By Paul Liberatore
Posted: 03/27/2009 12:06:09 AM PDT
Becoming a musician rather than going to college is a form of rebellion for most kids. Coming from her musical family, Lucy Wainwright Roche found it was the other way around. 'With a family like mine, everyone wondered why I was going to school,' she said.
On the phone from South by Southwest (SXSW), the marathon music festival that took over Austin last week, Lucy Wainwright Roche sounded a bit dazed and confused, but happily so.
"I've never been here before," she told me with a girlish giggle. "It's insane. It's quite overwhelming, but I'm having a good time. I'm content to be overwhelmed."
One of 1,900 acts at SXSW, Lucy was scheduled to go on rather late the next night in a ballroom in one of the downtown hotels.
"I'm performing at midnight, which is way past my bedtime," she said. "I'm usually totally dead to the world by that time, so this should be interesting."
Knowing her distinguished musical background, her performers pedigree, I had a feeling she could handle it. After all, she practically has singer-songwriter encoded in her DNA.
Lucy, who performs here March 31 in a benefit for Marin's Bread & Roses, is the 27-year-old daughter of the singer-songwriters Loudon Wainwright III and Suzzy Roche of the Roches.
Her half-brother is the Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright, her half-sister is singer-songwriter Martha Wainwright and her stepmother was the Canadian singer-songwriter Kate McGarrigle of the McGarrigle Sisters. That's a lot of singer-songwriters for one family.
"It never ends," Lucy laughed. "It goes on and on."
With two promising EPs to her credit that got rave reviews from the New York Times and National Public Radio, Lucy is the second generation of her family in the music business and a fast-rising newcomer on the indie-folk scene.
She comes to music a great deal later than her brother and sister, beginning her career after teaching second and third grade for three years in New York.
"I loved teaching," she said. " It was great. In the right setting it can be very creative. And it's never boring. I miss it sometimes. I miss being a part of the every day life of a whole classroom of kids. Now I'm just part of my own every day life, being in a different town all the time."
After her parents split up when she was 2, Lucy spent weekends and summers away from her Greenwich Village home, going on the road with her mother and aunts, who perform together in the sister group the Roches.
"I loved that," she recalled. "I was really, really into it. Hanging out with my mom and my aunts when I was a kid was like a traveling circus with all the people I liked the best. It was my favorite thing to do."
Be that as it may, when she graduated from high school she went off to Oberlin College in Ohio to become a teacher rather than the next in the long line of singer-songwriters in the family.
With most kids, becoming a musician rather than going to college is a form of rebellion. Coming from her family, it was the other way around.
"With a family like mine, everyone wondered why I was going to school," she snickered. "But music was such a huge part of my life that when I went off to school I didn't really think I needed to do it, too, since I was around it all the time. Then when I got further into my own life I realized that it wasn't in my life as much anymore, that music was their life and not mine. That's when I started to miss it. And that's how I came back to it."
That happened four years ago, when she agreed to go on tour with her flamboyant brother Rufus as a backup singer.
"I think he could see in me that I was aching to do it," she said. "He pushed me over the edge when he asked me to go on the road with him. And, sure enough, I didn't want to go back to my teaching job after that."
She had to go back, for one more year, but since then she's hit the ground running, touring with Dar Williams, Neko Case, Mary Gauthier and, most unexpectedly for her, Loudon Wainwright III, her father.
They spent 61Ú2 weeks touring Australia together last year. They will perform on the same bill again - along with Keb' Mo' and his son, Kevin Moore II - at the Bread & Roses benefit.
"My parents were not together when I was growing up, so I've gotten to know my dad a lot better since I've been touring," she said. I didn't foresee that happening, and I don't think it happens very often when you're grown that you get to spend 61Ú2 weeks with your dad. That was a chance for us to get to know each other, and it might not have happened in quite the same way if I hadn't come back to music. That may be the best part of this."
She admits that she wasn't a great guitarist when she began performing, but she's getting better. And her voice is strong and pure and unadorned, much as she is. NPR called it "sincere and raw," and the New York Times described it as "clear and steady, like a beaconÉ"
She gave herself a soft opening as a songwriter, easing into the indie record scene by quietly releasing two EPs - "8 Songs" in 2007, followed a year later by "8 More."
"It was a way to put stuff out there that wasn't like making a debut record or anything, because I'm still thinking about how I want to present myself in a more concrete way," is how she explained it.
Despite the lack of fanfare, her songs did not slip by unnoticed. "Snare Drum," a song inspired by the "Friday Night Lights" kind of high school football craze she witnessed when she was going to college in the Midwest, took first place in the USA Songwriting Contest and the Independent Music Awards. She was also one of the winners of the 2008 Falcon Ridge Folk Festival Emerging Artist Showcase.
Her plan is to stop her heavy touring schedule in May so she can finish the new songs she's writing for a full-length album she's scheduled to record this summer for release in the fall.
Accepting that she has the benefit of a famous name, two of them, to be exact, she also understands that she's just now mastering the tools of the trade, gaining the experience she needs to carry on a proud family tradition.
"I may have inherited the name, but you don't really know what it is to be a singer-songwriter until you're doing it yourself," she said. "I guess that's what's happening now. I'm collecting the real information. The raw data is rolling in."
Part of that raw date is social service. She joins her mother and father as a supporter of Bread & Roses, the Corte Madera-based nonprofit founded by the late folksinger Mimi Fariña to bring free live music to people shut away in hospitals, prisons and other institutions.
"My mom knew a lot about it," Lucy said. "When she heard they had written to me, she said, 'Oh my God, you have to go and do it. It's a great thing.' My dad's excited about it, too.
That's a good thing about having a family like mine. I'm happy to be following in their footsteps in this way, too."
IF YOU GO
- What: "Twice Blessed" benefit concert for Bread & Roses with Loudon Wainwright III, Lucy Wainwright Roche, Keb' Mo', Kevin Moore II, cast members from Teatro ZinZanni and surprise guests
- When: 5:30 to 10 p.m. March 31, 2009
- Where: Teatro ZinZanni,Pier 29, San Francisco
- Tickets: $400 to $750
- Information: 945-7120, www.breadandroses.org
Paul Liberatore can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it