All in the family: Wainwright-Roche to perform in Palmer Tuesday

PALMER — Have you ever had this experience?

A friend lets you borrow a record or introduces you to a standup comedian and then, for years afterward, that person pops up all over the place. You start seeing him in old television shows you’ve seen a million times, he gives interviews on shows you’ve been watching for years.

It’s like they’re stalking you only they’re not — they were there the whole time, just unnoticed.

That was what happened to me with Loudon Wainwright III, back when I was still in college.

Wainwright, sort of a patriarch of a family of musicians, is headed to Vagabond Blues Tuesday along with his ex-wife, Suzzy Roche, and their daughter, Lucy Wainwright-Roche. The show starts at 7 p.m. Tickets are $35, available at centertix.net.

Wainwright is also brother to the singer Sloan Wainwright and father to the much-beloved singer and composer Rufus Wainwright and Martha Wainwright, whose singer-songwriter style is closer to her father’s.

My own introduction to Wainwright came at the hands of a friend of mine who has long been a major source of new music in my life. He’s the reason I was in to the Decembrists way before everyone else and why I still have a soft spot for Southern California punk rock.

My friend and I were home for the summer and he checked a couple of Wainwright’s CDs out from the Z.J. Loussac Public Library in Anchorage. We listened to them a lot. He and my other friends debated whether his goofy songs — “Dead Skunk,” “B-side” — were worthy of consideration. There was no similar debate on “Hollywood Hopeful” and his other, more serious tracks, which we all just agreed were great.

For my own part — I’ve never been all that musical — I remember feeling proud that I was paying enough attention to notice that “Red Guitar” was a song about smashing guitars that was played on a piano — Get it? He doesn’t have a guitar anymore!

Wainwright is also the soundtrack to my summer spent in South Africa and to most of my graduate school time in Los Angeles. He means a lot to me.

After that introduction that summer in Anchorage he started to pop up all over the place. At around the same time another friend and I got obsessed with the television show MASH. I’d seen all of the episodes as a kid — my brother and I would catch the 10 p.m. re-run every night when I was in sixth grade — but not since.

As I made my way through the early seasons, the songs played of the singing surgeon, “Capt. Spalding,” was familiar. Then I read the credits — Loudon Wainwright III played that part. Turns out he did a guest spot on three early episodes. He even played one of my favorite songs — “Unrequited to the Nth Degree” — as the credits started to roll on season three’s “There’s Nothing Like a Nurse.”

Since then, Wainwright has started popping up in other places. He was in a handful of episodes of “Parks and Recreation” playing a part whose real life equivalent I am all too familiar with — the loud, angry, nearly incoherent crank at a public meeting.

After my family and I binge-watched the cult favorite and oft-mourned high school comedy series “Freaks and Geeks,” I kept going and started watching Judd Apatow’s follow up series, “Undeclared.” There was Wainwright again, playing the main character’s hard working but also fun-loving, recently divorced dad.

“It’s Loudon Wainwright!” I excitedly shout whenever my trolling through Netflix produced another sighting. My wife pretends she is likewise excited.

I’m probably going to drag her to Vagabond Blues on Tuesday. Maybe she’ll have the same experience as I did of feeling like a folk singer is stalking her through the television.

Or not. Either way, I’m sure she’ll have a great time.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.