Richard Thompson - Cutty Wren - Non-Album Acoustic Tracks (2007-2008)

My goodness, Richard Thompson is a really prolific guy.  I'm slowly working my way chronologically through his music career, and I still have a long way to go to get to the present day. This is another collection of him doing nothing but acoustic versions of songs. 

The vast majority of the songs are cover versions, though I believe he wrote "Poor Will and the Jolly Hangman" decades earlier. Plus, he was on the original recording of "Who Knows Where the Time Goes" by Fairport Convention, though that was written by Sandy Denny.

The only version here that has been officially released is "See My Friends." That came from a BBC session, as well as the last two. The rest were done at concerts, but I've edited the songs to remove the audience applause at the end. 

The reason "The Wind Cries Mary" has "[Edit]" in the title is because there was some applause when the familiar chords of this classic Jimi Hendrix song were played, and then again when the first words were sung. Since it was just a solo acoustic performance, I was able to use the sound editing program Spleeter to remove most of that applause.

This album took place at a time when Thompson was still involved with his "1000 Years of Popular Music" concerts. The last three songs, the ones done for a BBC session, were commonly played during those concerts at the time. I've included them because these are the closest he seems to have done clean studio versions of them. All the other songs come from other concerts. While many of them could have fit the "1000 Years" theme, I don't believe any of them were played in those types of concerts.

I particularly like his version of "War." The original Motown soul version is great, and very well known. His version is drastically different, almost turning it into a folk ballad, but I think it works that way too.

The sound quality is mostly very good, but it varies. Some of these songs were only bootlegged a single time, and probably were only played that one time in concert, so it's no surprise stellar sound quality wasn't achieved for all of them. A couple near the beginning like "Concrete and Clay" and "Rain on the Roof" have the roughest sound.

This album is 45 minutes long.

01 Joshua Gone Barbados (Richard Thompson)
02 Concrete and Clay (Richard Thompson & Julian Dawson)
03 Rain on the Roof (Richard Thompson & Julian Dawson)
04 Poor Will and the Jolly Hangman (Richard Thompson)
05 The Wind Cries Mary [Edit] (Richard Thompson)
06 Who Knows Where the Time Goes (Richard Thompson)
07 John the Gun (Richard Thompson)
08 All Along the Watchtower (Richard Thompson)
09 War (Richard Thompson)
10 See My Friends (Richard Thompson)
11 So Ben Mi Ca Bon Tempo (Richard Thompson)
12 Cutty Wren (Richard Thompson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15271028/RichrdT_2007-2008_CuttyWrnAcoustc_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from a concert in New Orleans in 2008.