Flop Eared Mule A Country Music Death Beast and Worker in the Dylan Industrial Complex | Sydney, Australia | Est. 2004

Also on the tour is Lucy Wainwright-Roche who was on after the Brewster Bros/Eleanor McEvoy turns in the previous post. Yes, another singing Wainwright/random female folkie child. I'd never heard of her nor heard her music and had no idea what to expect except I hoped she was good. Well, she was. Very good. Really delightful, in fact. She sings in a high, clear voice and writes songs and plays guitar.

The "functional hat" was part of a whole story about how she had been awfully sick for the last couple of days, causing her to cancel some gigs, have to beg a hotel room from some strangers and not eat for 72 hours. Her father was convinced it was heatstroke and insisted on the functional hat. Ha. So she was feeling very poor, compounded by breaking a couple of strings which dad had to fix. And then she just couldn't get the right tuning, which dad had to fix. Ha. The audience was utterly won over by not only the music but her sense of humour and wry observations. She said she was intrigued by how Australians were always saying "no worries" since she is from New York where the main idea is "worries." At the end she got a standing ovation and came out for her first ever encore, even though they were not allowing encores because the horrid poets breakfast went overtime and they were late. Good on the MC to let her have one, I heard later she was very emotional about the reception.

She's only been performing for a year, the way you rebel in her family is to get a real job so she was a primary school teacher in New York. She did some really nice originals, interesting and melodic little songs of outsiders and a couple of very good covers including "The Next Best Western" which has since sent me off on my much delayed exploration of the songwriter, Richard Shindell.

I also loved the fact she was quite like me if I had musical talent. I like Martha and Rufus but they are these super intense ARTISTIC eccentric pixie types, everything they do is IMPORTANT and EDGY and Fahbulous and larger than life. Lucy is a shy, zaftig primary school teacher and I felt immediately I could relate. Throughout Loudon was out the back laughing and taking photos (could see him through the curtain from my possie) and thus doing irreparable harm to his mythic repuation as a shit dad. They were very cute together.

This is about the best of Lucy on YouTube but you can hear her nice songs at MySpace.

Loudon was on later in the night, closing proceedings at the big marquee and he was excellent as I had hoped. An acquired taste I suppose but I must've acquired it in the womb. The previous act Ruthie Foster (who I haven't even blogged about yet. God will this festival blogging never freaking end??) got probably the biggest reception of the whole event with her inspiring soul/blues/gospel and left everyone on a high, which I wisecracked Loudon was now going to drag us all down from. The man himself made the same joke when he got on stage which I felt far too satisfied by. Great effing minds think alike. AND THEN he played my request mere seconds before I was about to shout it out. You guys, this psychic connection I obviously have to Loudon Wainwright III explains so much in my life.

The song I wanted to request was "White Winos" from the rather great album Last Man on Earth. This is it on YouTube. I like the Dutch subtitles and am in particular most taken with this line: ze dronk een glas of twee. I could murder a glass of twee right about now.

Probably the jokes are the same at every show but it was my first show so what do I care. I laughed. I'm almost emotionally prepared to see that stupid sex comedy romp he did the soundtrack for.

Your humble blogger and LW3. Given what I've heard, I was disappointed he didn't crack onto me at the autograph table. Sadly, no!