Loudon Wainwright III “wrings more human truth out of his contradiction than any other songwriter of his generation,” says the New York Times. What is his contradiction? The one between thinking and feeling, between living and dying, between red wine and white? “And if families didn't break apart / I supposed there'd be no need for art,” he sings in his song “In C.” Whatever the contradiction, he’s been working it out onstage at the Freight since the late 1960s, and he’s still going strong. He won a Grammy in 2010 for Best Traditional Folk Album with High Wide & Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project, and his 22nd and latest album, Older Than My Old Man Now, has won wide acclaim. “The songs signify individually and sequentially as they ponder mortality and poke jokily at old age,” says famed critic Robert Christgau. Mojo Magazine calls it “lyrically compelling and emotionally overpowering.”

Loudon was born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. His father, Loudon Wainwright, Jr., was a well-known columnist and editor for Life Magazine. He had an early hit with “Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road” and the songs have kept on coming, covered by such artists as Johnny Cash, Bonnie Raitt, Earl Scruggs, Mose Allison, Big Star, and Freakwater. He branched into acting early in his career, and has appeared on the television shows MASH and Parks & Recreation, and in the movies The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up. His recent theatrical piece, Surviving Twin, connects his music with the writing of his late father. Loudon was married to Kate McGarrigle and Suzzy Roche, and is the father of musicians Rufus and Martha Wainwright, and Lucy Wainwright Roche. He’s a social critic, a self critic, a superb singer and songwriter, and a wildly entertaining performer who balances honesty and emotion with the quirky contradiction of being Loudon Wainwright III.

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