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Words & Music2 – A Benefit ConcertRichard Thompson
While still a teenager, Thompson founded and led Fairport Convention, which was to British folk-rock what the Byrds were to the idiom’s American equivalent. Thompson’s solo albums, beginning with 1972’s Henry the Human Fly, reveal an artist of unparalleled dimension who has followed his muse as boldly as fellow iconoclast Neil Young. The series of albums Thompson recorded during the 1970s and early ’80s with his then-wife Linda, culminating in the devastating Shoot Out the Lights (1982), charted the arc of a relationship with unstinting candor. During the last two decades, he’s fired off a steady stream of critically acclaimed electric and acoustic solo albums, most recently 2007’s Sweet Warrior, whose centerpiece was “Dad’s Gonna Kill Me,” an unsettlingly vivid narrative using the actual language of soldiers in the Iraq War, which stands as the mother of all modern-day protest songs. Extracurricular work has included scoring soundtracks for Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man, Dreams With Sharp Teeth, and numerous other film and television projects. In 2009, Shout! Factory painstakingly compiled the comprehensive four-CD boxed set Walking on a Wire: 1968-2009—Thompson deferring to the label rather than taking an active role in digging through his massive archives. “Looking backwards is off the path, in a sense,” he explains. “It’s a pause at the side of the road. But then, you look at the road ahead, and you wonder what’s around the next bend.” What Thompson found around that bend is the Grammy-nominated Dream Attic, comprising 13 new songs penned by the artist specifically for the project during an inspired-three-month outpouring. The twist was that the material was recorded in real time during a series of West Coast shows with the latest lineup of the artist’s electric band—Pete Zorn (guitars, flute, sax, mandolin), Michael Jerome (drums), Taras Prodaniuk (bass) and Joel Zifkin (violin, mandolin). The record was produced by Thompson and Simon Tassano, the latter handling the remote recording and subsequent mix, vividly capturing the inspired interaction of the players. “The thing about recording live is that you lose accuracy but you gain energy; you lose choices but you gain immediacy,” Thompson says about his decision to work in a live setting. “In the studio, you’re creating something in which sound is a compositional component. It’s a more introverted experience, and you mustn’t dawdle in the studio or you’ll make an antiseptic product. So we’re forsaking the sound component of that process in order to go for the energy.” On several levels, Thompson notes, these 2010 shows felt not terribly different from Fairport’s very first tour of the States in 1970. That run of dates followed the exit of Sandy Denny, which thrust the guitarist/songwriter into the foreground for the first time. “That particular incarnation of Fairport was a very musical, well rehearsed and tight band,” Thompson recalls. “And also a pioneering band: there was no one playing that kind of music in that way at the time. There were a few baffled American audiences but, apart from that, it was fun. There was good camaraderie in that band as well.” Forty years later, he took the stage with another tight-knit band and presented audiences with another batch of unfamiliar material. For this veteran artist, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Now in his fifth decade of music making, Thompson
continues to challenge himself creatively. Before embarking on the Dream Attic project, he completed Cabaret of Souls, a song cycle for
rock band and orchestra set in Purgatory. As the 2010 curator of “I suppose I get bored thinking, ‘This song should reflect my life and all my previous traumas’—it seems too self-centered,” Thompson reflects. “Having written something like 400 songs, I’m always looking for new angles, new subject matter, new ways to write. I’m very excited about music and the possibilities of music, and if that changed, I hope I’d be courageous enough to say I’m in the wrong business. “But it’s not cheating to self-stimulate,” he continues, “to ask myself, ‘How can I be more productive? What works for me as a writer?’ “I try not to go through those periods where you start waiting for the lightning bolt of inspiration to strike. I’d rather be proactive and climb up to the hilltop, where you stand a greater chance of being struck by lightning.” Given the vital nature of recent works like Dream Attic, Thompson’s plan appears to be working stunningly well for him—and for us. "A perennial
dark-horse contender for the title of Recipient of the Orville
Gibson guitar award, the Ivor Novello award Appointed an officer of
the Order of the Curator of the 2010
Meltdown Festival |
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No
artist to emerge in the second half of the ’60s has gone on to have a more
productive and vital career than Richard Thompson. The England-born,
L.A.-based artist has amassed an astounding body of work comprising more than
40 albums, containing artfully shaped material that seamlessly and
expressively integrates traditional and contemporary modes. And Thompson is
among the most distinctive of guitar virtuosos, capable of breathtaking drama
and sublime delicacy.