Row C, Seat
105 – third row back, dead center
“Awesome” is a greatly-overused adjective, but it certainly describes this show. If Richard Thompson does three consecutive all-request shows at an intimate local venue again, I will be sorely tempted to attend all three.
While I’ve
seen quite a few of his shows before, both with a band and solo, I’d never had
the chance to see one of his all-request performances before, so I was
interested to see how the whole thing worked. As we came in and had our tickets
scanned, a Wolf Trap volunteer handed out slips of paper (one per customer), on
which we could write a request. There were several locations (merch table, bar,
stage) where we could put our slips, which eventually all wound up in a big
metal bucket on the stage. He’d pull out three at a time – his reactions were
among the highlights of the show – and on occasion would hand one or two of
them to a young woman so she could look them up on the Internet. The occasional
missteps (“Space Oddity” wasn’t exactly note-perfect) only added to the charm.
At the beginning, he joked that Tuesday night’s requests had been heavy on
Doris Day stuff.
He asked for
some help on “Yellow Submarine”, so it turned into an enthusiastic audience
singalong, complete with the appropriate sound effects on the bridge. When his
own “Tear-Stained Letter” was requested, he mentioned that he normally performs
that with a band, and divided the audience into sections for saxophone (my
side), harmony vocals (“And by ‘harmony’, I mean pleasing to the ear”), and
percussion (the balcony).
Performance-wise,
“Valerie” and “Beeswing” (the final song of the main set) were probably the
highlights, but he also nailed the slower numbers, especially “Waltzing’s For
Dreamers” and a heartfelt version of Sandy Denny’s “Who Knows Where The Time
Goes”. He did a very nice version of “Imagine”, a song that to be honest I’m
normally not all that fond of. Other covers included “Goin’ Back” (Goffin-King
song done by the Byrds among others) and “Old Time Rock & Roll”.
He got two
requests from his 1000 Years of Popular
Music album. The first was the 16th-century Italian number “So
Ben Mi Ch'a Bon Tempo”, which came up early in the show. Quite a contrast from
the final song of the night: Britney’s “Oops!...I Did It Again”.
He did pass
up one request in the middle of the set, saying he didn’t know it. I will not
name it here in order not to offend or upset any of my friends, but it’s the
opening track from the breakout album by a certain legendary rocker from New
Jersey.
And in the
interest of full disclosure, I requested “Season Of The Witch”, which was
suggested by an RT fanatic I know (who was off cavorting in Argentina with his
girlfriend this week). He didn’t get to it.
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