Loudon Wainwright III

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More About

• Loudon Wainwright III
• Suzzy Roche
• Lucy Wainwright Roche
• Joe Henry
• Knocked Up

A brilliantly twisted songwriter whose brutal honesty is more like a 2x4 to the forehead than a rapier thrust between the ribs, Loudon Wainwright III slathers his acerbic wit over every sacred cow—or in his case, skunk—he can find, and leaves them rotting in the middle of the road, stinkin' to high heaven. That he's often the victim—er, subject—of his own scathing insights makes them all the more delicious, and that much harder for the rest of us to deny when we fall under his purview. Like "Doin' the Math" from his new Strange Weirdos (Concord), about the grim realities of the aging process: "Doin' the math don't bring satisfaction/There's no more addition, now it's all subtraction." Weirdos' songs were written for or inspired by the summer film Knocked Up, in which Wainwright played a gynecologist. Joe Henry helped with the instrumental score, co-produced, and co-wrote a couple of tunes. But the rest is pure Loudon, although a bit sweeter than he usually is, given the nature of romantic comedy. Still, there's "Lullaby": "Shut your mouth and button your lip/You're a late-night faucet that's got a drip." Which may be the way he once tried to soothe Lucy Wainwright Roche, his daughter with Suzzy Roche. Just launching a career of her own, Lucy will open the show and may do a few duets with dear old dad.
Mon., Sept. 24, 7:30 p.m., 2007