Sweet Warrior is an album by Richard Thompson released in 2007. Thompson financed the recording of this album himself and then licensed the finished album to various labels for distribution. On its release, Sweet Warrior entered Amazon.com

Amazon.com

Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...

's top 20 for music sales.

Overview

The track "Dad's Gonna Kill Me" was given an advance release via Thompson's own web site and iTunes

ITunes

iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....

. The song was singled out for praise by critics

and featured prominently in Thompson's live performances in early 2007.
This song's lyrics make extensive use of U.S.

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 military slang

Slang

Slang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's language or dialect but are considered more acceptable when used socially. Slang is often to be found in areas of the lexicon that refer to things considered taboo...

 (the "Dad" of the title is GI slang for "Baghdad

Baghdad

Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...

"), and convey the thoughts and feelings of an uneasy U.S. soldier stationed in Iraq. It was subsequently used on the closing montage of the first episode of the third season of Sons of Anarchy

Sons of Anarchy

Sons of Anarchy is an American television drama series created by Kurt Sutter about the lives of a close-knit outlaw motorcycle club operating in Charming, a fictional town in Northern California...

.

This advance release also enjoyed airplay on several radio stations and attracted generally favourable comments from the press and advance publicity for the album.

The album received very favourable reviews.

Track listing

All songs written by Richard Thompson:

1. "Needle and Thread" - 4:43
2. "I'll Never Give It Up " - 3:22
3. "Take Care the Road You Choose" - 6:44
4. "Mr. Stupid" - 3:53
5. "Dad's Gonna Kill Me" - 5:16
6. "Poppy-Red" - 4:37
7. "Bad Monkey" - 5:13
8. "Francesca" - 5:17
9. "Too Late to Come Fishing" - 4:36
10. "Sneaky Boy" - 2:59
11. "She Sang Angels to Rest" - 3:25
12. "Johnny's Far Away" - 4:53
13. "Guns Are the Tongues" - 7:27
14. "Sunset Song" - 5:38

Bonus tracks on the P-Vine Records

P-Vine Records

P-Vine Records is a record label started by Blues Interactions, Inc., a firm in Tokyo, Japan established in 1975 by Yasufumi Higurashi and Akira Kochi...

 release for the Japanese market:

• "Any Old Body"
• "Dust and Wine"

Personnel

Musical

• Richard Thompson - vocals, electric guitar
  Electric guitar
  An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...
  
  , steel-string acoustic guitar, mandolin
  Mandolin
  A mandolin is a musical instrument in the lute family . It descends from the mandore, a soprano member of the lute family. The mandolin soundboard comes in many shapes—but generally round or teardrop-shaped, sometimes with scrolls or other projections. A mandolin may have f-holes, or a single...
  
  , accordion
  Accordion
  The accordion is a box-shaped musical instrument of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone family, sometimes referred to as a squeezebox. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist....
  
  , tin whistle
  Tin whistle
  The tin whistle, also called the penny whistle, English Flageolet, Scottish penny whistle, Tin Flageolet, Irish whistle and Clarke London Flageolet is a simple six-holed woodwind instrument. It is an end blown fipple flute, putting it in the same category as the recorder, American Indian flute, and...
  
  , autoharp
  Autoharp
  The autoharp is a musical string instrument having a series of chord bars attached to dampers, which, when depressed, mute all of the strings other than those that form the desired chord. Despite its name, the autoharp is not a harp at all, but a chorded zither. -History:There is debate over the...
  
  , harmonium
  Harmonium
  A harmonium is a free-standing keyboard instrument similar to a reed organ. Sound is produced by air being blown through sets of free reeds, resulting in a sound similar to that of an accordion...
  
  , hurdy gurdy
  Hurdy gurdy
  The hurdy gurdy or hurdy-gurdy is a stringed musical instrument that produces sound by a crank-turned rosined wheel rubbing against the strings. The wheel functions much like a violin bow, and single notes played on the instrument sound similar to a violin...
  
  , electric organ
  Electric organ
  In biology, the electric organ is an organ common to all electric fish used for the purposes of creating an electric field. The electric organ is derived from modified nerve or muscle tissue...
  
  , handclaps (on 10)
• Michael Hays - rhythm guitar
  Rhythm guitar
  Rhythm guitar is a technique and rôle that performs a combination of two functions: to provide all or part of the rhythmic pulse in conjunction with singers or other instruments; and to provide all or part of the harmony, ie. the chords, where a chord is a group of notes played together...
  
  , electric guitar, acoustic guitar
  Acoustic guitar
  An acoustic guitar is a guitar that uses only an acoustic sound board. The air in this cavity resonates with the vibrational modes of the string and at low frequencies, which depend on the size of the box, the chamber acts like a Helmholtz resonator, increasing or decreasing the volume of the sound...
  
  , backing vocals
• Danny Thompson
  Danny Thompson
  Daniel Henry Edward 'Danny' Thompson is an English multi-instrumentalist best known as a double bassist and businessman...
  
   - double bass
  Double bass
  The double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass, standup bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2...
  
  
• Taras Prodaniuk - electric bass guitar
  Bass guitar
  The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
  
  
• Michael Jerome
  Michael Jerome
  Michael Jerome Moore, born in Wichita, Kansas, is an American rock musician and drummer. Jerome is a former member of the Toadies , Course of Empire and James Hall's band Pleasure Club, which was formed in 2002. He was also a member of the Saginaw, Texas band Pop Poppins...
  
   - drums
  Drum kit
  A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....
  
  , percussion
• Judith Owen
  Judith Owen
  Judith Owen is a Welsh singer-songwriter. Her first North American album, Emotions on a Postcard, was released in 1996, and has since been followed by five additional releases...
  
   - backing vocals, handclaps (on 10)
• Sara Watkins
  Sara Watkins
  Sara Ullrika Watkins is an American singer-songwriter and fiddler. Watkins debuted in 1989 as the fiddler of the progressive bluegrass group Nickel Creek, which consisted of herself, her elder brother Sean, and mandolinist Chris Thile. As a band, they are notable for three wide-released albums:...
  
   - fiddle
  Fiddle
  The term fiddle may refer to any bowed string musical instrument, most often the violin. It is also a colloquial term for the instrument used by players in all genres, including classical music...
  
   (on 5, 12-13)
• Joe Sublett - tenor saxophone
  Tenor saxophone
  The tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor, with the alto, are the two most common types of saxophones. The tenor is pitched in the key of B, and written as a transposing instrument in the treble...
  
   (on 7-8)
• Joe Buck - first violin
  Violin
  The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
  
   (on 11)
• Al Michaels - second violin (on 11)
• Novi Ola - viola
  Viola
  The viola is a bowed string instrument. It is the middle voice of the violin family, between the violin and the cello.- Form :The viola is similar in material and construction to the violin. A full-size viola's body is between and longer than the body of a full-size violin , with an average...
  
  (on 11)
• Simon Tassano - handclaps (on 10)
• Chris Kasych - handclaps (on 10)

Technical

• Doug Tyo - engineer (at House of Blues Studio, Encino, California)
• Chris Kasych - assistant engineer
• Simon Tassano - mixing (at Rumiville Studio, Austin, Texas)
• Jim Wilson - mastering (at Airshow Mastering, Boulder, Colorado)

External links

• Official lyrics page