I'm starting a new thread for songs written by Richard Thompson as a solo artist, separate from the existing Fairport Convention/Dave Swarbrick thread, as his solo material is quite different in character -- your chance to post that smoking mandolin version of "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" that you've worked up! I've recorded a couple of songs from the Richard Thompson songbooks published last year, originally with the intention of using them as backing tracks to see if I can sing these songs. Turns out I can't -- my singing voice is so horribly out of key that I won't expose anybody to the risk of permanent damage to their hearing... So, I've uploaded them as instrumentals instead. If you have a better singing voice than me, feel free to use them as karaoke tracks -- the key, timing and phrasing is like on the original studio recordings, so they'll work just fine as pre-recorded backing tracks. 1. "Never Again" (From the album Hokey Pokey, 1975, but really written in 1969 as an expression of grief when Thompson's then-girlfriend died in a car crash in which he himself was injured): 2. "She Cut Off Her Long Silken Hair" (From the album "You? Me? Us?", 1996) -- clearly, only Pre-Raphaelite paintings will do for the video! I left out one verse to keep the track reasonably short, so if you want to sing along, it's the first verse, bridge, third verse and coda. Martin
Here's one of my favorites by Richard recorded about 1 year ago. On second listen I think I did this WAY too fast. http://youtu.be/cvvUVAamxZQ
At the risk of making this thread guitar-heavy, here's my 2008 version of the same one :-) I really must try this out on tenor guitar or mandolin...
Thanks, Will and Michael -- Dimming Of The Day is a great song and sounds good in just about any version, and Will's arrangement (and playing) in particular is stunning. To counterbalance the guitar presence that has crept into the thread, I have today recorded a mandolin and tenor guitar version of that tune. I think I have the tempo about right -- it's easy to creep up in speed, but for full effect it needs a lot of space to breathe. Apologies for obvious choice of pictures for the slide show in my video -- there are lots of sunset pictures out there and I've put a few together to accompany the tune. Martin
Very nice, Martin - the mandolin and tenor sound great together, and the tempo and tone are just right.v
Here's another Richard Thompson song, played as transcribed in Vol. 2 of the official RT songbook edited by Maartin Allcock -- Waltzing's For Dreamers, played on Ajr and tenor guitar: Martin
