Thompson, Mayo

***Uncorking the well of wit, whimsy and cool, refined fury that’s fueled his path around this world, Mayo Thompson pours out a new round: a first ever album of solo guitar music, not to mention a first solo album in almost forever, Quiet Days in Cliché.

With The Red Krayola, Mayo made three albums of pop music in the late 1960s, taking the idea of rock ‘n roll songs farther into the hoped-for realms of possibility than 98% of their psychedelic brethren before or since. Following the demise of the band, Mayo produced his first solo album, Corky’s Debt to His Father in 1970. It found the underground godfather-to-be looking backwards at his roots, with a great bunch of songs caravaning across the resident milieus, musical and otherwise, of his youth. Barely distributed in its day, Corky’s Debt to His Father has become a classic. Mayo continues to ply available trade routes, wherever they did and do currently run, to sail on.

Fifty-six years later, Quiet Days In Cliché is Mayo’s second solo album. The music is improvised and probably can’t be repeated as played. These pieces are ‘notes to self’, but we heard them and we liked them—so here they are.