S/D: Richard Thompson

Fairport:

Unhalfbricking Liege and Lief What We Did On Our Holidays (the first three are all pretty essential really) Full House

R<:

I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight Shoot Out the Lights Pour Down Like Silver Hokey Pokey

Solo Rich:

Across a Crowded Room Hand of Kindness Small Town Romance (solo acoustic live--pretty hard to find these days, I think) Daring Adventures

I more or less lost all interest after Amnesia . . .

-Fairport Convention
Meet On The Ledge
Fotheringhay
Sailor’s Life
Genesis Hall
Who Knows Where The Time Goes
Walk Awhile
Sloth
All of Liege & Leif

-Post FC
The Poor Ditching Boy
All of I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight (except The Great Valerio)
For Shame Of Doing Wrong
Night Comes In
The Dimming Of The Day
Jet Plane In A Rocking Chair
Never Again
Calvary Cross (live)
Wall Of Death
Shoot Out The Lights*
Bogie’s Bonnie Belle
When The Spell Is Broken*
Little Blue Number*
From Galway To Graceland
Tear Stained Letter
1952 Vincent Black Lightning
Feel So Good

+ the lead guitar on Nick Drake’s The Thoughts of Mary Jane (Time Of No Reply version)

(* made it just for the guitar playing)

Sorry for losing the chronology there.

'An introduction to Richard and Linda Thompson' on Island(?) is a good starting place.

destroy: i dunno, the rest? mirror blue led to one of bob christgau's best dismissive reviews "i thought she loved me but she didn't--why does this keep happening?"

The latest, 'The Old Kit Bag', is incredible, and possibly the best combo of production and songs since 'Shoot Out The Lights'. It's honestly that good.

oh, I love Thompson. oh, and Great Valerio is SO KEY. lies!

Billy Bragg was supporting, and he was pretty good too.

those reissues are really pricey (in the states) and i am allergic to arbitrary bonus tracks.

"henry the human fly" is underrated. i like it as much as the records that followed. it is going to be reissued later this month, so head's up.

he has a sizable following in the states partly because he is a very dependable concert artist.

"Shoot Out the Lights" hasn't been mentioned much on here; it is
excellent, but the R & L sound is more 'generic' than those 72-75 records, which have a ripe, sweet feel to them that "Shoot" tramples down. It's 'mature rock'. But bloody good.

also i still have really mixed feelings about linda's voice.

i've never seen a morris dance. the illustrations of "burr men" etc. on "liege and lief" are ace. but overall my love for fairport has really waned. i like "what we did on our holidays" and "unhalfbricking" more than "l&l" i think.

Search: ALL of the live "guitar vocal," especially the smoldering workouts on "Calvary Cross" and "Night Comes In." Song favorites: "When I Get To the Border," "I'll Regret It All in the Morning," "Beeswing."

Someone needs to compile a definitive list of RT's guest appearances (actually, I'm sure some obsessive fan already has). Some nice ones: mandolin bit on John Martyn's "Over the Hill," the entire "Rise Up Like the Sun" album by the Albion Band, "Blackwaterside" off Sandy Denny's "Northstar Grassmen," "Claudy Banks" by Shirley Collins, SO many more.

Anybody rate the second French Frith Kaiser Thompson LP? I've never heard that one.

Good to hear love for 'The Old Kit Bag', which I'm still enjoying. The power trio really suits him, and it's nice to hear a Christine Collister-surrogate again. I'll Tag Along, Gethsemane, Pearly Jim, and Word Unspoken, Sight Unseen stand out the most. Mock Tudor, on the other hand, is, well, almost without redemption. It's his only album since Sunnyvista that I'd delete wholesale.

If possible, track down the live versions of When the Spell Has Broken and Aint Gonna Drag My Feet No More from the Watching The Dark collection(which should be on your x-mas list anyway).

http://www.richardthompson-music.com/catch_of_the_day.asp?id=90

That version of "Calvary Cross" must be the same one on the boxed set. "Devonside" is an amazingly sad song. "Great Valerio" is another favorite of mine.

Stupid Beastie boys lyrics without "And I got more hits than Sadaharu Oh"

Beastie's "Slow and Low" without the tempo.

Si Tu Dois Partir without the need to go

Heart emoji

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71jNo95M-dL._SY355_.jpg

If that doesn't show up, it's Live At Rock City: Nottingham 1986
Anyall heard this?

I've not heard it, but I can only assume it's great. Because Richard Thompson.

I picked up dinner somewhere last week and the guy handing me my food had a Jason Isbell shirt on. I made some small talk with him, and he told me he and a couple of folks from the restaurant had actually made a road trip out of seeing Isbell play some place down south. Maybe Knoxville? Possibly as far as Florida? Anyway, this date apparently had Richard Thompson opening, and I told the guy I suspected Isbell arranged it just to watch Thompson play every night. And the guy with my food said he and his friend were totally unfamiliar with Thompson until that night and were left absolutely speechless and for a bit confused, because it sounded like three guys on stage rather than just one.

Oh yeah. And not just any three guys. I strung out, stalking him and his acoustic guitar around the world on Youtube, 2011--12, just sitting on park benches and what not, playing clubs, and yes totally amazing. This after seeing a rerun of some cable special, a monster opera house tribute to Joni Mitchell, who was presiding in a box seat: RT and some guys dashed off a very glib (though no worse than the original) "Raised On Robbery," and The Queen frowned, but later he came back all alone, to do an incredible "Woodstock," and she actually looked impressed, nodded, *maybe* even clapped (maybe he'd gotten the word).

I *got* strung out

Recommendation for Thompson obscurity hunters:

https://www.discogs.com/Various-Hard-Cash/release/3686033

Hard Cash, Brit Folk compilation co-compiled by RT for a documentary series about work. He writes/performs 2, writes or plays on several others. Includes June Tabor, Martin Carthy, The Watersons, Gregson/Collister. Most songs good-to-great.

Richard Thompson
SUN, Sept 13, Sept 27th, & Oct 11 at 2PM PDT
Virtual Meet & Greet and Merch add-ons available

"Live From London – my Livestream Series will be three unique shows each with a completely different setlist and all professionally produced and as close to being at a live gig as we can possibly get it! The livestreams will be available for 48 hours after each show. The first show I will be playing my new EP, Bloody Noses, in full as well as classic hits. The second stream will be Fairport Convention Era music with a majority of songs from the 60’s and 70’s. The last show will be all requests so be sure to send in your requests ahead of time! I am very much looking forward to this series and I hope you can join me for one or all three shows." -Richard Thompson
More info: https://boxoffice.mandolin.com/collections/richard-thompson?rfsn=4651697.b3ce54 and https://www.richardthompson-music.com/

Oh and thanks for the xpost Hard Cash tip, Hideous Lump! Looks v. promising,

Bloody Noses, 6 songs on bandcamp:
This is an all-acoustic EP recorded at home during lockdown.
All instruments played by Richard Thompson, some harmony vocals by Zara Phillips.

"All acoustic" seems to incl. some deft use of pick-ups, something in the recording set-up allowing for some effects I associate more with per se electric guitar on strong closer "What's Up With You?", in which some of the guitars get percussive as hell, also one of 'em's tuning helps, and sounds like might be actual drums on "The Fortress," with Zara Phillips chiming in effectively on the chorus, "You had the whole world, wrapped around your fin-gah," also good on "Survivor."
Fave so far is "She's A Hard Girl To Know," which I had trouble following at first: so many details, scenes in his head, as he creeps through the rooms, putting it all together, maybe. She's still keeping him going, he knows that much.
Tunes are good, and it's all RT as hell, no surprises, but not just killing time either.
Must check some of the other stuff on here as well:
https://richardthompson.bandcamp.com/

been repeatedly blasting out Rumor & Sigh tonight, fucking sick album.

just did an hour's worth of RT electric live jams on Dublab: https://www.dublab.com/archive/radio-free-aquarium-drunkard-w-guest-chad-depasquale-10-18-20

Starts about two hours in.

Seems he's got a memoir coming out, Beeswing.

yeah just saw that was on the Rough Trade upcoming page. But I thinnk it may not be out until April.
Sounds good anyway.

Yes, that date sounds about right

Yeah---RT's 'Beeswing' Memoir - Available April 6!

Very excited to be announcing the forthcoming publication of my book ‘Beeswing’. This is a memoir of the years 1967-76, an important, turbulent and world-changing decade in music. -RT Pre-order info via this:https://mailchi.mp/richardthompson-music/richard-thompson-frets-and-refrains-2018-on-sale-604114?e=3412af6338

Also on there:
We had great fun performing the Live From London shows, that streamed online recently. We felt the audio quality was so good that we wanted to pick the best of those tracks, and release them on Bandcamp. I tried to pick an interesting and less obvious selection - hope you like the ones I chose! -RT
Bandcamp sez: from his livestream series in 2020 from Kore Studios in the UK.
Out today, Bandcamp Friday, w several sample tracks kicking it off:
https://richardthompson.bandcamp.com/album/live-from-london

By no means a Thompson completist, I've only really been slowly digging my way into his non-Fairport work over the last few years, but I picked up the first French, Frith, Kaiser & Thompson dirt cheap on a whim - this is so great! Didn't realize how much I needed Thompson's guitars with Drumbo on the kit, but I love how silly and irreverent this is.

yeah, it's a very cool record!

just started RT's memoir — really good so far. Just Fairport's 1969 seems like it could be an entire book on its own.

No doubt! Will have to get that. Reminds me that I just came across this passage in a chronicle of South Africa's Blue Notes interacting with European musos:

Now Cape Town meets Canterbury. This 2020 reissue (Dudu Phukwana & The “Spears”) from the indispensable Matsuli Music contains two albums: Dudu’s S.A.-only 1968 solo debut, which gives this package its misspelled name, plus a recently discovered session. Both feature Pukwana, McGregor, Feza, and Maholo, more S.A. expats (bassist Harry Miller, trombonist Jonas Gwangwa) and future members of the great London-based Ghanaian Afro-funk band Osibisa. Yet the newly found Joe Boyd-produced sessions add Fairport Convention guitarists Richard Thompson and Simon Nicol for freewheelin’ cross-cultural wonder. Highly swinging horn- and guitar-heavy Afro-pop and kwela grooves shed more light on Pukwana’s melodic brightness and his ability to bridge continental gaps without sacrificing personality.
--From:
https://daily.bandcamp.com/lists/blue-notes-south-african-jazz-guide?utm_source=footer

Xpost

“A Blind Step Away” is easily in my all time top ten RT songs

That's a great one, also love "Drowned Black Dog Night". The whole thing is really great though, so many unexpected moments - I love how the "Surfin U.S.A." cover starts out pretty straight before going completely off the rails when the backing vocals kick in. The CD reissue adds a couple of other terrific songs, including "DrumBo Ogie", essentially an excuse for Drumbo to have a solo, and ends with cover of Willie Dixon's "The Same Thing" that is surprisingly straight-faced, considering the rest of the album.

"DrumBo Ogie" is a great song title.

There’s a live recording out there of French Frith Kaiser Thompson, maybe the only live show they did? It is great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcRlcdbDpTk

The first FFKT album is really one of my all-time favorites (and I discovered it by chance... it was misfiled at Amoeba, decades ago).

Watch for Roy Eldridge - "Little Jazz!" - around the two minute mark, which segment was deleted in the South for some reason back in the day.

Frets and Refrains, RT's guitar and songwriting camp, is back for its 10th Anniversary, in 2022:
...We hope you will be able to join us for what should be a special year. We will be joined by a couple of our most popular teachers from the past, Martin Simpson and Jill Sobule, and we will have our regular instructors, Happy Traum, Sloan Wainwright, Teddy Thompson, Jack Thompson, Zak Hobbs, Bobby Eichorn, Simon Tassano, and Annaliese Tassano. We are also expecting some very special guests to drop by!

We are proud of the community that has built up over this decade of camp, and love the fact that you can learn so much from fellow attendees, and that the atmosphere is supportive of every level of skill. The setting is Full Moon resort, in the picturesque Catskill Mountains, the food is excellent, and if you are any level of singer, songwriter or guitarist, we guarantee you will come away enriched and buzzing with ideas!

I hope you will join us.

Best wishes,

Richard Thompson
and the Thompson family, Zak, Teddy and Jack
More info and links:
https://mailchi.mp/richardthompson-music/richard-thompson-frets-and-refrains-2018-on-sale-604126?e=3412af6338

Any of yall heard Serpent's Tears? Only one track streaming freely here: https://richardthompson.bandcamp.com/

For 40th Anniversary of Shoot Out The Lights, two sets of R&T w Simon Nicol etc. in NYC, at the Lone Star: https://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/post/678799150803042304/richard-linda-thompson-lone-star-cafe-nyc

Richard Thompson
@RthompsonMusic
The 45th Anniversary re-issue of RT’s 1976 Collection of Rarities with Fairport Convention, Linda Thompson, and solo will be releasing 3/25.

This remastered vinyl will also contain a download card and is available for pre-order from RT’s UK store now at http://richardthompson-music.com/ukstorevinyl

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FOaHLTpXMAEjMFO?format=jpg&name=medium

Also, No Quarter is reissuing his soundtrack to Grizzly Man on May 6th:

Excited to announce a reissue of Richard Thompson's masterful soundtrack to Grizzly Man available May 6th on CD, LP and digital formats. Music From Grizzly Man is a remastered/repackaged set containing all of the music Thompson recorded for the Werzer Herzog-directed documentary about life and death in the Alaskan wilderness. Comprised of both solo compositions and material recorded in chamber setting, with Jim O’Rourke (piano, guitar), Danielle DeGruttola (cello), Damon Smith (upright bass) and John Hanes (percussion) joining Thompson to create tenderly detailed melodies and quietly visceral improvisations. The solo recordings are intimate meditations – from the acoustic opener “Tim & The Bears” to the long night of “Treadwell No More,” a harrowing darkness in slicing treble and tremolo shiver.

https://richardthompson.bandcamp.com/album/music-from-grizzly-man

So Beeswing is out in paperback, and Terry Gross is talking to RT, even got him singing "Adieu, Adieu" (he's in a carpark, birdwatching)--stream, download, even read:
https://www.npr.org/2022/04/20/1093709649/fairport-convention-band-cofounder-richard-thompson-looks-back-on-his-life-in-mu Also, "you have a drone and melody and not an awful lot of saying what the chord is. And just drone and melody is a very old tradition. A lot of pipe music, bagpipe music from all around the world - it's basically drone and melody. So it's a very ancient thing. And you don't have to develop that into a chord structure necessarily. You can keep that ambiguity going. So in Fairport, eventually we really tried to do a lot more of that." Short excerpts, but good assortment so far. Going to break with "1952 Vincent Black Lightning."

Wow, this is intense. And lucid as hell.

Re "Adieu Adieu": there's a lovely version by Eliza Carthy that I rather like.

She's using the same melody as Thompson but it's an appealingly bonkers arrangement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kP1-4RZJN-M

I interviewed Richard Thompson! https://aquariumdrunkard.com/2022/05/05/richard-thompson-the-aquarium-drunkard-interview-2/

Excellent interview

Seconded!

Thirded! That was great!

Anyone have any idea why Daring Adventures doesn't appear to be streaming?

Great read. Thanks Tyler!

Beeswing so good, although maybe it goes bad at the end as he described.

Awesome.

Great interview. I recently picked up the expanded version of Dudu Pukwana's first solo album from 1968 or so, which has a whole extra disc of outtakes that includes a session with Thompson playing guitar. I guess he knew that whole crew of South African musicians working in London at the time, they introduced him to township music. You can tell listening to it that he's a bit out of his element, mostly plays kind of ragged rhythm parts. Certainly not his best playing but fun to hear.

yeah that is a great record — though yeah, Richard is pretty subdued on it, might not know it was him if he wasn't in the credits. I think Joe Boyd was involved with the Blue Notes, later got Chris McGregor to play on Bryter Later.

Yeah, thanks for interview T--also came across this last spring:

I just came across this passage in a chronicle of South Africa's Blue Notes interacting with European musos:

Now Cape Town meets Canterbury. This 2020 reissue (Dudu Phukwana & The “Spears”) from the indispensable Matsuli Music contains two albums: Dudu’s S.A.-only 1968 solo debut, which gives this package its misspelled name, plus a recently discovered session. Both feature Pukwana, McGregor, Feza, and Maholo, more S.A. expats (bassist Harry Miller, trombonist Jonas Gwangwa) and future members of the great London-based Ghanaian Afro-funk band Osibisa. Yet the newly found Joe Boyd-produced sessions add Fairport Convention guitarists Richard Thompson and Simon Nicol for freewheelin’ cross-cultural wonder. Highly swinging horn- and guitar-heavy Afro-pop and kwela grooves shed more light on Pukwana’s melodic brightness and his ability to bridge continental gaps without sacrificing personality.
--From:
https://daily.bandcamp.com/lists/blue-notes-south-african-jazz-guide?utm_source=footer

― dow, Monday, April 12, 2021

Yep! That's the one I just picked up on vinyl. Great, great stuff. The best is on the officially released album, but the outtakes are really good too.

great interview!

From Post-Fahey thread---thanks Evan!

https://richardthompson.bandcamp.com/album/music-from-grizzly-man/

Great stuff

― Evan, Friday, May 6, 2022

Oh, very welcome! It's a beautiful record.