It was one of those rare instances where what was happening outside the concert venue was reflected in what the artist was performing inside.
Richard Thompson was barely two songs into his solo acoustic show at Town Hall last night when he made mention of the Occupy Wall Street protesters less than a block away at Times Square--45 of whom were arrested.
"People are out marching in the streets!" the renowned singer-songwriter-guitarist said, raising a fist in his gentle, nonthreatening way to sustained applause from most of the audience. He then introduced his next song, "The Money Shuffle," as "the other side of the story," being from the point-of-view of a hedge fund manager.
"I think they deserve a voice!" Thompson continued tongue-in-cheek, adding that the song, which is the lead track from his current album Dream Attic, provides information as to "where your money has gone--and it has gone!" (Sample lyric: "Come on and do the Money Shuffle/I've got you right there where I want you/Come on and do the Money Shuffle/Can't find your money if you want to.")
Otherwise, Thompson employed a very funny gimmick he's introduced for his current U.S. tour: With 17 of his album titles written on scraps of paper placed in one of his trademark berets, he randomly picked one, having promised to do a few songs from the designated album. It turned out to be an easy one in his landmark 1982 Shoot Out The Lights album with then wife Linda Thompson, from which he performed the titletrack, "Back Street Slide" and "Just The Motion" (he did the disc's "Wall Of Death" later in the set).
While the superb set included favorites like "1952 Vincent Black Lightning," "I Feel So Good" and "Crawl Back (Under My Stone)" (impishly tagged at the end with a bit of "In the Hall of the Mountain King"), as well as a sing-along version of the more recent "Johnny's Far Away," Thompson did a bit of "proselytizing" for a late friend toward the end of the set.
Seeking greater recognition for the great vocalist Sandy Denny, who sang her classic song "Who Knows Where The Time Goes?" in the seminal British folk-rock band Fairprot Convention of which he, too, was a key part, Thompson submitted his own take. Admitting that his rendition of "Who Knows Where The Time Goes?"--which became an album titletrack for Judy Collins--would suffer in comparison, Thompson nevertheless turned in a lovely version, and while his crowd no doubt knew well of the tragic Denny, who died in 1978, he said that if he was able to lead anyone to amazon.com in search of her recordings, "my job has been done."
Incidentally, Thompson's wife Nancy Covey's Festival Tours International music tour company will be taking a group to Fairport Convention's annual Cropredy Festival in England's Oxfordshire countryside near the tiny village of Cropredy. The Aug. 9-11 festival marks the 45th anniversary of Fairport Convention.
And give it up for opener Sarah Jarosz' stellar solo opening set. Her mix of old-timey banjo tunes and contemporary singer-songwriter acoustic guitar originals--and a tribute to Paul Simon's 70th birthday via his "Kathy's Song"--was perfect.
[The Examiner contributed an essay to the booklet included in Walking On A Wire: Richard Thompson (1968-2009).]
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