Richard Thompson
The Tralfamadore Café, Buffalo June 18, 2007

By Kevin J. Hosey

Neither personnel change nor use of a guitar technician onstage could stop the Richard Thompson show at the Tralfamadore Café in downtown Buffalo from being another great performance.
Thompson and band opened smartly with two songs off his new CD, “Sweet Warrior,” beginning with “Needle and Thread,” a jangly pop rocker in which various women have torn apart Thompson’s heart, requiring him to sew it back together, all complemented with a pretty good solo. Next up was “Bad Monkey,” a fast romp where Thompson advises a friend whose husband/boyfriend is overly needy and whorish of attention to take care of and stand up for herself. After each played a strong solo, Thompson and multi-instrumentalist Pete Zorn traded guitar and saxophone leads, respectively, before Zorn launched in a raunchy, honking solo, to which Thompson replied with a very fast, stinging solo of his own. (During the wild applause, Dave Mahoney, DJ for WLKK 107.7 FM, the station which provided Val and I with free tickets for the show because Thompson is listed as one of my favorite musicians in my profile, and a former DJ along with me from WBNY 91.3 FM, snuck up from his seat behind to say hello.)
After the applause died down, Thompson explained that his regular bassist/backing vocalist, Danny Thompson, had left the tour the night before on emergency bereavement, and that was why Zorn had played bass on the first song and guitar tech Bobby Eichorn played bass on the second song and would on several other tunes; Michael Jerome was again holding down the drummer’s position. “Anyway, he’s a clever bastard, he’ll be OK,” Thompson joked about Zorn.
The pace was changed a bit for the next song, the lovely, slower “Take Care the Road You Choose,” also from “Sweet Warrior,” with heartbreaking lyrics on how the right woman found Thompson/his character at exactly the wrong moment, at his lowest spiritually and chemically, but he’ll try his best to clean up and if he does, he’ll come for her. It sounds like some of the subtlest broken hearts I’ve heard in a long time, as Thompson’s electric guitar was only accompanied by Zorn’s acoustic guitar.
Concentrating on “Sweet Warrior,” Thompson and band then kicked into the politically charged “Dad’s Gonna Kill Me,” a reference to what soldiers in Iraq, British and American in particular, refer to Baghdad as and how dangerous it is for them to patrol there as they try to survive from one day to the next. Thompson played three solos, each wilder than the previous one, and he received a standing ovation at the song’s end. The music eventually went back a little earlier as the band cranked up “The Wrong Heartbeat” from “Hand of Kindness,” with Thompson’s guitar accompanied only by Jerome’s drums and Zorn on baritone saxophone and staying quite upbeat. Of course, he immediately went back to a slower tempo on “Al Bowlly’s in Heaven,” the story of a popular World War II British singer; between Thompson’s acoustic guitar leads and Zorn’s soprano sax accompaniment, it seemed as if we were in a jazz club. As he does when he plays The Tralfamadore Café in Buffalo, Thompson then told the story of the night he played here when it was billed “Richard Thompson’s Big Band,” and when he looked out at the crowd before the show, a large crowd of “blue hairs” were sitting up front, waiting for big band jazz. He then got a loud cheer as the band started “Open Door Breathes” from “Old Kit Bag,” a very Mid-Eastern sounding song with Zorn’s bouzouki adding beautiful sounds to Thompson’s acoustic guitar and Jerome’s hand drum and bass drum.
Pete Zorn enjoys Bobby Eichorn taking a turn on bass while Thompson strums away
The evening did pick up in tempo again with another new song, “I’ll Never Give It Up,” and Thompson and band then played what has become one of his set stoppers and at least temporarily replaced “Shoot Out the Light” in his live show, “Hard on Me” from what I feel is the underrated/underappreciated “Mock Tudor” CD. As intense and gut wrenching as the song itself is, Thompson absolutely took over the club on guitar for an amazing long, stinging solo that was only interrupted for an actually enjoyable bass solo by Zorn. After the short rest, Thompson returned swinging with another jaw-dropping solo with some dissonance and lots of punch, which inspired Jerome to some powerful drumming. The crowd went crazy as the song ended. As he tried to introduce the next song, Thompson tripped over some words at least three times, prompting his joke about sounding presidential: “Our prime minister is a bit of an idiot, but at least he can string together coherent sentences,” at which the audience howled. After he played “Mingulay Boat Song” from the “Rogue’s Gallery” compilation CD, Thompson added a fine “Man in Need” before going back to the new CD for “Too Late to Come Fishing,” and with Zorn once again playing baritone sax, performed “I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight.” To end the regular set, Thompson first played a wonderful “Wall of Death,” then concluded this part of the show with a punchy, rollicking version of “Heard About Love.”
For the first encore, Thompson played an all-acoustic guitar and voice “Sunset Song” and a bouncing, electric “Mr. Stupid,” both from “Sweet Warrior.” For his second encore, he first played a slow, burning “Don’t Sing Me No More Gypsy Love Songs” before bringing the shindig to a close with a sweaty “Tear-Stained Letter,” with Zorn first playing a great saxophone solo, then quickly picked up an electric guitar to play rhythm for Thompson’s fiery solo.