Richard Thompson - Rumor and Sigh - Acoustic Version (1991)

One thing I've tried to do with Richard Thompson's solo career is to make all-acoustic versions of his albums. He plays enough solo acoustic concerts, and there are enough quality bootlegs, that this is often doable. Unfortunately, he almost never plays every single song from any given album.

In this case, 1991's "Rumor and Sigh" is arguably his most popular album (it reached no. 32 in the charts in Britain, which is high by his standards), so he's played a lot of the songs. I was able to find good acoustic versions of 11 out of the 14 songs from the album, enough for an album that's 42 minutes long.

Three of the songs here were officially released, all of them coming from "The Life and Music Of" box set. Although the rest are from bootlegs, they're pretty much all from excellent sounding soundboards, so the quality is high throughout. In order to find the best versions, I didn't limit myself chronologically. So the performances range from 1989 to 2010.

"Rumor and Sigh" is not only probably Thompson's most popular album in terms of sales, it's arguably his best album too. Many songs on it became standards for him, most especially "1952 Vincent Black Lightning," which is an all-time classic for any artist. Time Magazine even listed it as one of the best 100 songs of the last 100 years. That song already was done in a solo acoustic style, so this version is hardly different. But pretty much all the others were done with a full band, so these versions are quite different and interesting.

01 Read about Love (Richard Thompson)
02 I Feel So Good (Richard Thompson)
03 I Misunderstood (Richard Thompson)
04 Why Must I Plead (Richard Thompson)
05 1952 Vincent Black Lightning (Richard Thompson)
06 Mystery Wind (Richard Thompson)
07 Don't Sit on My Jimmy Shands (Richard Thompson)
08 Keep Your Distance (Richard Thompson)
09 Mother Knows Best (Richard Thompson)
10 God Loves a Drunk (Richard Thompson)
11 Psycho Street (Richard Thompson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15852278/RichrdT_1991_RumrandSghAcoustc_atse.zip.html

I put some effort into making the cover art for this album. I happened to know that an animated video was made for the song "I Feel So Good." (It's very good; check it out on YouTube.) The video was done in the same style as the album's cover, so I took a still from that, and the stole bits and pieces from the official album artwork to build the rest.