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Loudon Up Now | The darkly funny singer/songwriter pays tribute to one of the great banjo-playing entertainers of the ’20s on his latest CD.

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Edmonton Folk Music Festival
Gallagher Park
Thursday, August 6 - Sunday, August 9

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LOUDON WAINWRIGHT III
Edmonton Folk Music Festival, Gallagher Park. Concert: Stage 1, Fri, Aug 7 (7pm) • Keep Your Coins I Want Change session (with Oysterband, Chumbawamba, Dick Gaughan): Stage 3, Sat, Aug 8 (11am).

You may recognize the name Loudon Wainwright III from the current number-one box office smash G-Force, but then again, you may not.

“Okay, I’m only onscreen for eight seconds, but you just watch those DVD residuals roll in, baby!” he cackles over the phone from New York.

It seems somehow apt that the man who gave us “Dead Skunk (In the Middle of the Road)” as his most enduringly popular song should, even briefly, share screen time with CGI guinea pigs. For a whole new generation, this may even turn out to be his legacy. That his mordant sense of humour allows him to not only glory in this but not take offence speaks well of the North Carolina born singer/songwriter, one of the more eccentric of the second wave of folk singers who trailed along in the wake of Bob Dylan.

“I actually studied to be an actor,” Wainwright explains, “though I’ve been writing songs since ’68. To be honest,” he adds in a confidential voice, “I’m glad I didn’t depend on acting as a career — I’d be earning a living as a waiter.”

He’s just being modest — Wainwright has always juggled music with acting, recently pulling down minor roles in Big Fish, 28 Days, Knocked Up, and The 40 Year Old Virgin, as well as a repeating stint in the show M*A*S*H as a singing doctor. The 62-year-old views himself as an entertainer, a label that nicely encompasses his ability to pen tunes that vary from brutally raw to, well, goofy, as well as a way with an onstage monologue that never fails to kill.

“That’s all in my job description,” Wainwright allows. “Really, I play the same five guitar chords I learned when I was 16. I make a living as a musician but I’m an entertainer — these are songs that are meant to be performed.”

Lately, Wainwright has been turning to another notable North Carolina-born musician for inspiration: singer and banjo player Charlie Poole, who died back in 1931. He points to his producer, Dick Connette, for pushing him into it — while he’d been listening to the revered yet forgotten old-timey musician for decades, he’d never gotten around to tackling his material.

On the 18th of this month, the result comes out: High, Wide and Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project, a lovingly designed two-CD set with a booklet full of graphics, notes, and lyrics. To top it off, Wainwright also wrote 10 extra songs about Poole describing him, his life, and the milieu in which he played.

“This was a real labour of love,” Wainwright says quite seriously. “Charlie Poole was one of my heroes. He was around earlier than the Carter Family or Dock Boggs. A great musician and singer, and he’s not in the Country Hall of Fame, which is criminal. Very interesting guy — worked in mills in North Carolina until he learned to make a living with the banjo. He was an entertainer — a dancer and acrobat, and a horrendous drunk who drank himself to death at 39.”

While Wainwright might view Poole’s abilities as an entertainer and musician with reverence, or even find sympathy for the self-destructive tendencies that killed him at far too early an age, he doesn’t labour under such a dark cloud himself. Or at least he doesn’t lately — for now, he’s happy to be exactly where he is at this point in his life.

“On a good day, the career is a happy surprise, but it also can be an unhappy surprise,” he notes. “As a seven-year-old kid, I wanted to be an entertainer. I have to remind myself when I get pissed off — when it’s not happening — that I’ve been doing this for a long time now, working on very, very cool things like this Charlie Poole project, and I’ve gotten to do most of what I’ve wanted to do.”