Richard Thompson, Aladdin Theater, Portland, Oregon, USA (7 October, 2005)
He could have quit after "King of Bohemia" and I'd have gone home feeling quite blessed and transported. It was the fourth song in a two-hour concert by the unparalleled English guitarist and singer-songwriter Richard Thompson, and only one of many high points.
Thompson began his current tour on the American West Coast playing in an acoustic duo with double-bassist Danny Thompson (no relation). Except for some time off for illness, Danny has been Richard's bassist on duo and band tours and in the studio for about a dozen years now, and the unspoken communication between the two makes for some extraordinary music. Both are steeped in English roots music -- Richard having co-founded the groundbreaking Fairport Convention when he was still a teenager and Danny having played in the seminal folk-rock combo Pentangle -- and both are equally at home with various American roots forms as well, including rock, rockabilly, country and jazz.
Thompson is touring, supposedly, in support of his latest release, the mostly solo, mostly acoustic Front Parlour Ballads. But he only performed four of the baker's dozen tracks on the CD, and spent the rest of the nearly two hours (including two encores) exploring his extensive catalog. He included songs from the '70s ("Withered and Died," "Hokey Pokey," and "Wall of Death," all from his Richard-and-Linda period) and the '80s ("Al Bowlly's In Heaven," "When the Spell is Broken," and "Ghosts In The Wind"), but mostly focused on the '90s and '00s, including songs from his two most recent studio releases, 1999's Mock Tudor and 2003's Old Kit Bag, as well as Ballads. He also tossed in a couple of his recent unreleased novelty numbers, "Alexander Graham Bell" and "Hots For the Smarts," the latter an entendre-laden paean to brainy women. And there was another song, unrecorded as yet, a Celtic-flavoured ballad perhaps titled "Johnny's On the Rolling Sea," detailing the steely-eyed unfaithfulness of an Irish fisherman's wife with a ceilidh musician.
"King of Bohemia," from 1994's Mirror Blue, is one of Thompson's saddest and most beautiful ballads. It's a love song of sorts, and a prayer, but mostly a somber meditation on the hard life facing a young person. Named for a pub he frequented in his Fairport days, it asks in its chorus, "Did your dreams die young/were they too hard won/did you reach too high and fall?" In its simplicity, the song spoke of the brief but beautiful nature of all life.
He followed that with a stunning arrangement of the catchy "One Door Opens" from Kit Bag. The interplay between guitar and bass on this intricate song was a wonder to behold.
Thompson should by now have a patent on the trick of playing his acoustic guitar with a combination of flat- and finger-picking so that it sounds like three guitar players going at once. He can hold an audience's attention indefinitely by himself, and with the addition of Danny's sympathetic bass-playing, can blow many much larger acoustic ensembles off the stage. Over the past decade or so he's also taken to drawing out song endings with a combination of vocal and instrumental improvisation so that none of the songs come off like sparse acoustic arrangements of numbers intended for a full band. He's pretty much a whole band in himself, now vocally as well as instrumentally.
The Ballads songs he did play -- "For Whose Sake," "Let It Blow," "My Soul, My Soul" and "Old Thames Side" were a good fit with the rest of the material. He's still able to perform his best known "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" with great verve, and nicely revived old chestnuts like "Hokey Pokey." His version of "Al Bowlly" was more stripped-down than the last few times I've heard it, and gained poignance in the reworking. "Jimmy Shands" was fun as usual, especially the way he can play accordian polkas on the guitar. And "Ghosts in the Wind" has never been a favorite of mine, but I loved watching Danny play on this one. The two have worked out quite an intense arrangement of this atmospheric song that lends it a good deal of power.
Thankfully for his hard-core fans around the world, Richard Thompson shows no signs of slowing down. Go see this man and his guitar if you get the chance.
