TalkAwhile - The Folk Corporation Forum

RT comes to the UK with a full band. Jubilation throughout the land !

Full band - does that mean more than just the trio, do you think?  But no shows in the SW anyway  :(

To most of us in England, Bristol is the SW, but to Devonians & Cornwall folk it's the Midlands! Is there any significance to the nautical title and picture?

 

This cover is really annoying me.  It's like an (is it?) AI image of what RT would look like if he was fisherman.  And yet somehow ends up looking precisely nothing like him.  Has an 'artist' created this or is it literally AI?

Don't know this for a fact, but "full band" probably means electric trio (Taras Prodaniuk and Michael Jerome) with guitar cameos from his tech Bobby Eichorn and his grandson Zak Hobbs. And a backing vocal cameo from Zara Phillips (wife #3). This is the same lineup he toured with previously so changes are possible. There's still a massive Pete Zorn-sized hole in the band.  :'(

Wow RT in Stoke. Didn't know he did Northern Soul 😁

I'll know hell has frozen over if RT ever tours with a keyboardist. I so miss the colors that PZ added with mandolin, sax, acoustic guitar, etc., not to mention lovely high harmony vocals. I share the speculation set forth above that we're talking bass/drums and Zara.

None suitable for us, this time, sadly! Missing our fix.

He was playing his upcoming album songs at Blackpool festival with Zara Phillips

We're in West Devon, and Bristol is a 2 hour drive from us (and that is almost all on dual carriageway roads or motorways), assuming that the M5 is clear.

Cardiff Yaay! New Theatre - erm... Anyway, hopefully, I'll be able to get a ticket

Just looked at the pricing for the Cardiff concert. £53 - £65 per ticket. I'll need to think about this (tickets not on sale until Friday)

Manchester is £67 including booking fee.
If you go through RT's website link, you can click on presale and buy straight away (for Manchester at least).

I'm afraid that Barclays would not approve our attendance.

3 tickets booked for Stoke, second row, nearly seventy quid each.

Last time I saw Richard in concert I had change from twenty quid.  It's not *that* long ago...

Likewise! Especially adding on fuel for a 400++mile round trip, min. two nights of accommodation and having to use three days of annual leave, which I can ill afford due to other stuff.

Had I known sooner, or were it on a Saturday, I may have not signed up for some other things I/we’re doing...a bit gutted, but not desperately.

Will look forward to your reviews, folks.

I love RT live - but in recent years I have restricted myself to seeing him at Festival's as the ticket prices seem to have gone  insane.

Not many tours come to our area these days and when they do they are not cheap . Saving Grace was £70 too, but i passed on that one. The local folk clubs and theatre in the round give better value .

I saw Saving Grace in Carmarthen on 16/4/19.  Tickets were £22.50 each.  The world's gone mad...

Last November tickets for Tankus the Henge at Bridport's Electric Palace (until recently a regular Wintour venue) were only £12. It was packed to capacity and a fantastic night.

Maybe RT will still play to sold out crowds - but somehow I think he won't with those prices

Sadly, I suspect they'll sell out.  Plenty of people still have plenty of cash.  It's just that vast quantities also have next to none....

As you know we were there the same night. I certainly wasn't particularly impressed. Were you?

Got a couple of tickets for Stoke as soon as the presale opened. Had a sharp intake of breath at the asking price of £140 for the pair, expected somewhere around £45-50 each based on the last time we saw him and allowing for a bit of inflation but that is at the very limit I'd pay to see anyone. Thankfully it's just down the road for us and travel costs are negligible so that helped justify the spend. To think we used to go to multiple shows on a RT tour, now one is pushing the limits.

Aye, I adored every second of it (and the other time I saw them)...

Wow. Just goes to show...

Albert Hall booked, at a wallet-shrinking £93 a ticket. I hesitated for a minute, but given a lot of my favourites won’t be around forever, I went for it. It’s on a Saturday, so a good opportunity to meet up with London friends as well

Absolutely friggin' ridiculous (the price, not you going for it).  The guy used to be a normal bloke...he's taking the p1ss now.

Even normal blokes need to pay the bills. All aspects of a tour must be way more expensive, in this current financial climate.

Me too!!

Blimey, if he sells that out he may never need to work again!

Yeah sure, he’s obviously lounging around on his yacht in Corfu, and selling his limited edition lithographs for 5K apiece, and hobnobbing with Taylor Swift and Beyonce at a swanky Las Vegas hotel and personally flying in Bono, Jagger, and McCartney for a 90 minute studio session….I think THAT is taking the piss. I don’t pay for large capacity shows often, in part because I prefer the music in more intimate settings these days, but I would plunk down the music for this. To each their own, but Richard has consistently worked bloody hard throughout his career. The singer Jackie Venson had a phenomenal social media post about the economics of touring in a world where almost nobody makes much money on their actual freaking music recordings these days. Richard included I am sure. If you are marginally living between the red and black wouldn’t you push the envelope sometimes?  Rant over, not sorry…but no offense to personal opinion intended!

This is what I wrote in the thread about RT's 2023 tour :

"Well, didn't he once say, half in jest, that once he reaches 70 he officially becomes a living legend and can double his fee ?"
 
"Hasn't Mr Pegg been known to say, again half in jest, that they can only afford him for Cropredy every 5 years ?"

Maybe he's jesting no longer ?  ;D ;D

Its just a guess, but I suspect he's playing off on a Wes Anderson motif.....

I've just found my first ever RT ticket - Portsmouth Pyramids Centre in 1995, duo tour with Danny T, Christine Collister support.

Don't think he's played Portsmouth since - I've seen him with and without a band many times in Basingstoke, Guildford, Abingdon, London, Brighton, Cropredy, Chesterfield, Chichester, Southampton, but not Portsmouth.

Ticket prices for his return this year are either £57.60 or £72.10

In 1995 - £8.50 ! Even using an online inflation adjuster, in 2024 money that would be roughly £22.10 !

Whatever the circumstances £93 just feels excessive.

The Bank of England Inflation Calculator (arguably the most accurate one of these for the UK) shows this to be £16.72 today

Don't know what it costs to hire the Albert Hall, but even so...  Anyone know how much Show of Hands were charging for their party there last year?

Top prices for Fotheringay and Elton John at the RAH in 1970 were 25 shillings, which would be £16.41 in today's money according to the Bank of England inflation calculator (thanks for that, David).  Seems like a bargain to me now!  At the age of 6 it was way out of my price range  ;D (even if I had had any idea who Sandy or Elton was at that age).

Agree. Inflation or not, the industry has changed and is the real cause for the spike.....and I've changed with it.  I have to admit that I haven't bought an RT album in quite some time.  Its just too easy (and permissible) to listen for free.  

Therefore, if I'm fortunate enough to have an opportunity to see him this year, I'll pay the price.  Its my comeuppance for streaming.  I owe the man.

I would make the day long journey to see him in Richmond or Vienna ( pronounced "Vy-anna" ) Virginia, but they're both already sold out! Hopefully a proper southern tour is in the cards down the road.

How?  Why?  I'd have to avoid that on principle... ;) ;D

Its the South.....or was the South.  Its probably pronunced properly now that all the Yankees have moved in.  In the old days, you called them "Vy-anner Sauceygages" or risked severe scutiny!  ;D

Ha ha ;D

You should hear how locals pronounce Cairo, in Illinois.

Go on...

Is it as funny as hearing British people pronounce Tuolumne (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuolumne_County,_California)?

(Try it before hitting the pronouncement hint ... and be honest!)

Kay-ro.

Read American Gods for confirmation.

I was close but not quite there.

I missed another electric trio , because I thought the ticket price was too high , with a leader with a distinctive electric guitar playing style & a vocal style not for the mainstream , bit like RT really...and I thought Wilko would outlive me !

So I'll pay a lot more than I did last time (£33 on 23/10/18) and drive to the next city to see Richard , but I agree with many of the comments in this thread , especially cutting down on travel and finding new fave acts by attending smaller gigs in smaller venues

That would be £41.19 today, which kind of illustrates how much inflation there's been recently..[Bank of England inflation calculator]

I think the emphasis has turned from “This is how much we’re going to charge for tickets, where can we afford to stay overnight?” to “This is where I want to stay overnight, how much are we going to have to charge for tickets?”

Well, I decided to get a ticket to see Richard Thompson in Cardiff. It's amazing how quickly £53 becomes £60 when 'booking fees' and 'handling costs' are added - this for a ticket sent straight to the mobile phone. Anyway, it's done. I also noticed that The Corrs are playing in Cardiff this summer. After buying the RT ticket, I was curious to see how much Corrs tickets were. They are between £90 and £200. No thanks!

News filtering through on Faceache that the full band lineup for RT's UK tour will be : RT (!), grandson Zak Hobbs on 2nd guitar, bassist Taras Prodaniuk,  and DM behind the traps.

Looking forward to it even more now !

With Zara as well, do we know?

Oops...silly me, yes Zara will be on the tour too, guesting on various numbers.