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THE RICHARD THOMPSON BAND : LIVE AT CELTIC CONNECTIONS
- The Money Shuffle
- Among The Gorse, Among The Grey
- Haul Me Up
- Burning Man
- Here Comes Geordie
- Demons In Her Dancing Shoes
- Big Sun Falling In The River
- Stumble On
- Sidney Wells
- A Brother Slips Away
- If Love Whispers Your Name
- The Angels Took My Racehorse Away
- Can't Win
- One Dooor Opens
- Al Bowlly's In Heaven
- I'll Never Give It Up
- Wall Of Death
- Tear Stained Letter
- Take Care The Road You Choose
- A Man In Need
Bonus Tracks (Cambridge Folk Festival 2011) : - Uninhabited Man
- Johnny's Far Away
Label : Eagle Vision
Length : 148 minutes
Venue : Celtic Connections Festival, Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, Scotland, UK
Recording Date : January 25, 2011
Release Date : 2011
NTCS : 16:9
Review (AllAboutJazz) : In a career spanning nearly half a century, it wouldn't be unforgivable to put out the occasional duff; with a repertoire of something like 400 original songs, it wouldn't be amiss to expect a writer's pen to dull a tad with age; and with an early career as significant as Richard Thompson's, it wouldn't be beyond the pale to think that the best part of his career is behind him. But as he approaches 63, the British singer/songwriter/guitarist isn't just at the top of his game, he's released one of the best albums of his career with Dream Attic (Shout! Factory, 2010). In an unusual move for Thompson, this baker's dozen of new originals was recorded live, garnering a Grammy nomination in addition to significant critical acclaim. Not too shabby for a writer who, in his humorous, semi-autobiographical 1991 song "Now That I Am Dead" opined: Now that I have kicked the Rolling Stone has picked my records as the best there be; Now that I am boxed, they say my music rocks, it's taken on a new appeal; Too bad my genius was discovered after my coffin had been covered. The truth is that Thompson's classic Shoot Out the Lights (Rhino, 1982), his last record with soon-to-be-ex-wife Linda, was cited as #9 on Rolling Stone's "Top 100 Albums of the 1980s," despite sales that were dwarfed by its surrounding rock icons brethren. But if so many artists who achieved massive visibility early in their careers found it a challenge to, if not better, at least equal their early success, Thompson has chosen a different path. He's never had a million seller to top; instead, year-after-year, he has continued to release albums possessed of sharp insight and profound emotional depth, building a discography and career of remarkable consistency. With the number of well-known songs he's now written, he could at this stage make a perfectly good living as a nostalgia act, touring well-known songs like "Shoot Out the Lights," "I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight" and "For Shame of Doing Wrong," in addition to songs he wrote as a charter member of seminal British folk-rock group Fairport Convention, like "Meet on the Ledge" and "Now Be Thankful" (the latter co-written with fiddler Dave Swarbrick). Thompson continues to dig deep into his back catalog when he tours, but he continues to weight just as heavily on new material. It should come as no particular surprise, then, that Live at Celtic Connections, recorded during his 2011 British tour in support of Dream Attic, features plenty of material from an album already road-tested it in its entirety by his crack quintet. The first of the two sets that comprise this two-plus hour performance runs the entire album down, in fact, with the exception of the album's penultimate rocker, "Bad Again," with the balance of the performance a walk through Thompson's entire career-"our greatest hits, small 'h,'" Thompson quips after a smoking set-opener, "The Money Shuffle." Thompson digs right back to his massively unsuccessful solo debut, Henry the Human Fly (Island, 1972) for the Celtic rocker "The Angels Took My Racehorse Away," and moves forward to the thundering, four-on-the-floor "I'll Never Give Up," from Dream Attic's immediate predecessor, Sweet Warrior (Shout! Factory, 2007). If Thompson has largely left his British musical partners behind-though not entirely, the guitarist being a regular guest at Fairport Convention's annual Cropredy Festival-he's still working with one musician that dates back to Shoot Out the Lights and the legendary tour (or more accurately, according to his supporting musicians, tour from hell) that followed its release with the now-separated Thompsons. Pete Zorn played bass on that record and tour, but by the time of its follow-up, Hand of Kindness (Hannibal, 1983) he'd switched to horns, and in the ensuing years and tours he's turned into a demonic multi-instrumentalist, adding flute, mandolin and guitar to his résumé. Here, in combination with violinist/mandolinist Joel Zifkin, Zorn's sopranino sax manages to sound more like a crumhorn on the visceral "Demon in Her Dancing Shoes," while screaming with grit and grease on tenor on Hand of Kindness' Zydeco-infused "Tear Stained Letter," the ten-minute set closer that's almost as exciting from the living room couch as it must have been at Glasgow's Celtic Connection.
Review (Montreal Gazette) : With just about every solo he plays seeming like a carefully-constructed epic drama, it's still one of contemporary music's greatest mysteries that Richard Thompson isn't lauded daily as one of rock's most exciting guitarists and, let's not forget, one of its most gifted songwriters. Anyone who, after four decades, needs initiating should immediately watch his stellar performance at the Celtic Connections Festival at Glasgow's Royal Concert Hall, recorded in January 2011 and now available on DVD as The Richard Thompson Band: Live at Celtic Connections (Eagle Vision). The show captures Thompson after the tour that produced Dream Attic, the stunning live disc of new material he released in 2010. The first half of the filmed concert finds Thompson and band attacking 11 of that album's 13 songs and, incredibly, improving on them. "You can hear the band being more embedded into the music, taking a few more risks and getting a bit deeper into the groove," Thompson writes in the liner notes of the DVD. The second half of the performance goes back through the Thompson oeuvre (40-ish albums over 40 years, post-Fairport Convention) and includes both well-loved classics (Wall of Death, Tear Stained Letter) and dusted-off, deep-catalogue beauties like The Angels Took My Racehorse Away and Can't Win. The band members - Thompson, Montreal violinist Joel Zifkin, drummer Michael Jerome, bassist Taras Prodaniuk and multi-instrumentalist Pete Zorn - react to each other telepathically and blend in a wonderful alchemy throughout the concert. They stretch out leisurely on Burning Man, erupt into a free-jazz/ Celtic jig storm on Sidney Wells and get individual showcases on the jazz-grooved Al Bowlly's In Heaven. Zifkin's typically-perfect solo in Stumble On and Zorn's impassioned harmonies on Wall of Death are among many moments that make a case for this band being the best line-up Thompson has assembled. Thompson, of course, is fascinating to watch throughout the film. Chatting with the audience, telling stories and deflecting the remarks of good-natured hecklers, he seems relaxed and confident. And getting to see him at close range playing one astonishing solo after the other, all the while without grandstanding - in fact, with very little motion at all - is the DVD's greatest treat. With Thompson's instrumental virtuosity, the songwriting sometimes gets overlooked. And yet does an argument really need to be presented for latter-day, immediate classics like Big Sun Falling In the River or evergreens like A Man In Need? Thompson's local appearances in the last few years have been mostly acoustic (see a review of the most recent one here), and if you'd like a taste of that aspect of his performances, enjoy the DVD's two bonus tracks, Uninhabited Man and Johnny's Far Away, recorded at the 2011 Cambridge Folk Festival. In the end, there's enough in this full-band celebration to make you feel, even after two and a half hours, that you need more.