Table 101,
Seat 4 – table for 4, right in front of the stage, on the left
Conspiracy
theory of the day – Donald Trump’s lawyers got after Richard Thompson at some
point. Details below.
First things
first, however. The afternoon (1:00 pm show in deference to the Super Bowl)
didn’t get off to the greatest start when the doors to the performance area
weren’t opened until 25 minutes after the scheduled time of noon, leaving all
of us standing in the small, crowded, and chilly waiting area. Things did
improve when Canadian alt-country singer-songwriter Doug (no relation to Brad)
Paisley took the stage with his acoustic guitar. He did a well-received and
surprisingly strong 25-minute opening set, with some excellent songs that would
have fit nicely on an early Jayhawks album.
Thompson
came out about 15 minutes later, joking with the crowd that he’d have to make a
quick getaway to make it to the Super Bowl for his part in the halftime show.
Only 5 of the 21 songs overlapped with Thursday night’s show: “When The Spell
Is Broken” and “Beeswing” (both by request), “Wall Of Death”, “Matty Groves”,
and “Valerie”, with his stunning guitar work on the latter again being a
highlight. He opened with the relatively obscure “The Sun Never Shines On The
Poor” and also threw in “Dry My Tears And Move On” (great song, new to me), but
made sure to include plenty of more familiar material as well, such as the
mandatory “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” (7 songs in), “Persuasion”, and “Johnny’s
Far Away”, a “modern sea shanty” which sparked an enthusiastic audience sing-along.
Also featured were 3 cuts from his latest album Still (mentioning that he was sure we all had it already but could
buy a copy for a friend after the show). I was especially glad that he went
back quite a few years to pull out “Dimming Of The Day” to start the second
encore set, which I first heard when Bonnie Raitt did a great cover version on Longing In Their Hearts.
Near the end
of the main set, he introduced a song (“Fergus Laing”) that he said was about a
certain real-estate developer, joking that the guy would probably have him
killed if his actual name were used. Thompson’s original motivation for the
song was Trump’s behavior in Scotland, particularly the destruction of
protected sand dunes to enable the building of Trump’s golf course in Aberdeen.
RT did mention that he’d added a few verses in light of recent events. Great
song, with the protagonist being dragged
off to jail amidst shouts of “You’re fired!” in the final “regular” verse.
The song
sounded somewhat familiar, so when I got home I checked my collection and found
it on the bonus disc included with the deluxe edition of Still; I had listened to that 5-song disc a few times but had never
made the Trump connection. As I expected, the lyrics in the CD booklet ended
with the “You’re fired” verse. Looking for a performance of the song on
YouTube, however, I was quite surprised to find that both live performances
lacked that verse. Even more peculiar, the disc itself lacks that verse,
despite what the lyrics booklet says; there’s just a long instrumental at the
end. Although I have absolutely no proof, I have a sneaking suspicion that
lawyers were involved somewhere along the line.
Setlist
(entered by yours truly – my first)
