Folkie and current cast member of Fox’s “Undeclared,” Loudon Wainwright first introduced the world to his son in his song, “Dilated to Meet You.” Singing to the bulging belly of his wife, Kate McGarnickle of the McGarnickle Sisters, Wainwright told his son, “Even though there’s trouble, even though there’s fuss/We really think you’ll like it here, we hope that you like us.”
So far, Rufus Wainwright seems to like it here. Both his self-titled debut and sophomore effort, Poses, have been successful and heralded by critics. His first headlining tour on Poses brings him to the Barrymore Tuesday.
“This is the biggest tour I’ve ever done. It’s great it’s been all sold out and well attended ,and I’ve got my crazy groupies now,” Wainwright said in a recent interview with The Badger Herald.
While he has his crazy groupies, girls, you’ll be disappointed — according to a song he covered on Poses, he’s a “One Man Guy.” But this fact doesn’t normally cause any backstage awkwardness after his shows.
“The girls are briefed on my preference and they’re more apt to bring me sacrificial gifts. They seem to dig that kind of thing. Girls like gay guys for some reason.”
He’s charming. His voice is gorgeous. His music is intricate, beautiful and the definition of what pop music should be. He’s also quite a handsome young lad. And all he wants is more love in the world.
“I think we need to get a bit more hippy-dippy and peace lovey-dovey, because that whole spirit is our only way out of everything that’s happening in the world,” Wainwright said before an Ann Arbor sound check. “There’s gonna come a time pretty soon where we’re gonna have to fight, in a weird way, for peace. I think we all got to get together and love each other.”
Love is Wainwright’s musical inspiration. It has brought him through the depths of human existence and right back up to the top. Not only is his music impossible to get completely out of your head, his treatment of love gives any listener something to relate to. Some critics have called him the poster boy of unrequited love, but he doesn’t know anything about that.
“I’ve never had that problem,” he said jokingly.
On Valentine’s Day, the unrequited lover’s worst nightmare, Wainwright didn’t do anything out of the ordinary — for him, at least. He played a show in New York and afterward went to a party and hung out with Calvin Klein and Monica Lewinsky.
“They were very charming and nice. They were both at my show so they were fans like any others.”
Despite his busy tour schedule and partying with the fashion elite and national jokes, he does find time to date.
“I’ll sort of take people on little vacations on my bus. I’ll take them running with the circus.”
Listening to his vaudeville-esque first album, it’s easy to picture Wainwright sitting at a piano in a derby-cap with a painted face in some sort of circus musical, and he is considering writing one — without the circus theme, of course.
“There’s been a few offers. I’d like to write an opera as well. But I guess musicals are pretty popular these days. I’d like to do a musical if it was on film, like a ‘Moulin Rouge’ kind of thing.”
And if a musical or opera isn’t in the near future, he has begun writing for his next, possibly double, album and it will have a bit more of the operatic flavor found on his first album.
“I don’t want to be afraid to go back and revisit some of the dramatic tinges of the last one. And not be afraid to be operatic in my approach at times, but also use the pop stuff I’ve acquired as well. I should really make a double album.”
But Wainwright still has most of his tour to finish, and his songwriting is, like a bad breakup, a long process of forgetting.
“I basically try to write stuff and then I try to forget it. And whatever I find really hard to forget is usually what’s good. So it’s really a process of trying to whittle it down to some sort of truth in some way, which takes a while.”
