Small Town Romance is a live album by Richard Thompson (formerly of Fairport Convention).
Before and after the "Tour From Hell" to promote the Richard and Linda Thompson album Shoot Out the Lights, Richard played solo shows in the USA in 1982. Three of these shows were recorded for radio broadcasts. When Thompson left the ailing Hannibal Records label in 1984, the release of an album collated from the 1982 live recordings was negotiated as part of the amicable separation.
Thompson was unhappy with the quality of the recordings and the performances and later persuaded Hannibal to delete Small Town Romance from their catalog. But the demand continued, and in the face of bootleg versions and high prices being paid for second hand copies the album was re-released, with Thompson's consent, in 1997.
The album might be described as "warts and all". Thompson's vocals are sometimes shaky, especially on songs formerly sung by Linda Thompson, but his playing is assured and for many years this was the only legitimate record available of Richard Thompson playing a solo, acoustic show - a live presentation which he has increasingly featured and which now makes up the majority of his live performances.
Read more about Small Town Romance: Track Listing, Personnel
Famous quotes containing the words small, town and/or romance:
“All the way home I kept remembering
The small book in my pocket. It was there.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Speak the speech ... trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it ... I had as lief the town crier had spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and as I may say the whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“A guide book is addressed to those who plan to follow the traveler, doing what he has done, but more selectively. A travel book, in its purest, is addressed to those who do not plan to follow the traveler at all, but who require the exotic or comic anomalies, wonders and scandals of the literary form romance which their own place or time cannot entirely supply.”
—Paul Fussell (b. 1924)