Alison Stewart: Rufus Wainwright has a few milestones coming up, which he's commemorating with a number of different projects. Just today, a surprise release of a remastered edition of his debut album exactly 25 years to the day after it was released. Then later this summer, he'll be celebrating his 50th birthday and throwing a party with a purpose. The one-night-only show is called 50 Isn't the End: A 50th Birthday Concert with Rufus Wainwright and Friends. It's actually a benefit for the Montauk Historical Society and what happened at the Montauk Point Lighthouse on July 13.

That follows the release of a new album of folk songs and standards due out June 2nd, which is also Rufus and Friends, titled Folkocracy. It features duets with a wide ranging of guests including his siblings, Martha Wainwright and Lucy Wainwright Roche as well as Chaka Khan, David Byrne, John Legend, Susanna Hoffs, and Brandi Carlile. Let's hear their collaboration called Down in the Willow Garden. Here's Rufus and Brandi.

[MUSIC - Rufus Wainwright feat. Brandi Carlile: Down in the Willow Garden].

Down in the willow garden

Where me and my love did meet

As we set there a courtin'

My love fell off to sleep

I had a bottle of burgundy wine

Alison Stewart: If that weren't enough to keep him busy, Rufus Wainwright is doing a residency at the Cafe Carlyle right now. Not right now but these four days. [laughs] Right now, he's in studio with me and at the piano. Thank you so much for making time. You're so busy.

Rufus Wainwright: Yes, I am. It's kind of fun because I live in LA. At the moment, we were mostly in LA and so we're in New York now during these Cafe Carlyle shows and it's part of being in the city. That's stay busy here.

Alison Stewart: This surprise dropped remix edition of your debut album, how long has that been in the work?

Rufus Wainwright: Oh, God. I have to be honest and admit that I haven't paid too much attention to it in the sense that-- I mean, I'm very excited and very happy but I have a lot going out on between the new Folkocracy album and then these residency shows of doing Kurt Vile songs at the Carlyle and the birthday show. I've just been admiring the 25th anniversary from far, [laughter] but today is the actual day that the album was released. I have had a few poignant moments of memories and so forth.

Alison Stewart: That's when we met.

Rufus Wainwright: Yes, we met. Yes. I remember you looking at my mail [laughter] in Montreal. That was part of the introduction to the piece.

Alison Stewart: We just started. We just showed up at your house. You were just this young fella with this great talent. I think you were a little sleepy that day.

Rufus Wainwright: Yes. I'm sure sleepy is a nice way of putting it. A clean way.

Alison Stewart: Are anniversaries important to you?

Rufus Wainwright: Are they important? They seem to be in the sense that what I'm celebrating are positive events, whether it's this album or hitting 50 and being in a good place in my life. I think it's all stuff to celebrate. There's always a bit of sadness, especially because you start to have these two types of anniversaries. One being your life but then also people that you miss, like my mom, Kate. I celebrate her passing. Now it's almost going to be 15 years that she's been gone. Yes, I think you just got to celebrate as much as you can.

Alison Stewart: That is wise advice.

Rufus Wainwright: Yes. It's great.

Alison Stewart: In honor of your anniversary, let's just play a little bit of Danny Boy.

[MUSIC - Rufus Wainwright: Danny Boy].

Your skin is cold

But the sun shines within your hold

Your hair is gold

But you see through a goldfish bowl

Alison Stewart: All right. That's our walk down memory lane. Let's look forward. The new album, it's an interesting mix because you have Scottish folk songs from the 1820s, Wild Mountain Thyme.

Rufus Wainwright: There is Hawaiian music, there's some Schubert, but all within a folk setting for sure.

Alison Stewart: What were you striving for in the song selection?

Rufus Wainwright: I come from a folk background. Both my parents are folk musicians. I grew up in that milieu but then as you can hear with Danny Boy from my first album, I chose to become a little more, I don't know, maybe more musical theater or more operatic, more dramatic. That was my little rebellion was to become a little more florid. Anyways, but the folk always remained. The ingredients were always there. Now, I feel especially in this day and age, there is this yearning to return to just a very humanistic environment.

Something where it is about just people gathering in a room, singing at the same time, playing real instruments, and making mistakes here and there and it being part of the magic. I don't know, I just felt that I think we need some grounding now and focus has always done that actually.

Alison Stewart: I guess the musical version of touch grass. [laughter] Outside of your family, when did you realize that folk music was its own thing? Its own culture. Having its own place.

Rufus Wainwright: I really can't take it outside of the family because I started going to folk festivals as a baby. Yes, I think the folk festivals were seminal, whether it was Cambridge or there was going up the Hudson Valley, they had the one for the Pete Seeger festival and for the Hudson River and the Riverkeeper, and just being around these other I should say Folkocracies because there were quite a few. There's my friend Teddy Thompson whose father is Richard Thompson and Linda Thompson. That was a whole family that sang together.

Our family sang together. It was just always this, I don't know, this meeting of information is the best way to put it that had been passed down over the, arguably the millennia. If you really dig in, that we were somehow privy to and we could share with other groups of pickers.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: This is Rufus Wainwright. The new album which comes out June 2nd is Folkocracy. You have a cover of Neil Young's Harvest. Andrew Bird is on this, and Chris Stills?

Rufus Wainwright: Yes.

Alison Stewart: How did you all come together?

Rufus Wainwright: When I first went to Los Angeles 25 years ago to make my first album, I was thrust into an interesting environment where there was a preponderance of kids of out on the scene trying to make their mark and Chris Stills, Stephen Stills' son or Adam Cohen, Leonard Cohen's son, Bijou Phillips, these were all people that I hung out with and Chris especially became a dear friend. Still, really, I find he's one of the great singers of our time. He has such a beautiful voice. He's also just an amazing human being.

Yes. Of course, he comes from a slightly more augmented folk family than mine. They did a little better. The Crosby Stills and Nashes. We still have that same sensibility and that same philosophy.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to Harvest.

[MUSIC - Rufus Wainwright: Harvest]

Did I see you down in a young girl's town

With your mother in so much pain?

I was almost there at the top of the stairs

With her screamin' in the rain

Did she wake you up to tell you that

It was only a change of plan?

Dream up, dream up, let me fill your cup

With the promise of a man

Did I see you walking with the boys? Though it was not hand in hand

And was some black face in a lonely place

When you could understand?

Alison Stewart: Rufus, there are some duets on this album, Madison Cunningham, Sheryl Crow, it really seems to make sense with folk music, but then there's Nicole Scherzinger from the Pussycat Dolls and Chaka Khan. How many times did you say Rufus and Chaka Khan?

Rufus Wainwright: I know, I know. This is a long time coming, this duet between Rufus and Chaka Khan. We've joked about it for years, and it was great to finally end the joke and create the reality. I wanted to have-- How can I say this? Look, Chaka Khan, she's not known as a folk singer or even a gospel singer but when I brought the song to her, we do a version of Cotton Eyed Joe, it's based on a Nina Simone version, she instantly told me that it reminded her of her dad. Obviously, she grew up with music, presumably from the church, I guess.

Then with Nicole Scherzinger, she's from Hawaii, and her grandparents are native because this song I sing is a native song. I think in a lot of ways, it was maybe reaching to people who weren't as obvious and maybe just because we all have folk roots, obviously, and just trying to play with that a little bit.

Alison Stewart: I want to play the John Legend track which really gets the treatment. There are strings. Tell me about the approach to the arrangement of this song, Heading For Home.

Rufus Wainwright: This is a great song by Peggy Seeger, who is Pete Seeger's sister. She's still with us, very much so. She's one of the great banjo players of folk music. It isn't her playing on the track but it's an homage to that fact. She wrote this song called Heading For Home which has just haunted me for years. I asked John Legend to perform and he agreed. As I said, I'm hitting 50. I don't know how old John Legend is. He looks about 19 but eternally so. Nonetheless, I don't feel old or anything. The horizon is definitely starting to appear somewhat delicately.

I can relate to the subject matter of Heading For Home in a more philosophical way, shall we say.

Alison Stewart: Let's take a listen.

[MUSIC-Rufus Wainwright feat. John Legend: Heading for Home]

My face to the sky, my back to the wind

Winter is entering my bones

The day has been long and night's drawing in

And I'm thinking of heading for home

Yeah, I'm thinking of heading for home

The cradle and grave, the fruit and the seed

The seasons mirror my own

The geese flying south are calling to me

And I'm thinking of heading for home

Alison Stewart: That is Heading For Home. It's off Folkocracy, which comes out June 2nd. We've been talking about this birthday. There is this birthday concert for a good cause called 50 is not the end. It isn't the end. I'm older than you are. It isn't the end. The next decade is pretty fun. I have to tell you because you have no blanks left to give. Does this spot have a special significance is for you?

Rufus Wainwright: Though my husband and I live in LA most of the time to be close to our daughter, Viva, during COVID I had a little tiny apartment on Gramercy Park, which I adored, but it just didn't make sense to keep it anymore. We had to get rid of that. We did keep our house in Montauk which we've had for quite a while now. That is a very important place for us, mainly because I also had a very deep relationship with that town when my mother was alive and we would often go there.

Also my dad Loudon lives on Shelter Island and the Wainwright's actually a large wing of the family are from East Hampton. It's that we've just been in that area for a long time. It's good to go back there. Certainly, the Montauk Lighthouse is one of the most beautiful settings that one could ever imagine. It'll be great to be there.

Alison Stewart: That's on July 13th.

Rufus Wainwright: Yes.

Alison Stewart: You're kind enough to sit at the piano and perform for us. I know you're in the middle of this residency. I do appreciate it. What are you going to play?

Rufus Wainwright: I'm going to do Going to a Town mainly because it's on the new album. I do a version of it with the amazing Anoni. She's not with us today but I'll do it alone. Going to a town and lovely to see you.

Alison Stewart: Lovely to see you.

Rufus Wainwright: See you next time.

[MUSIC- Rufus Wainwright: Going to a Town]

I'm going to a town that has already been burned down

I'm going to a place that is already been disgraced

I'm gonna see some folks who have already been let down

I'm so tired of America

I'm gonna make it up for all of the Sunday Times

I'm gonna make it up for all of the nursery rhymes

They never really seem to want to tell the truth

I'm so tired of you America

Making my own way home

Ain't gonna be alone

I got a life to lead America

I got a life to lead

Tell me do you really think you go to hell for having loved?

Tell me and not for thinking everything that you've done is good

(I really need to know)

After soaking the body of Jesus Christ in blood

I'm so tired of America

(I really need to know)

I may just never see you again or might as well

You took advantage of a world that loved you well

I'm going to a town that has already been burned down

I'm so tired of you America

Making my own way home

Ain't gonna be alone

I got a life to lead America

I got a life to lead

I got a soul to feed

I got a dream to heed

And that's all I need

Making my own way home

Ain't gonna be alone I'm going to a town, yeah

That has already been burnt down

Alison Stewart: That was Rufus Wainwright. The new album is called Folkocracy. It comes out June 2nd. Rufus will be at Red Bank, New Jersey on June 25th; Morristown, New Jersey on June 29th; and at the Montauk Lighthouse on July 13th. Rufus, thank you so much.

Rufus Wainwright: Thank you.

 

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