Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Gethsemane
2. Jealous Words
3. I'll Tag Along
4. A Love You Can't Survive
5. Open Door Breathes
6. First Breath
7. She Said it was Destiny
8. I've Got No Right to Have it All
9. Pearly Jim
10. Word Unspoken, Sight Unseen
11. Outside of the Inside
12. Happy Days and Auld Lang Syne

Disc 2:

1. So Ben Mi Ca Bon Tempo (Orazio Vecchi, Arr. R. Thompson)
2. Kiss (Prince)
3. Richard Thompson BBC Documentary Footage

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #114540 in Music
• Released on: 2003-05-06
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Enhanced

Album Description
Thompson is one of the master musicians & storytellers of the 60s British rock scene. Seminal releases with Fairport Convention & 30+ years of solo albums & assorted collaborations (Zeppelin, Hendrix, Floyd, Bonnie Raitt, etc.) mark an eclectic & uncompromising career. This, his first studio record since 1999, is an intimate, smoky album of narrative songs, recorded as a trio with minimal overdubs, & allowing him to show off his guitar playing. Includes a free bonus disc with 2 exclusive audio tracks 'So Ben Mi Ca Bon Tempo' & 'Kiss' (Prince) plus a 2 minute 40 second Quicktime clip taken from the BBC documentary on Richard entitled 'A Solitary Life'. Cooking Vinyl. 2003.

Amazon.com
After a string of slick albums that de-emphasized his folk-rock past, The Old Kit Bag marks a return to Thompson's indie-label roots. Produced by John Chelew (John Hiatt, Blind Boys of Alabama), it was recorded quickly with a minimum of overdubs and just a handful of musicians (double-bassist Danny Thompson, drummer Michael Jerome, and background vocalist Judith Owen). Fortunately, this spare approach serves Thompson well because he's such a strong and varied songwriter plus a remarkably distinctive guitarist. Longtime fans will likely gravitate to the musical equivalents of comfort food--the weepy ballad "Happy Days and Auld Lang Syne," the revved-up rocker "I'll Tag Along," and the brooding melancholy of "First Breath." Yet subsequent listens reveal the subtler charms of a gorgeous jazz-pop ballad, "I've Got No Right to Have It All," and the righteous anger of "Outside of the Inside," on which Thompson, a devout Muslim, attacks the moral emptiness of religious fanaticism. Thirty-five years after his debut with Fairport Convention, Thompson proves that he's yet to exhaust his store of ideas or his will to challenge himself and others. --Keith Moerer

Customer Reviews

Beyond Category
A prefatory disclaimer: I'm wholly in the tank for Richard Thompson. Have been for 20 years. I have everything he's done but the fan club stuff and the most obscure sides as a supporting player (and wouldn't rate anything at less than 3 stars). I have heard most of these songs over the past 9 months in three live performances and am in the position - not unusual, but unusual for me - of knowing, and loving, a body of music before I'd heard the artist's recordings of his own work. I am not an impartial witness.

And I love this album. In its variety, spareness, emotional intensity, and simple beauty, it rivals any single album Thompson has done since the fabled Shoot Out the Lights. I have seen some reviews that describe The RT Band of this recording as a "power trio" a la Cream or Mountain (sic) (I know - a quartet). If one had only heard the second track, the scalding "Jealous Words," one might credibly carry this point. But Thompson here displays all his influences - Celtic, Scottish, Middle Eastern, American (jazz, blues, rock, pop) Caribbean - in brilliantly realized, lapidary tracks. And The Old Kit Bag also has Thompson's obligatory shot - two very good ones, actually -at a commercial single (the haunting "Gethsemene" and the rousing "She Said It Was Destiny").

Fans expecting guitar pyrotechnics - Thompson's signature wheeling, careering, soaring, jagged figures and explorations - are unlikely to be disappointed, but little here would qualify as fiery and, throughout, Thompson exhibits an extraordinary, albeit dense and imaginative, restraint. This I must attribute to the spare format and the tasteful production of John Chelew (Los Lobos, Blind Boys of Alabama), who put Thompson's boundless good musical taste on excellent display with the minimum take sessions. This recording also marks Thompson's first outing on an Indie label, Cooking Vinyl/spinArt, and he is well served by the connection (the packaging is attractive and useful),

A few other tracks require special citation: the chilling "Outside of the Inside" might be heard either as lambasting of Islamic extremism or, oddly, as an attempt to render the Taliban perspective sympathetically - Thompson is a convert to Sufi Islam. In light of his own comments on the extremists, however, the former perspective is the accurate one. In the disarming "One Door Opens," Thompson bounces along (in duetto with Judith Owen, another of his madrigal-clear accompanying voices) in a lively theme, but the lyrics are typically, acerbically Thompsonesque - it's tripping, exceedingly tuneful performance that will stay in your head. Long time collaborator, acoustic-bassist Danny Thompson (no relation) gives a lovely account of his art (the production here is particularly good - you can hear the resonant wood, and on several tracks - particularly "A Love You Can't Survive" - DT plays arco most movingly).

The US release of The Old Kit Bag also has a "bonus CD" that includes two tracks from Thompson's "1000 Years of Popular Song" roadshow, which he has recently committed to CD (at a nearly prohibitive price) and a Quicktime short clip from a BBC documentary, "A Solitary Life." This is marketing, true, but one of these sides, "So Ben Mi Ca Bon Tempo," from late Medieval-early Renaissance Italy, features bravura Thompson lute work (on guitar); the other song is Prince's "Kiss" (a hoot). (He also performs Brittney's "Whoops" on the full CD).

This is mature, densely concentrated, tannic, and long-finishing Richard Thompson. Devotees will be thrilled. Newcomers will be stunned. "Imagine encountering," wrote Kurt Loder in Rolling Stone 20 years ago in a review that sent me straight to the record shop, "here in the Eighties, someone who had never heard of Jimi Hendrix, who had never been moved by the great singers and session groups of golden-age Motown, or who, by whatever unimaginable means, had managed to remain incognizant of the collected musical masterworks of Lennon and McCartney...And yet, how many Americans remain unaware of the work of Richard Thompson, the richly gifted guitarist, songwriter and singer." Spot on, but, alas, this statement still stands. Brilliant songwriter. The most distinctive and imaginative guitarist on record. A singer of power and emotional subtlety.

Earlier this week I heard Richard Thompson in Washington D.C., in a refurbished theater - Club 9:30, the city's premier alternative venue - off U Street, in the heart of Ellington Country. All I kept thinking of in that context was Ellington's famous superlative: "beyond category." So it is. The Old Kit Bag is another Richard Thompson gem.

gorgeous stuff
Richard Thompson is so far ahead of the game when it comes to songwriting, guitar-playing and general musicianship it can seem downright unfair. For those of us who have been listening to him for years, it also sets the bar extraordinarily high any time he embarks on a new project because our expectations are inevitably sky-high. It took a few listens for me to become truly enthused by this album, but at this point I can say my initial wariness was merely a symptom of the material's complexity and consistent ambition. Word Unspoken, Sight Unseen and I'll Tag Along were the songs I found most accessible; Jealous Words and Outside of the Inside the ones I had to work a bit to love, not just admire. Now I'm a fan of them all. The production on this album is even more pared down than its immediate predecessor, Mock Tudor, but just as fresh and uncluttered; it buzzes with much of the energy of Thompson's legendary live performances. Judith Owen's backup vocals are particularly welcome; I'm one who thinks Thompson's voice can do with a bit of leavening from time to time, and he hasn't duetted this serenely since the Linda era.

Quite a few reviewers here have wrestled with the question of where this album ranks in the Thompson oeuvre. But honestly, who cares? This is gorgeous stuff, dense, layered, immensely satisfying, like a bottle of wine from the Arabian Nights you can keep drinking and never exhaust. One of the pleasures of Thompson's broad grasp of music and musical history is that he can sound groundbreaking for 2003, or groundbreaking circa 1596, or even -- strange, but true -- both of these at the same time. Richard Thompson is truly a minstrel in rocker's clothing, and Old Kit Bag, like so much of his work, is both playful and dark, as sweet as it is weighed down by the accumulated melancholy of centuries. Oops, he hath done it again.

Fantastic work, highly recommended
Admittedly, I am a huge Richard Thompson fan, so I am clearly biased towards anything that he releases. However, if you've ever seen him live you could not possibly come away a non-fan. Anyhow, while I would rate almost any of his previous albums at least 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 stars, 'The Old Kit Bag' is definitely a 5-star effort, perhaps his best ever. And why shouldn't it be? He keeps getting better with age. His baritone voice and his unique guitar style is on fine display on every track, and with Danny Thompson on string bass, Michael Jerome on drums and Judith Owen on occasional background vocals, it's amazing the fullness and variety of musicality they manage to produce. What I've always enjoyed about his guitar soloing style is how he covers the whole fretboard but seems to focus more on the lower notes than other guitarists yielding a richness in tone that helps give his style its fingerprint. From the full-tilt rockers to the more acoustic-textured songs, you can listen to this over and over and discover something new each time. Everybody should hear this recording. And don't forget the two 'cover' tracks on the Bonus disk that are also excellent.