppose.

GROSS: We'll hear more of our interview with Loudon Wainwright in the second
half of the show. It was originally broadcast in August of 2009, after the
release of his double-CD "High Wide and Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project."
I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of song)

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: (Singing) Take me home to the place where I first saw the
light. To the sweet, sunny South, take me home, where the mockingbirds sang me
to sleep every night. Oh, why was I tempted to roam?

So I think with regret of the dear home I left and the warm hearts that
sheltered me there, of the wife and dear ones of whom I'm bereft, and I sigh
for the old place again.

Take me home to the place where the orange trees grow, to my cot in the
evergreen shade, where the flowers on the river's green marches once bestowed
all their sweetness on the banks where we played.

The path to our cottage, they say it has grown green...

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Let's get back to my interview with singer and songwriter Loudon Wainwright.
Wainwright is also an actor who's appeared in the "40 Year Old Virgin" and
"Knocked Up."

I spoke with Wainwright in August of 2009 after the release of his double CD
paying tribute to the old-time country banjo player and singer Charlie Poole.
It's called "High Wide and Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project," and features
Wainwright performing songs Poole recorded, as well as a few new ones inspired
by him.

Wainwright told me how he started listening to folk music.

Mr. LOUDON WAINWRIGHT (Singer-Songwriter): My dad had a great record collection
and it was very eclectic. I mean he had Lerner and Loewe, and Rodgers and Hart,
and Frank Loesser records, which I listened to as a kid, and then - but he also
had Huddie Ledbetter, and you know, Kid Ory, and jazz records, and somehow a
Joan Baez record came into the house, and I heard that.

And then, you know, that led to hearing the Kingston Trio, and then by that
time the folk music thing had really started and I heard Pete Seeger and then
got real, real in deep and listened to Ramblin' Jack Elliott, who became my
first gigantic hero.

I mean my guitar playing is all comes from Jack Elliott and I would take
weekends from this boarding school and go see Jack Elliott at the Second Fret
in Philadelphia, in fact.

So the five guitar chords that I know are the ones that I learned when I was 15
and I learned them, you know, from listening to Jack Elliott and all those
people that I mentioned.

GROSS: Did you go through different identity periods when you were deep into
folk music as opposed to when you were mostly performing your own songs, trying
to figure out who you really were as a person and as a performer?

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: When I was trying to find myself, as we used to call it.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: Well, yeah, I wore, you know, in boarding school, of course, I
wore blue jeans and tried to grow my sideburns.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: Was constantly being told to cut them. But - so I was, you
know, rebelling in that environment. And then when I made my first record, I
adopted that persona. I had short hair on the cover and I was wearing a Brooks
Brothers shirt and gray flannel trousers, so I kind of reached back and took
the preppy psycho killer look.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: And then that was the first album that I did. So, you know,
when I was in boarding school I rebelled against it and then I later went back
and used it for my debut.

GROSS: So I want to play another song from your "Charlie Poole Project" CD, and
this is, you know, we've been talking about you doing songs that were kind of
out of character. Here's another one. It's a beautiful spiritual that I've
never heard before...

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: Yeah.

GROSS: ...called "Beautiful," and it's a simple sweet melody and you're
probably one of the last people I'd think of as singing an old spiritual, but
that's because of the very contemporary autobiographical songs that you're
known for. But I'm sure you really connect with this song in some way, so would
you talk about how you connect with it?

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: Well, Dick Connette felt that it was important to have this
element to the record, you know, in addition to the parlor stuff and the
novelty songs and the train songs and the letter songs.

Poole never recorded this song, "Beautiful," but he is reported to have sung it
and it and other kind of gospel songs, so Dick felt we needed to have that
religious element, which I initially resisted. The boarding school that I
referred to was an Episcopal boarding school, and I don't go to church anymore
and haven't for years.

But the song - and there's another one, actually, that my friend Chaim(ph)
Tannenbaum sings, "The Great Reaping Day." Both of these songs are very
beautiful, and "Beautiful," the song "Beautiful," is really beautiful, and I
was happy to sing it.

GROSS: Was it nice to have an excuse to sing a song you that you normally
wouldn't do?

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: Yeah, I guess it was. I mean it's - you know, you get set in
your persona, you know? So, to sing a gospel song, I love gospel music and I
(unintelligible) you know, whether it's blue grass or black gospel music, I
mean I'm - it's great stuff and - but I would never, I guess I would never have
gotten the opportunity to do it had we not done this record.

GROSS: Why don't we hear it? This is an 1897 song by Barney E. Warren. Again,
somebody I've never heard of.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: But...

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: Yeah, Barney. Who knew that people were called Barney in the
1800s?

GROSS: Oh yeah, so true.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: Yeah.

GROSS: Good point.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: So here's Loudon Wainwright from his new double CD, "High Wide and
Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project."

(Soundbite of song, "Beautiful")

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: (Singing) Beautiful robe so white, beautiful land of light,
beautiful home so bright, where there shall come no night. Beautiful crown I'll
wear, shining with stars o'er there. Yonder in mansion fair. Gather us there.

Beautiful robes, beautiful land, beautiful home, beautiful band; beautiful
crown, shining so fair; beautiful mansion bright, gather us there.

LUCY WAINWRIGHT ROCHE (Singer): (Singing) Beautiful thought to me, we shall
forever be. Thine in eternity, when from this world we're free; free from its
toil and care, heavenly joys to share. Let me cross over there. This is my
prayer.

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: (Singing) Beautiful robes, beautiful land...

GROSS: That's just so lovely, and I'm just kind of grateful - by doing this
"Charlie Poole Project" it's given you an opportunity to sing songs like this,
which a kind of hard-bitten cynical songwriter like you would probably never
do. And that's why - I guess that's one of the nice things about old songs like
that, is that they let us express things that we'd feel are just too...

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: Expressive or...

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: ...heartfelt. Yeah. Yeah. I agree with you. I mean I think that
was one of the best things about doing this record. And also, you know, I got
to sing with other great singers. I mean on "Beautiful" you had Maggie and
Suzzy and Dave Roche, and my...

GROSS: Oh, they sound great. I know. I know.

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: And my daughter, of course, Lucy Wainwright Roche, sings the
second verse, so it was a perfect thing to sing with those people, because we
are a family and that's a - that music is done nicely with - in the family
setting.

GROSS: I see the rhymes are so simple - like white and bright that rhyme
together. I mean, I don't know if you'd allow yourself to do something like
that.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: Yeah. Yeah.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: My guest is singer, songwriter, and actor Loudon Wainwright. His new
double CD is called "High Wide and Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project."

We'll talk more after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is singer and songwriter Loudon Wainwright. His double CD pays
tribute to the old-time country music banjo player and singer Charlie Poole.
It's called "High Wide and Handsome."

You know, it's interesting - this CD, which features songs from the late 1800s
and early 1900s, comes on the heels of an album you did a year or two ago
called "Recovery."

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: And what you recovered in there was your own old songs, the songs that
you wrote for your first few albums.

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: Yeah.

GROSS: And so, like you're recent projects have been mining the past, your
personal past, and the past of popular music history.

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: Yeah.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: I guess...

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: I better start going forward again soon, I hope.

GROSS: No. But they are - I think they are moving you forward in an unexpected
way. But anyway, do you think that there's something in particular that has led
you to look backwards at your past and popular music's past?

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: Hmm. Yeah, I would imagine, and it could be the fact that, you
know, I'm getting older. I think that it's a natural tendency. I'm going to be
63 in September. You do have a tendency to look back as you, as time runs out,
I think. And whether it's back to my old material or this very old material
that predates me, I think that maybe that's a tendency as one advances toward
the end.

GROSS: What...

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: Woo.

GROSS: Ouch.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: Oh, sorry about that, Terry.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: What do you think you learned about yourself as a songwriter by
rerecording your early songs?

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: That was a really interesting thing to do with my friend Joe
Henry, who produced that record. You know, my first album I made, the first
couple of albums I made were, the singer on that record is a completely
different singer. My voice was much, much higher and kind of keening, scary
quality, which was...

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: ...which was great, and again, people paid attention to it. But
now I've been singing for 40-something years. It was really interesting to go
back and record those songs, because some of them I had continued to do, but
some of them I hadn't done anymore for years, and they're good songs.

I mean the guy that wrote those songs, which happens to be me, was a good
songwriter. But I felt, or we felt, Joe and I did, that I was a completely
different singer, so there wasn't anything redundant about it or we really did
kind of rediscover some material and then record it again, and it felt - it was
an interesting project, that one.

GROSS: I want to ask you to choose a song from that album that you were glad to
have the chance to sing again.

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: Wow. Let's see. Well, you know, "Motel Blues" is a song that I
have continued to sing. I mean I wrote it when I was 25 and it has lines in it
like: Come up to my motel room and save my life. You know, and they used to
work great, those lines.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: It was a, you know, I got into the business to meet women and
that was a really important song for me. But now, of course, if a 62-year-old
guy sings...

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: ...it has a whole kind of lurid, desperate quality which I find
very compelling. So let's hear that one.

GROSS: Yeah, okay, great. But I want to say, you know, earlier I'd asked you if
you wrote love letters like the love letters your grandfather wrote to your
grandmother...

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: ...that you set to music. And maybe what you're saying is you didn't
have love letters, but you had some good lines...

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: Yeah.

GROSS: ...that you could use.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: Pick-up song. Right.

GROSS: Pick up songs. Okay. So let's hear this one, and this is an early song
by Loudon Wainwright that's featured on his recent album, "Recovery."

(Soundbite of song, "Motel Blues")

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: (Singing) In this town television shuts off at two. What can a
lonely rock and roller do? Oh the bed's so big and the sheets are clean and
your girlfriend said that you were 19 and the Styrofoam ice bucket is full of
ice. Come up to my motel room, treat me nice.

I don't wanna make no late night New York calls. And I don't wanna stare at
them ugly grass-matte walls. Chronologically you know you're young but when you
kissed me in the club you bit my tongue. I'll write a song for you. I'll put it
on my new LP. Come up to my motel room, sleep with me.

GROSS: That's Loudon Wainwright from his CD "Recovery," which came out last
year and it features songs he has rerecorded from early in his career.

Now, you grew up with show tunes in addition to folk music, and jazz and blues
and rock and roll. What influence do you think they had on you?

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: A big influence. Again, this record collection that my father
had, I mean we were listening to "Guys and Dolls" and "South Pacific," and you
know, the original cast recordings of all those great Broadway shows, and my
sister and brother and I were kind of prancing around the living room in our
pajamas at, you know, as a little kids, you know, eight, nine-year-olds. And
I’m sure I absorbed a lot of that stuff. I mean, the quality of the writing in
those songs is just so strong. And when I, myself, was kind of discovered at
the Gaslight in the late ‘60s - which Gaslight was a club in the Greenwich
Village - the guy who actually walked up to me and gave me his card and said,
call me kid, was – is a man called Milton Kramer who at that time was running
Frank Music, which was Frank Loesser's publishing company.

GROSS: Oh, wow.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: So that really had – and I, of course, knew and loved Frank
Loesser. And at that time, when I went up to see Mil Kramer, Frank Loesser was
in the hospital; actually, he was dying of lung cancer. But Mil kept saying,
I've got to get you in to meet Frank because I think he would love to know
that, you know, there are young writers who are – who were influenced by him.
Unfortunately, I never got to actually meet Frank Loesser, but it was a great
thing to be signed to Frank Music.

GROSS: Wow, yeah. That, I...

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: Yeah.

GROSS: ...that's kind of an amazing story. And Frank Loesser wrote words and
music, like you do.

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: Yeah. Phew – yeah. And I mean, he wrote - yeah, he was - not
many people could do that. I mean write those incredible melodies and the
lyrics.

GROSS: My guest is singer and songwriter, Loudon Wainwright. His double-CD pays
tribute to the old-time country music banjo player and singer Charlie Poole.
It's called "High Wide and Handsome."

We'll talk more after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is singer and songwriter Loudon Wainwright. His double-CD pays
tribute to the old-time country music banjo player and singer, Charlie Poole.
It's called "High Wide and Handsome."

Let me quote something that you wrote, I think for a speech that you gave. I'm
not sure. I found it on the Internet and I really couldn't tell what it was
from...

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: ...but you wrote: I didn't want to be a writer. It seemed hard, boring
and above all, lonely. As a kid growing up, I saw my journalist father at work,
torturing himself while writing, trying to write and worst of all, not writing.
He was a famous and successful columnist and editor for Life magazine and was
in fact a fine writer. Unfortunately, he suffered from a streak of sado-
masochism that runs in our family and succumbed to a prejudice held by many
journalists, namely, that writers aren't real writers unless they produce
books. But the books my father wanted to write refused to be written. Can you
talk a little bit about what image you got of writing from watching your father
torture himself trying to write books?

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: Well, he thought that he or he felt that he had to, you know,
he – his contemporaries were Updike and Bellow and Philip Roth and these were
the kind of – that, you know, when they were the young Turks and just writing
those books and stories that were – that I guess he wanted to be doing that,
but he was a journalist. And he wrote for Life, although the first thing that
he ever got published was in The New Yorker, a great short story that he wrote,
which probably, you know, in 1948 or something like that. But he had a family
and kids and he got a job at Life, during the great, great years of Life
magazine. But I think that there was a lot of regret that he wasn't writing
short stories and of course novels.

So it was – as a kid, it was tough to see because there was a – you know he
felt that he wasn't doing what he should've been doing. And I felt - I think
what I was trying to say in that - was actually a speech that I gave at an Ohio
University, that thing that you quoted, that you read from. What I was trying
to say was, you know, he didn't – it was a pity that he didn't feel good enough
about what he was doing, which was writing these great columns.

He wrote - the name of his column was "The View From Here." And he could write
about anything he wanted to. And he wrote about politics. He wrote about his
personal stuff was just incredible. I mean, there's a column he wrote about our
dog dying. Our dog - this would've been in 1972. And he – it just - you're
weeping by the end of it. I mean I am. And then I send it to everybody who ever
had a dog that died. I mean, he was a very, very good writer. And I just wished
that he enjoyed that more and felt secure in that more and didn't beat himself
up, as we can do, about what he didn't do.

GROSS: Was writing songs for you ever a beating-yourself-up process? Did it
have a kind of pain that you associated your father having with his writing?

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: No. And I think that was – I was lucky in that regard. I mean,
writing a song is – it's three minutes. I mean, you can knock one off pretty
quickly. I mean, a great song is as powerful as a great short story, certainly.
But somehow that was my way in. I thought I was going to be an actor. After I
went to that boarding school, I went to drama school to study to be an actor. I
wanted to be a performer, I knew that. I didn't think I was going to be a
writer. But I found out that I could write. You know, maybe it was a genetic
thing, you know, I could write. And I didn't feel threatened by songwriting. It
just seemed much less scary than the, you know, the page and the typewriter
that he had to face.

GROSS: Well, you've become something of an actor, thanks in part to Judd
Apatow...

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: Yeah.

GROSS: ...who cast you in his TV series "Undeclared" you were in "Knocked Up."
What else have you been in of his? Am I missing anything?

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: Well, I have a - I married the couple at the end of the "40
Year Old Virgin."

GROSS: Oh, right, right.

MR. WAINWRIGHT: ...yeah. And – occasionally I get an acting job and that's nice
and fun, too.

GROSS: You're actually living in LA now. And I picture you as such a not LA
person. How have you adapted?

MR. WAINWRIGHT: I'm not quite sure. It's a very – we live way out on the
outskirts of LA in Woodland Hills, California. But, occasionally I'll go into
town to try to get an acting job.

GROSS: You have a nice song about LA, called "Grey in LA."

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: Yeah.

GROSS: That's on the soundtrack from "Knocked Up." Well, it - songs from the
movie and inspired by the film. And the album is actually...

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: Right.

GROSS: ...called "Strange Weirdos."

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: Yeah.

GROSS: But it's a really nice song. Why don't you say a few words about it,
then we'll play it.

MR. WAINWRIGHT: "Grey in LA," yeah, well, that's that thing of - I talk about
in this song. I talk about the cruelty of LA, you know. It is the cruelest
town, I'd say. But - and you're in a car all the time and the weather, you
know, is kind of unrelenting. The blue California weather and it's just - all
that stuff is in the song. The bitterness of being an actor is in the song, in
a sense. But - and when it does rain, it feels great. And then the mudslides
start in.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: It doesn't feel so good.

GROSS: I shouldn't laugh, I'm sorry.

MR. WAINWRIGHT: It's a terrible place. It's a biblically - you know, I mean,
it's - there's always something terrible happening there. And, of course now,
they don't have any money there. So, it just gets worse and worse. I've got to
move.

GROSS: Well, in the meantime, this is "Grey in LA" from the album "Strange
Weirdos," songs from the soundtrack of the film "Knocked Up" and inspired by
them.

(Soundbite of song, "Grey in LA")

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: (Singing) When it's grey in LA, I sure like it that way. Cause
there's way too much sunshine around here. I don't know about you, I get so
sick of blue skies, wherever they always appear. And I sure love the sound of
the rain pouring down on my carport roof made out of tin. If there's a flood
then there's gonna be mudslides, we all have to pay for our sin. And I suppose
that they'll close canyon roads. And the freeways will all start to clog. And
the waters will rise and you won't be surprised, when your whole house smells
like your wet dog. When it's grey in LA, it's much better that way. It reminds
you that this town's so cruel. Yeah it might feel like fun when you're sporting
sunglasses. But really you're just one more fool.

GROSS: That's a song by Loudon Wainwright called "Grey in LA." I want to close
with another song from your album "High Wide and Handsome: The Charlie Poole
Project," and this is the title track which you wrote.

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: And so, tell us what inspired the song.

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: "High Wide and Handsome" is an expression that I heard growing
up because my mother, I mentioned, was from South Georgia. I think it's a
Southern expression. And I think generally when people say or use that
expression, they're thinking of prosperous and wealthy and good looking and
doing well. I think Poole - Charlie Poole was reported to have – he said that
he wanted to die, go out high wide and handsome. He drank himself to death.

I think it was a 13-week alcohol binge that killed him. So, almost the opposite
of high wide and handsome, but the song has a – I wanted to kind of tap into
what I thought his bravado might have been his, you know, his alcoholic
bravado. And so, I think I had all those things in mind when I wrote it.

GROSS: Loudon Wainwright, it's really been great to talk with you again. Thank
you so much.

Mr. WAINWRIGHT: Great talking to you, Terry. Thanks for having me back.

GROSS: Loudon Wainwright's double-CD is called "High Wide and Handsome: The
Charlie Poole Project." Our interview was recorded in August of 2009.

You can download podcast of our show on our Web site at freshair.npr.org. And
you can follow us on Twitter at nprfreshair.

I'm Terry Gross.
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