Loudon Wainwright III has been writing songs about the specific discomforts of being alive — the marriages that fray, the children who disappoint, the deaths that keep arriving — since 1968. He turns 80 this fall, and he is marking it the way he always has: by playing rooms where the songs can do their work up close. He comes to Caffe Lena ten days before a formal 80th Birthday Jubilee at Town Hall in New York City.
About the Show
Wainwright’s career spans more than 30 albums and a tonal range that moves from mordant comedy to genuine grief without losing its footing. The 1972 novelty hit “Dead Skunk” sent him to the Top 20 and established the deadpan sensibility that has run through his catalog ever since; the Grammy-winning High Wide & Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project (2009) showed what he could do when he turned that same attention toward traditional American music. Johnny Cash, Bonnie Raitt, Earl Scruggs, and his son Rufus Wainwright have all recorded his songs. He published a memoir, Liner Notes, in 2017, and his one-man show Surviving Twin became a Netflix special produced by Judd Apatow and directed by Christopher Guest. His latest release, Loudon Live in London, catches up with where he is now: Caffe Lena describes his concerts as “intimate conversations as much as performances, filled with unforgettable stories.”
Caffe Lena is presenting two consecutive nights, September 2 and 3, and this first show opens with Emily Barnes, a contemporary folk singer-songwriter from Johnsonburg, New Jersey, a town of fewer than 100 people, where she began writing songs on the stone steps of a 200-year-old house. Her 2025 Hey Nonny Songwriting Contest win came on the strength of her song “Comets”; she also won the 2026 COMBO Music Songwriting Contest and has been a finalist at the Kerrville Folk Festival. She has been described as a storyteller who “sets the lives of her characters to music,” and on a bill with Wainwright, that description lands differently: two writers working the same territory, decades apart.
Venue & Logistics
Caffe Lena is a 110-seat folk club on Phila Street in Saratoga Springs, one of the capital region‘s essential listening rooms. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.
Tickets
Tickets are $65.07 general admission, $59.65 for Caffe Lena members, and $32.53 for children and students, fees included. A livestream through Caffe Lena TV is available for $5, with all proceeds going directly to the artists. Buy tickets