IT'S ANOTHER day in the life of a Wainwright. Lunchtime in Manhattan and Lucy Wainwright Roche has just been to visit her friend and "his 40-year-old monkey who used to be an actor". Now she's off to see her mother, folk singer Suzzy Roche, in Greenwich Village. Wait a minute, now she's bumped into her father, Loudon Wainwright III, on the doorstep, dropping off his guitar before the show they're playing together tonight. While we chat, I hear him strumming in the next ro
"Hi dad, I'm doing an interview but she's asking about you, right?" I can tell her eyes are rolling, though only in jest because she, like all the Wainwrights, likes nothing better than a chinwag about the Wainwrights. "He says to tell you he's fine,
thanks," she says. If Kate and Anna McGarrigle, and Kate's children, Martha and Rufus Wainwright, were to show up now for a family jam, which happens all the time, the picture would be complete.
Martha and Rufus are Wainwright Roche's half siblings, and she is the latest to join the family business. She was the rebellious one who turned her back on folk music to – shock, horror – become a teacher. "I didn't have a lot of interest in doing music," says the 27-year-old. "I'd had enough of it, surrounded by it all the time. Also I was really shy and didn't like to talk or be on stage. Now, I can't stop talking."
Lasting four years in the classroom, she was beckoned out on the road by her brother when he asked her to sing with him one evening in New York. When he saw how much she loved it he told her to go home, pack her bags and be ready to leave in two hours. "I ended up on tour with him for a month," says Wainwright Roche.
Having stopped teaching, she then released two EPs and is now working on her album, has gigs lined up opening for Rufus, Neko Case, and Madeleine Peyroux, and is about to come to the UK for her first headline tour. "The first time I came to the UK it was supporting my dad and the second time it was Eddi Reader," she says. "She bought me nine stuffed Highland cow toys. I'm a big fan of the Highland cow."
This time Wainwright Roche will travel with only her guitar on the back seat for company. "I'm a little worried because I'm going to be driving on the other side of the road for the first time," she admits. Hopefully, she jokes, she'll make it to Scotland.
It was 2007 when she went on tour with her father for the first time. "I didn't grow up with my dad – my parents broke up when I was two," she says. "Since we've started touring together we've got to know each other better."
She was two when she started going on the road with her mother and her aunts, who formed folk trio The Roches. "I toured with them all the summers, weekends and holidays," she says. "I got to travel, be with my mum – I had everything I could possibly need. It was like the ideal family vacation."
She saw Rufus and Martha during the holidays. "They would come to New York and I thought they were the best thing ever. My sister and I used to play a game called the Human Body Restaurant. One of us would be the waitress and one would be the patron and order things like eyeballs with fried hair. We thought it was hilarious."
While Rufus' sound is lush and operatic and Martha's raw and country influenced, Wainwright Roche has a sweet, more traditional folk voice. "One of the blessings of our family is we all sound different so we're not stepping on each other's toes," she says. "For a long time I worried about what family members would think of my songwriting but the truth is everyone's into their own thing. They're not worried about your songs – they're worried about their own songs."
Growing up, Wainwright Roche was influenced by her family's folk music but she also loved Tracy Chapman and Joni Mitchell. "And I'm a big Eminem fan," she says. "I do a cover of his song, Cleaning Out My Closet. I've only ever done it in private, with family members. It's a very vicious song about his mother – a lot of people in my family request it." v
Lucy Wainwright Roche plays Glastonbury, 28 June; Glasgow Brel, 1 July; and Dunfermline Carnegie Hall, 2 July
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