The Folkie Rank And
File-An Interview With 1960s Folkie Loudon Wainwright
Comment by Josh Breslin
I was somewhat of a late-comer to the folk
revival scene of the early 1960s having missed that early segment completely
while I was growing up in Olde Saco, Maine away from the big centers of the movement
like Harvard Square in Cambridge, The Village in NYC, Old Town in Chicago, and
North Beach in Frisco town. I did not pick up the folk habit until 1967, the
Summer of Love, when I went out to Frisco town to see what it was all about and
met fellow New Englander Peter Paul Markin, always called Scribe by his friends
on Russian Hill and he took me in on the Captain Crunch caravan that he was
part of. (I suppose it does not matter now but my introduction to the Scribe
was going up to this long-haired bearded guy and asking him for a joint. He
gave a huge one to me and the rest is history until his untimely early death
under mysterious circumstances.)
The Scribe had been a folkie fan since
his early high school days going over to Harvard Square and soaking in whatever
there was to soak in. Of course by 1967 the main stream of the revival had run
out of steam and so I got most of what I know second-hand. In the case of the
folkie that I am creating a link for here of an interview he did on the Terry Gross interview show Fresh Air of NPR discussing
his latest memoir it was really third-hand. The third-hand part is through a
discovery of the McGarrigle Sister, Anna and the late Kate, the latter who was married
to Wainwright for a time and had two children with him, one the well-known
Rufus Wainwright. As usual when I get into something I like to see where it
leads (a trait I picked up from the Scribe who really did try to learn every
possible fact of any possible use for any possible purpose). Knowing of the
McGarrigle-Wainwright connection I checked out his eclectic folk work. I can’t
say I was a strong supporter of his work but there were some interesting things
he did. Let him tell you via the interview some of the highlights.
http://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/2017/09/06/548788469/fresh-air-for-sept-6-2017-loudon-wainwright-iii
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