Family Bands: Thompson Family

[purchase]

Here we are, halfway through the second week of this theme, we only have one post. I suggested the theme, so it must be a good one. Therefore, I’m going to blame the lack of writing on the fact that it is the summer, and people are on vacation. Also, two of our writers live in a country that just had an abortive coup, and I’ve been busy with work and family obligations.

So, just time for a short piece about an album that came out in late 2014 called Family, from a group simply billed as “Thompson.” It is, overall, a very good album, if not a great album, but well worth checking out. The project began when Teddy Thompson, an excellent singer, songwriter and performer in his own right (when he is paying attention—don’t get me started writing about the time I saw him and he messed up most of his songs.....) reached out to members of his talented extended family to see if there was interest in working on a project. His father, SMM favorite Richard Thompson, and his mother, Richard’s ex-wife and legend in her own right, Linda Thompson, signed on. As did sister Kami and her husband, guitarist James Walbourne (who together make up The Rails). The next generation was also enlisted, including Jack Thompson, Richard’s son from his second marriage, and Zak Hobbs, the son of Richard and Linda’s eldest daughter Muna, who is not a professional musician, but also appears on the album (and drew the cover illustration). There are also contributions from Richard’s daughter-in-law Paulina Lis, Welbourne’s brother Rob and his wife Brooke Gengras.

The songs were, at Teddy’s direction, to be written where each of the writers lived. He gathered the basic tracks, then fleshed them out with overdubs in London and Los Angeles. So not surprisingly, the album jumps around stylistically, although if you listen carefully, there is a certain “Thompson-ness” about the album that somewhat holds it together.

Ultimately, the key song is probably one of the last written, Teddy’s “Family,” that opens the disc and gives it a title. A gentle waltz featuring Teddy, Zak and Linda, it opens:

My father is one of the greats to ever step on the stage,
My mother has the most beautiful voice in the world. 
And I am betwixt and between, Sean Lennon, you know what I mean. 
Born to the manor, never quite clamoring free. 
It’s family, its family. 

My elder sister is pretty than you believe, 
My younger sister is prettier still and can sing. 
And I am the middle child, 
The boy with red hair and no smile, 
Not too secure, very unsure who to be. 
 It’s family, its family. 

Because this is a fairly recent song, I will follow our informal guidelines and not post a downloadable copy of the song. And I can’t find a video just of the song, so the video above is a short “making of” piece about the album, and it does feature some of “Family.”

WHERE I LIVE: LICHFIELD

The British have always, at least in the canon of popular song, been coy about referencing our towns and cities, seeming much happier to fantasise around the US, with a decades long parade of the never traveled singing about Amarillo or somesuch. True, there are exceptions, if one enjoys paeans to the joys of Durham Town., but all pretty thin on the ground, with maybe more Yanks singing about Liverpool than actual Liverpudlians. But the field of folk is different, many of the songs stemming from a time before Uncle Sam was even a glimpse in the telescope of the Plymouth Brethren, and it is here I have had to search.

I live in Lichfield, a very small city, about the size of a market town, population about 35k, based around a cathedral (see above picture) built in between 1195 and 1249 and, yes, it did take that long, making Gaudi seem somehow less of a slouch down in Barcelona. In the English midlands, a 40 minute drive northward from Birmingham, it is close to the centre of the country. I love it and, after 12 years, feel proud to call it my home. So, songs about Lichfield?

Luckily I have one that hits all my spots, as I make no secret of my awe and admiration for the family Thompson. Richard Thompson has had a near half century of muted fame, usually happily ensconced to the side of the radar, preaching to  the converted, a hardcore base of staunch supporters stretching back to his actually only very brief tenure within Fairport Convention, to his duo with erstwhile wife, Linda, and beyond. RT has written many a song about his home country, perhaps most famously a hill in Surrey, and has become ever more English the longer he has lived in L.A. Well, this isn't about him. Nor indeed his son, Teddy, who has carved out a career singing such homegrown fare as this, showing apples don't necessarily always fall closest to the tree. No, this is another family member, daughter of Richard and Linda, sister of Teddy, one Kami Thompson. Her apple is perhaps slap bang right next to the trunk, as what she felt the 2014 world needed more than anything else was a folk-rock duo like, well, the comparisons are inevitable, her ma and pa. And so, with husband, James Walbourne, guitar on hire to many and varied, including Jerry Lee Lewis and Son Volt, the Pogues and the Pretenders, they form the Rails, their debut appearing last year. It is an unwritten rule that SMM avoids lifting music from under a decade old, even in these mp3 light, YouTube heavy days, but I feel I can get away with this, as it comes from an unreleased radio session. (Hell, without it, I would be scuppered for this piece as it so clearly references the city, my home.)



Trivia fans may also be intrigued to know that a frequent member of the larger live Rails band, on 2nd guitar, is one Zak Hobbs, Kami's nephew and, yes, RT's grandson. Here he is with grandpa.......

Of course, and there is always an of course with trad.arr., a slight problem is that many versions of the same song abound, each with a varied memory of who said what, living tradition and all that malarkey. So here, in memory of where my brother used to live, or, at least, relatively nearby, here's another version, by the seemingly now lost in action great folk hope of 2000, Bill Jones. Curiously, although she was born in Staffordshire, the county within which is Lichfield, her version talks of Southampton............

Buy the studio version by the Rails.
Or, for the full Thompson,  try THIS