Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega & Loudon Wainwright III - Songwriters' Circle, BBC, London, Britain, 9-26-2010

In my constant search for more BBC material, I've come across some unusual things. Such as this. It's a concert where Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega, and Loudon Wainwright III were all on stage the whole time together and took turns playing their own songs. But the other two didn't just sit and listen when it wasn't their turn. They'd practiced some in advance, or often sang or played guitar. Thompson, in particular, is an excellent lead guitar player and frequently added his guitar skills to the songs by the other two. It's a very interesting three-way musical interaction by three great musical artists.

Apparently, this "songwriter's circle" is something the BBC has been doing since at least the 1990s. The format is always the same, bringing three musicians together to take turns playing songs. I'll try to post more, but these are hard to find since they don't get the interest a show by just one artist does, yet they aren't various artists shows with tons of different acts either. If you have any others, please let me know.

This show is officially unreleased. But, as you'd expect from the BBC, the sound quality is excellent. You can watch the whole thing on YouTube.

This album is an hour and four minutes long.

00 talk (Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega & Loudon Wainwright III)
01 Keep Your Distance (Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega & Loudon Wainwright III)
02 talk (Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega & Loudon Wainwright III)
03 Marlena on the Wall (Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega & Loudon Wainwright III)
04 talk (Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega & Loudon Wainwright III)
05 One Man Guy (Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega & Loudon Wainwright III)
06 talk (Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega & Loudon Wainwright III)
07 1952 Vincent Black Lightning (Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega & Loudon Wainwright III)
08 talk (Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega & Loudon Wainwright III)
09 Luka (Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega & Loudon Wainwright III)
10 talk (Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega & Loudon Wainwright III)
11 Dead Man (Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega & Loudon Wainwright III)
12 talk (Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega & Loudon Wainwright III)
13 Down Where the Drunkards Roll (Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega & Loudon Wainwright III)
14 talk (Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega & Loudon Wainwright III)
15 Frank and Ava (Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega & Loudon Wainwright III)
16 talk (Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega & Loudon Wainwright III)
17 House (Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega & Loudon Wainwright III)
18 talk (Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega & Loudon Wainwright III)
19 I Feel So Good (Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega & Loudon Wainwright III)
20 talk (Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega & Loudon Wainwright III)
21 Gypsy (Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega & Loudon Wainwright III)
22 talk (Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega & Loudon Wainwright III)
23 Be Careful There's a Baby in the House (Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega & Loudon Wainwright III)
24 talk (Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega & Loudon Wainwright III)
25 Genesis Hall (Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega & Loudon Wainwright III)
26 talk (Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega & Loudon Wainwright III)
27 Tom's Diner (Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega & Loudon Wainwright III)
28 talk (Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega & Loudon Wainwright III)
29 The Swimming Song (Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega & Loudon Wainwright III)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/hQyE2EPR

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/3JqRJz51dA7539w/file

The album cover is a screenshot taken from a high quality video of this concert. I used Photoshop to make some adjustments. From left to right: Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega, and Loudon Wainwright III. 

Various Artists - Can't Be Here Now - Mother's Day Special Home Concert, 5-10-2020

In late March 2020, singer songwriter Billy Bragg wrote a song about the difficulty of being separated from loved ones during the coronavirus pandemic lockdown. He called it "Can't Be There Today," and posted it on YouTube. From that, he came up with the idea to have a special home concert on Mother's Day, May 10, 2020, to help people celebrate that day in these weird times. The concert is named "Can't Be Here Now" as a play on that song title.

A lot of the best singer songwriter types joined in, recording one or two songs from wherever they happened to be hunkered down, and then sending in their videos. So I think this is unique in my music collection in that this "concert" has no fixed single location. Some of the musicians spoke a little bit before or after their songs, and others didn't. Most of the songs have some connection to a mother's day or at least a mother theme, but a few do not. It's a pretty loose gathering of performances, with no fixed rules.

No less than seven of the artists are ones that I've posted albums of here at this blog: Mary Chapin Carpenter, Rosanne Cash, the Indigo Girls, Jorma Kaukonen, Joan Osborne, KT Tunstall, and Loudon Wainwright III. There are some other big names for this type of music as well, such as Bragg, Steve Earle, Rufus Wainwright, and Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields. I have to confess that I wasn't that familiar with the others, but hopefully if you listen to this you'll discover some new artists, just as I have.

Since this is a collection of home recorded videos, the audio quality is variable. I did my best to adjust the volume and improve the mix whenever I could. The result is pretty good overall. But there were a couple of significant problems I couldn't fix. Valerie June recorded her song in the great outdoors. That looked nice on video, but late in the song a big gust of wind came along and blew on the microphone for about thirty seconds, rendering that part of the song unlistenable. Luckily, it was just a repeat of the chorus, so I was able to salvage the song by editing that part out. Some of her talking had to be cut out due to more wind.

Also, the Indigo Girls played their best known song "Closer to Fine." But the vocals of the lead vocalist Emily Saliers was way down in the mix compared to the guitar and the other vocalist Amy Ray. I couldn't do anything to fix that, so it's a rather unusual version.

The concert is nearly two hours long. If you don't like some of the artists and/or songs, you can edit your version down to just the ones you do like, and you'll probably still have a fairly lengthy album.

Oh, and by the way, I just posted the fourth of Norah Jones's home concert albums a day ago. It turns out I missed including one song and got the name of another song wrong. So if you've downloaded that one, I recommend you do it again, now that I've fixed those things.

01 Can't Be There Today (Billy Bragg)
02 The Sunken Lands (Rosanne Cash)
03 talk (Fink)
04 My Love's Already There (Fink)
05 Buckets of Rain (Joan Osborne)
06 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
07 White Winos (Loudon Wainwright III)
08 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
09 Oedipus Rex (Loudon Wainwright III)
10 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
11 talk (Todd Snider)
12 Enjoy Yourself (Todd Snider)
13 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
14 Late for Your Life (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
15 talk (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
16 A Heart Needs a Home (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
17 talk (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
18 talk (Andrew Bird)
19 What Shall I Feel My Love (Andrew Bird)
20 talk (KT Tunstall)
21 I Want You Back (KT Tunstall)
22 talk (KT Tunstall)
23 Black Horse and the Cherry Tree (KT Tunstall)
24 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
25 I Am the Light of This World (Jorma Kaukonen)
26 talk (Amy Helm)
27 Sing to Me (Amy Helm)
28 talk (Amy Helm)
29 Yakety Yak (Amy Helm)
30 talk (Mountain Goats)
31 Love Cuts the Strings (Mountain Goats)
32 talk (Mountain Goats)
33 talk (Steve Earle)
34 Devil's Right Hand (Steve Earle)
35 talk (Stella Donnelly)
36 Season's Greetings (Stella Donnelly)
37 Hammer (Shovels & Rope)
38 This Ride (Shovels & Rope)
39 talk (Joseph Arthur)
40 The Movies (Joseph Arthur)
41 The Day the Politicians Died (Stephin Merritt)
42 talk (Rufus Wainwright)
43 Peaceful Afternoon (Rufus Wainwright)
44 talk (Rufus Wainwright)
45 Tired of America (Rufus Wainwright)
46 talk (Rufus Wainwright)
47 talk (Valerie June)
48 Sadie [Edit] (Valerie June)
49 talk (Valerie June)
50 talk (Hamilton Leithauser)
51 The Garbage Men (Hamilton Leithauser)
52 talk (Indigo Girls)
53 Closer to Fine (Indigo Girls)
54 talk (Billy Bragg)
55 I Keep Faith (Billy Bragg)
56 talk (Billy Bragg)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/iRd7bh6y

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/DKNPmhRGcnJp6vL/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/eB76H

The video of the entire concert is on YouTube, if you want to watch it as well as hear it. (Just search for key words in the title.) So I could have used screenshots from that. However, if I did that, I would have to favor some artists over others, since there's no way I could fit them all in without having them look tiny. So instead I used the playbill that was promote the show. I made some changes, including squishing the entire thing horizontally to make it fit into a square space. I also redid the names of the artists, since there were about four of them that joined in late and so didn't get mentioned. But there's all mentioned here.

Loudon Wainwright III - Songs I Wish I'd Written, Home Concert, New York City, 4-25-2020

Loudon Wainwright III is a talented singer-songwriter who has been steadily putting out albums since 1970. This is the first time I've featured him on this blog. He's also another new artist added to the growing collection of musicians with home concerts performed during the coronavirus lockdown.

Wainwright has lots of excellent original songs. But for this particular concert, he chose the theme "Song I Wish I'd Written." That means it's all covers. And that's fine with me, since all-covers albums has become a common theme for this blog. Perhaps not surprisingly, most of the songs done are similar to Wainwright's originals, with literate and often wry lyrics. But there are some surprises, such as the Motown classic "My Girl" and the Drifters classic "On Broadway."

I'm especially happy to see he covers a Tom Lehrer song "Oedipus Rex." Lehrer has probably written the funniest songs of all time, with this song being a good example. I would post some Lehrer music to help share it, except he doesn't have any "Albums That Should Exist." A box set called "The Remains of Tom Lehrer" ably gathered up all of his stuff. So I recommend you get that, or a "best of" if you want to start small.

The sound quality is very good, but not excellent, pretty much on par with most of the other home concerts. I broke up all his banter between songs into their own tracks. Then I boosted the volume for those, as I usually find I need to do. I also cut out a bit of his talking (though not much). In addition, there was so much guitar tuning that at one point he made a joke about it. I left the joke in, but cut out the vast majority of the tuning that led to the joke.

For the song "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright," he forgot the words to one of the verses. There was a long pause as he tried to remember them. Finally he did, but he only spoke them instead of singing them, before resuming the song. I edited that down so it seems as he intended to have a little spoken section. I think it actually works pretty well that way.

The last song is a bonus track of sorts. It doesn't come from the concert, and it's an original, so it doesn't fit the covers theme. However it was recorded in his home just four days later. It's a funny song about the toilet paper shortage during the lockdown, with the fitting title "Toilet Roll Blues."

Including that last song, the album is an hour and eight minutes long.

Here's a list of the original artists. I've removed the tracks that are just talking, so the song numbers have some missing:

02 On Broadway - Drifters
04 Ever Since the World Ended - Mose Allison
06 Yankee Lady - Jesse Winchester
08 No Wonder She's a Blushing Bride - Art Fowler
10 Today I Started Loving You Again - Merle Haggard
12 Withered and Died - Richard & Linda Thompson
14 Don't Think Twice, It's Alright - Bob Dylan
16 Paradise - John Prine
17 Harmless - Michael Marra
19 My Girl - Temptations / Smokey Robinson
21 You Can't Fail Me Now - Joe Henry & Loudon Wainwright III
23 Love Hurts - Everly Brothers
25 Oedipus Rex - Tom Lehrer
27 The Angel of Death - Hank Williams
29 Feel So Good - Mose Allison
31 Daughter - Peter Blevgad
32 Toilet Roll Blues - Loudon Wainwright III

Here's the full, usual song list:

01 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
02 On Broadway (Loudon Wainwright III)
03 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
04 Ever Since the World Ended (Loudon Wainwright III)
05 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
06 Yankee Lady (Loudon Wainwright III)
07 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
08 No Wonder She's a Blushing Bride (Loudon Wainwright III)
09 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
10 Today I Started Loving You Again (Loudon Wainwright III)
11 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
12 Withered and Died (Loudon Wainwright III)
13 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
14 Don't Think Twice, It's Alright [Edit] (Loudon Wainwright III)
15 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
16 Paradise (Loudon Wainwright III)
17 Harmless (Loudon Wainwright III)
18 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
19 My Girl (Loudon Wainwright III)
20 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
21 You Can't Fail Me Now (Loudon Wainwright III)
22 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
23 Love Hurts (Loudon Wainwright III)
24 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
25 Oedipus Rex (Loudon Wainwright III)
26 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
27 The Angel of Death (Loudon Wainwright III)
28 Intro to Feel So Good (Loudon Wainwright III)
29 Feel So Good (Loudon Wainwright III)
30 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
31 Daughter (Loudon Wainwright III)
32 Toilet Roll Blues (Loudon Wainwright III)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15274859/LoudonWainW_2020_SngsIWshIdWrittenHmeConcrtNYC__4-25-2020_atse.zip.html

The cover art is a screenshot from the concert in question.