I discovered Marc Anthony Thompson around the same time that Bruce Springsteen did: at the New York Guitar Festival’s Nebraska Project tribute concert in January 2006.
There was a stellar array of on-stage talent that night, from Michelle Shocked to The National to Martha Wainwright and more. And in the audience was the original songwriter, appreciatively taking in how other artists interpreted his songs.
All the performances were great, but one in particular blew me away. Early in the show, the emcee introduced an artist named Marc Anthony Thompson, who recorded and performed as the leader of Chocolate Genius, a musical collective (as Thompson calls it) with a membership that ebbs and flows over time.
That night, Chocolate Genius consisted of Thompson and pianist/omnichordist Thomas Bartlett, a.k.a. Doveman. The duo took the stage to play a cover of “Johnny 99,” and within seconds the audience was rapt.
Even now, fifteen years later, Thompson’s performance moves me like few other Springsteen covers do. His arrangement is ethereal and forlorn, almost grieving at times, and somehow both detached and visceral at the same time.
Thompson’s soulful vocals are filled with empathy. When Johnny’s mother implores the judge “please don’t take my boy this way,” Thompson wordlessly drifts to make room for her pain to register. It’s a moment that catches me by the heart every time I hear it.
After the performance, Thompson explained why Bruce’s song resonated with him so strongly.
I wasted no time ordering every Chocolate Genius CD I could find. You shouldn’t either, if you enjoyed that performance above. Start with GodMusic, Black Music, and Black Yankee Rock (but good luck–they’re tough to locate both in print and online), and you’ll discover three incredible albums of genre-defying music.
Bruce was hooked, too. He introduced himself to Thompson that night; soon after, he asked Marc to join his own musical collective, the touring ensemble known as the Sessions Band.
“[Marc] said he’d be interested in doing some singing,” Bruce told Dave Marsh in a Backstreets interview, “and I said ‘Well great, come on down!’ And he came down, and it was like, bang!, it was just perfect right away.”
It really was. Thompson’s voice meshed perfectly with Bruce’s, and Thompson quickly earned a nightly opportunity to duet with Bruce, an honor rarely afforded to a band member.
We’ll take a look at one of those moments tomorrow.
