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