Loudon Wainwright III at Clark Art Institute, 2/20/99

by Seth Rogovoy

(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. Feb 21, 1999) -- Since the outset of his career in the late-'60s, Loudon Wainwright III has often been touted incorrectly as a Bob Dylan wannabe or a WASP Woody Allen. But as Wainwright demonstrated in his standing-room-only concert at the Clark Art Institute on Saturday night -- the first of three shows in the museum's winter "Different Voices" series -- Wainwright is his own man, drawing deftly upon his own personality, quirks and wit in presenting engaging, provocative, humorous and at times poignant portraits in song.

If Wainwright's style -- one-part standup comedy, one-part confessional singer-songwriter -- seemed familiar, that's because he may very well have invented the standard currency of singer-songwriter performance which several generations of guitar-wielding bards take for granted as their modus operandi. One can see the influence of Wainwright in the stage performance of everyone from John Gorka to Shawn Colvin, who chummed around with Wainwright in the early-'80s in Greenwich Village, where she undoubtedly picked up a few pointers on her way to Grammy fame and considerable influence of her own on a subsequent generation, including the likes of Vance Gilbert and Lucy Kaplansky.

Looking like a prep-school headmaster, except for when he unleashed his maniacal grin or let his busy tongue wag out of his mouth, Wainwright, 52, alternated topical songs with more intimate, personal portraits of family relationships. Some of his topical material was serious and some comic, and some of the personal songs were serious and some comic. What united them all were Wainwright's impeccable craftsmanship, straightforward simplicity, and disarming ingenuousness.

It's only February 1999, and I thought I'd already had my full share of Y2K jokes, but Wainwright grabbed this listener and the rest of the crowd from the moment he took the stage and launched into a funky, funny tune about the millennium computer bug. Throughout the evening, he dug into his catalog for other topical songs, many written on commission from National Public Radio and currently being collected for an upcoming recording. Some of these held up better than others: a song about the O.J. Simpson trial was mildly amusing, but numbers about John Sununu, Tonya Harding and Bill Clinton were not as devastatingly convincing as some of Wainwright's best, more personal material.

That group included "Four Mirrors," a dark, poetic composition about finding his late father within himself, and "Your Mother and I," in which a father breaks the news of her parent's divorce to his child. Those songs, along with "Men" and "So Damn Happy," with its quintessential Loudon Wainwright refrain, "it's comic that it's all so tragic," were perfectly-executed essays or poems in song, packing emotional punches that far outweighed their minimalist settings.

Berkshire singer-songwriter Ed Kohn warmed up the crowd with a similar blend of serio-comic material. Underneath its sunny surface, "Velveeta" was a sharp, stinging look at the cultural gulf that divides the classes (as in "middle" and "working"); "No More Rembrandts Today" was an aptly chosen, comic look at the cultural overload experienced by American tourists abroad; "Landlubber's Lament" hit a strong chord with the audience, obviously sympathetic to its portrait of the misery of the modern office worker.

The Clark's "Different Voices" series continues this Saturday night (Feb. 27) with Irish singer-songwriter Susan McKeown and her band, The Chanting House.

If you would like to purchase Loudon Wainwright III’s latest CD on-line, please click on the SoundStone logo to the right.