Charles Thompson - The Soul of Oakland torrent

Charles Thompson is a street musician who was living in a halfway house in Oakland in the year 2000. I discovered him at a BART train station, playing for change, and my reaction was \"What the fuck is this guy doing playing in a train station?\"

He played a white acoustic guitar and possessed the kind of voice you can only be born with. His music has such feeling, that perhaps it is appropriate that it was recorded in a simple way to just capture the pure acoustics of his music.

As I was leaving town a couple days later, we hastily arranged a recording session in an empty room at the halfway house. I borrowed an AKG M/S stereo microphone from Dan Alexander Audio in Berkeley, and recorded the 8 songs in one take.

Unfortunately, the phone number he gave me stopped working after a month, and I was never able to contact him again. Any and all searches for him on the internet have been fruitless.

In the year 2011, it\'s hard to imagine that if he\'s still playing around the bay area as a street musician, that someone wouldn\'t have recorded him with a phone or camera and put it on YouTube. So I fear the worst, maybe he died or is in a bad way.

If you recognize his music, and have any idea where he is now, please leave a comment here...

Encoded mp3 VBR very high quality.