In 2003, in what could be considered a completely “on-brand” move, Thompson walked away from the majors and moved his estimable skill set over to the UK indie label Cooking Vinyl. His initial exertion as an independent artist was the entirely self-financed The Old Kit Bag, a collection of very good songs, produced very well and played very expertly by a small, but entirely competent backing band. By this point, this kind of effort from Thompson didn’t (or at least shouldn’t) surprise anyone – Richard Thompson is a great songwriter. The six-minute opener “Gethsemane” has both a title and a run time that should turn off most consumers, but it somehow manages to pull of the fantastic trick of being hooky and memorable while taking the time to get the point across. Thompson never sounds less than convicted in any of his performances on the record, though the songs occasionally feel like wallpaper – very nice wallpaper, but still. The title is taken from a WWI song about packing up your troubles in an old kit bag, and this definitely feels like Thompson soldiering on in typical British Keep Calm And Carry On fashion. Perhaps Thompson is shrugging it off on the heartsick, beautiful blues lament “I’ve Got No Right To Have It All,” acknowledging that he never achieved supernova stardom at Capitol, but he sure sounds like he knows that he’s not going to be fading for a long time.