Any previously unheard document by guitarist
John Renbourn is just cause for investigation -- and for some, celebration. He was such a slippery and subtle innovator, spending his life working on everything from better form and technique to restless and inveterate song discovery and curation throughout his long career. Like his friend and fellow
Pentangle collaborator
Bert Jansch,
Renbourn never stopped pursuing the mysteries of the guitar and its folk, blues, and jazz repertoires. This date was captured on the second of two nights
Renbourn played Kyoto's Jittoku Coffeehouse. The tapes, recorded by famed engineer Satoru Fujii (
Ghost,
Helena Espvall,
Masaki Batoh,
Damon & Naomi, etc.), were stored in his personal archives for nearly 40 years. Luckily, before his passing in 2013, he entrusted them to his friend Toshiko Kitajima for safekeeping.
According to
Batoh's brief liner essay,
Renbourn was unhappy with first night's performance at the venue, where he played in a duo setting with
Stefan Grossman. He is much more relaxed here playing solo. In front of a small but enthusiastic audience,
Renbourn plays and sings songs that range across his entire career to that date. The set is quite astonishing, opening with a breezy reading of
Mississippi John Hurt's "Candyman" that almost seamlessly transitions into a blistering read of
Davey Graham's "Anji," made all the more poignant by his rumbling bass notes and pacing.
Renbourn offers spirited, loose, and honest versions of tunes he's recorded before ("The Earle of Salisbury" and "Transfusion" from
Sir John Alot of Merrie Englandes Musyk Thyng & ye Grene Knyghte and "Lamentation for Owen Roe O'Neill" -- with audience participation -- from
The Hermit), along with those that would appear the following year on
So Early in the Spring (the title song [drawing more heavily on the
Pentangle version], "The Orphan," and "The English Dance"). There are also stellar readings of age-old English and Scottish folk songs in "John Barleycorn" and "Banks of the Sweet Primroses."
The entire set is impeccably recorded and inspired, including the versions of
Furry Lewis' "Kokomo Blues" and the wrangling American transplant "The Cuckoo"; originating in the British Isles and ultimately becoming an eternally puzzling standard revealing the mysteries of America itself in the hands and voice of
Clarence Ashley, "The Cuckoo" is rendered here with the eerie strangeness and forceful energy that made it such an oft covered tune during the last century. The Yankee fiddle tune "Peacock Rag" and jazz-blues of
Charles Lloyd in "Transfusion" are rendered as punchy and interrogative. This is especially true in the latter tune, where
Renbourn closes in on what he thinks it means, only to have it escape as he finds the turnarounds. The set closes with a medley of lute tunes -- "Gypsy Dance"/"Jew's Dance" -- from the 16th century, as
Renbourn allows dissonance and humor to inform his arrangement. No matter what the guitarist performs here, he does so with real enthusiasm, an affinity for his appreciative audience, and his own relentless sense of adventure: he digs out songs for this crowd that he hadn't played in a decade or more. Granted, Live in Kyoto 1978 is for
Renbourn's legion of hardcore fans more than a general introduction. That said, there isn't anything here that any fan of brilliantly played acoustic guitar music won't appreciate and admire. ~ Thom Jurek