Loudon Wainwright III explores mortality

Shawn Baldwin/Associated Press

Singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III, seen here in a 2001 photo, is becoming more aware of his own mortality as he enters his mid-'60s.

Even six decades into his career, the peculiar thrill of writing a song has not diminished for Loudon Wainwright III.

“It’s still the most mysterious and exciting aspect of the job,” Wainwright says. “The moment when you actually get one. Nothing quite beats that.”

Despite having just a single pop hit (the one-off 1972 novelty “Dead Skunk”), the Grammy-winning Wainwright has built a voluminous catalog filled with sharp-witted and acid-tongued observations of life, death and all that comes with it.

Tonight, he plays the Buckman Performing & Fine Arts Center in what he notes will be his first-ever Memphis concert.

Those planning to attend Wainwright’s show can expect to hear familiar songs, as well as a preview of material off his new record due in April, titled Older Than My Old Man Now.

“The (songs) are of a piece, in the sense that the emphasis is on, for want of a better expression, death and decay,” Wainwright says of the album. “My dad died relatively young at the age of 63. So when I hit 64, about a year and a half ago, I started to write a bunch of songs about that … about what looms ahead for all of us.

“It’s a topic that interests me; the passage of time, the mortality issue. Certainly, as I get older, it’s increasingly more and more in my mind. For me, the trick to this record was to make it not a bummer. To a large degree, I think we accomplished that.”

Despite the heavy subject matter, the album includes a series of lighthearted songs and spirited duets. Wainwright pairs up with his early folk hero, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, on a track called “Double Lifetime,” and works up a tune called “I Remember Sex” with Australian comedian Barry Humphries (a.k.a. Dame Edna), while all four of Wainwright’s musician children also appear on the record.

Older Than My Old Man follows on the heels of last year’s 40 Odd Years, a four-disc career-spanning four-disc box set that forced Wainwright to take a close look at his back pages.

“I worked as hard on that as anything I’ve ever done. If I had to do it all over again, I might’ve handed the reins to someone else,” says Wainwright, laughing. “ ’Cause I had to go back and listen to all the records and all the unreleased stuff. It was quite a painful decision to pick the tracks and cut them down.”

Hearing his younger self was an eye-opening experience for Wainwright. “The first things were recorded in 1969,” he says, “and despite the fact that my voice has changed, and that physically, I’ve changed, it seems like it’s the same guy. That surprised me a little bit.”

“The concerns I was writing about — I was thinking about death and decay even when I was young — and the way I was writing, I won’t say I was fully formed in 1969, but I was pretty close. That was the biggest revelation.”

The strange part is that, growing up, Wainwright never envisioned a serious career as a musician. “It’s a mystery even to me how it happened. I didn’t expect to be a songwriter. I studied acting. I assumed that’s how I’d be earning my living,” says Wainwright, who has developed a sideline as a thespian, appearing in various TV and film projects over the years.

“Basically, I played guitar and sang in folk bands and jug bands in boarding school — just singing other people’s songs,” he says. “But then I wrote my first song in 1968. By 1969, I had a record deal. And it was kind of a shock. I’ve been clinging to that for a long time now.”

Over the past 40 years and some 20-plus albums, Wainwright has maintained a remarkable level of quality, turning out consistent and occasionally blinding LPs. “The first album (1970’s self-titled LP) is still the most special to me; I had 20 years’ worth of living to write about. There have been other things I’m proud of. I’m Alright (1985), that was another one,” he says.

“A little later, I wrote an album called History. Pound for pound, that has to be one of the best records I’ve ever made. My father had just died, and a lot of the songs were dealing with that issue. Then after my mother died (in 1997), I did Last Man on Earth, which talks about that experience. When those huge events happened, songs rose up or rose to the surface for me.”

These days, Wainwright continues to explore the craft of writing songs, but he says the process has grown increasingly challenging.

“Like a lot of things as you get older, I don’t get as many, and they don’t come as quickly,” he says. “I make the analogy with fishing. I’m waiting in the boat a lot longer now, it seems. It’s still exciting to get a strike and pull something in. But it’s tougher to pull them into the boat.

“It’s an energy question. It’s a physical psychic energy thing. At the beginning of your career, you’re just exploding with stuff. Some stuff you shouldn’t include on your records, and maybe your editorial sense does get sharper as you get older. But after a while, you start to run out of things to say and ways to say them.”

“I don’t know how close I am to hanging it up,” Wainwright says with a chuckle. “Hopefully, I won’t run out of steam anytime soon.”

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