Loudon Wainwright III - Songs I Wish I'd Written, Home Concert, New York City, 4-25-2020

Loudon Wainwright III is a talented singer-songwriter who has been steadily putting out albums since 1970. This is the first time I've featured him on this blog. He's also another new artist added to the growing collection of musicians with home concerts performed during the coronavirus lockdown.

Wainwright has lots of excellent original songs. But for this particular concert, he chose the theme "Song I Wish I'd Written." That means it's all covers. And that's fine with me, since all-covers albums has become a common theme for this blog. Perhaps not surprisingly, most of the songs done are similar to Wainwright's originals, with literate and often wry lyrics. But there are some surprises, such as the Motown classic "My Girl" and the Drifters classic "On Broadway."

I'm especially happy to see he covers a Tom Lehrer song "Oedipus Rex." Lehrer has probably written the funniest songs of all time, with this song being a good example. I would post some Lehrer music to help share it, except he doesn't have any "Albums That Should Exist." A box set called "The Remains of Tom Lehrer" ably gathered up all of his stuff. So I recommend you get that, or a "best of" if you want to start small.

The sound quality is very good, but not excellent, pretty much on par with most of the other home concerts. I broke up all his banter between songs into their own tracks. Then I boosted the volume for those, as I usually find I need to do. I also cut out a bit of his talking (though not much). In addition, there was so much guitar tuning that at one point he made a joke about it. I left the joke in, but cut out the vast majority of the tuning that led to the joke.

For the song "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright," he forgot the words to one of the verses. There was a long pause as he tried to remember them. Finally he did, but he only spoke them instead of singing them, before resuming the song. I edited that down so it seems as he intended to have a little spoken section. I think it actually works pretty well that way.

The last song is a bonus track of sorts. It doesn't come from the concert, and it's an original, so it doesn't fit the covers theme. However it was recorded in his home just four days later. It's a funny song about the toilet paper shortage during the lockdown, with the fitting title "Toilet Roll Blues."

Including that last song, the album is an hour and eight minutes long.

Here's a list of the original artists. I've removed the tracks that are just talking, so the song numbers have some missing:

02 On Broadway - Drifters
04 Ever Since the World Ended - Mose Allison
06 Yankee Lady - Jesse Winchester
08 No Wonder She's a Blushing Bride - Art Fowler
10 Today I Started Loving You Again - Merle Haggard
12 Withered and Died - Richard & Linda Thompson
14 Don't Think Twice, It's Alright - Bob Dylan
16 Paradise - John Prine
17 Harmless - Michael Marra
19 My Girl - Temptations / Smokey Robinson
21 You Can't Fail Me Now - Joe Henry & Loudon Wainwright III
23 Love Hurts - Everly Brothers
25 Oedipus Rex - Tom Lehrer
27 The Angel of Death - Hank Williams
29 Feel So Good - Mose Allison
31 Daughter - Peter Blevgad
32 Toilet Roll Blues - Loudon Wainwright III

Here's the full, usual song list:

01 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
02 On Broadway (Loudon Wainwright III)
03 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
04 Ever Since the World Ended (Loudon Wainwright III)
05 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
06 Yankee Lady (Loudon Wainwright III)
07 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
08 No Wonder She's a Blushing Bride (Loudon Wainwright III)
09 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
10 Today I Started Loving You Again (Loudon Wainwright III)
11 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
12 Withered and Died (Loudon Wainwright III)
13 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
14 Don't Think Twice, It's Alright [Edit] (Loudon Wainwright III)
15 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
16 Paradise (Loudon Wainwright III)
17 Harmless (Loudon Wainwright III)
18 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
19 My Girl (Loudon Wainwright III)
20 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
21 You Can't Fail Me Now (Loudon Wainwright III)
22 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
23 Love Hurts (Loudon Wainwright III)
24 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
25 Oedipus Rex (Loudon Wainwright III)
26 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
27 The Angel of Death (Loudon Wainwright III)
28 Intro to Feel So Good (Loudon Wainwright III)
29 Feel So Good (Loudon Wainwright III)
30 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
31 Daughter (Loudon Wainwright III)
32 Toilet Roll Blues (Loudon Wainwright III)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15274859/LoudonWainW_2020_SngsIWshIdWrittenHmeConcrtNYC__4-25-2020_atse.zip.html

The cover art is a screenshot from the concert in question.