Loudon Wainwright III Unveils “You Rascal, You (I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead)”

Loudon Wainwright III has released “You Rascal, You (I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead),” a second preview of his forthcoming album I’d Rather Lead A Band (October 9/Thirty Tigers). A collaboration with Vince Giordano and his band The Nighthawks, as well as producer and music supervisor Randall Poster, I’d Rather Lead A Band interprets the Great American Songbook, featuring Wainwright as singer and band leader. The new record was announced alongside an extensive feature in Rolling Stone, who deemed the album an “anti-nostalgic” revival of songs from the 1920s and ‘30s. 

Listen to “You Rascal, You (I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead)” here: https://soundcloud.com/thirtytigers/loudon-wainwright-iii-you-rascal-you-ill-be-glad-when-you-re-dead/s-y6slC8RvMUK

Like many of the selections on I’d Rather Lead A Band - “You Rascal, You” is deeply intertwined into Loudon’s youth and his father’s extensive record collection. He remembers first being introduced to the song at eight years old when he heard Louis Prima’s live 1954 Las Vegas recording from his 1956 album The Wildest!  The song was written in 1931 by Sam Theard and became widely known when it was featured in a Betty Boop cartoon of the same name - featuring a performance by Louis Armstrong. 

As Wainwright puts it: "There's a theory, maybe just a romantic idea, that we're drawn to the music our progenitors made love to, perhaps to somehow inhabit the sonic back-ground of our own conceptions. (Psychologists have termed this theory "cascading reminiscence bump.") Or maybe we're just drawn to great songs."

This new project took shape as Wainwright, Poster and producer Stewart Lerman volleyed dozens of mp3s and YouTube videos back and forth, ultimately whittling them down to 14 picks. Then Wainwright, Giordano and The Nighthawks then recorded the album in just 3 days at Electric Lady Studios.   

A common thread of this project is the participants’ involvement with the 2012 Boardwalk Empire soundtrack, which Poster and Lerman both won a GRAMMY for (Best Compilation Soundtrack). Poster - widely celebrated for his work with Wes Anderson, Martin Scorsese, and all-star albums made in homage to the likes of Buddy Holly and Fleetwood Mac - oversaw the music for the HBO series set in Atlantic City in the 1920s. Giordano, who is widely regarded as an expert on the music of the era, and his band were featured throughout the series; And Wainwright, who first met Poster while appearing in Scorsese’s The Aviator, recorded three songs for Boardwalk Empire as well.  

For the past fifty years, Wainwright has carved out a distinguished career as one America’s most original singer-songwriters, a six-string diarist with material that is by turns, tongue-in-cheek, tender, satiric, heart-wrenching, and always deeply personal. Along the way he has released more than twenty albums, won a GRAMMY, acted in film and TV, and has had his songs recorded by artists including Johnny Cash, Mose Allison, Bonnie Raitt, and his own son, Rufus Wainwright. His one man show - Surviving Twin, based on his father's Life Magazine column in the 1960s - toured internationally and became a Netflix special directed by Christopher Guest and produced by Judd Apatow. He also published a memoir, Liner Notes: On Parents & Children, Exes & Excess, Death & Decay, & a Few of My Other Favorite Things" and in 2018 issued "Years in the Making," a 42-track "audio-biography" of rare, offbeat recordings from his remarkable career.

You can pre-order I'd Rather Lead A Band now: 

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I’d Rather Lead A Band Tracklist

1. How I Love You (I'm Tellin' the Birds, Tellin' the Bees)

2. Ship Without A Sail 

3. Ain’t Misbehavin’

4. I’m Going to Give it to Mary with Love

5. The Little Things in Life 

6. So the Bluebirds and the Blackbirds Got Together

7. A Perfect Day 

8. I Thought About You

9. I’d Rather Lead a Band 

10. My Blue Heaven 

11. Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea 

12. Heart and Soul

13. You Rascal You (I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead)

14. More I Cannot Wish You