With five decades of impressive work to his credit, including more than 40 albums and 400 songs, British guitarist and songwriter Richard Thompson has quite the storied career. Among his numerous accomplishments are winning the prestigious Ivor Novello Award for his songwriting, taking home the Orville H. Gibson Award for best acoustic guitarist and being awarded a lifetime achievement award from BBC Radio.
Rolling Stone has even named him a perennial dark-horse contender for the title of greatest living rock guitarist.
“It’s all very fulfilling—live performance especially,” Thompson says. “It’s the joy of creativity and expression, with the feeling that you’ve managed to convey something emotionally to the listeners.”
His genre-defying mastery of both acoustic and electric guitar, along with his dizzying energy and onstage wit, continue to earn him generations of new fans. The secret to his 50 years in the music biz, he says, is loving what he does.
“You have to love music, love performing and love the lifestyle—that includes a lot of traveling and waiting, and being away from loved ones,” he says. “You also have to pace it so that you don’t burn out in a hurry.”
Born and raised in West London, Mr. Thompson was influenced early on by everyone from Fats Waller to Buddy Holly to Duke Ellington.
“The guitar was a popular instrument when I was a small kid in the ’50s, and I wanted one but no one took me seriously,” he says. “I saw Eddie Cochran and Buddy Holly on TV looking very cool with guitar, and I finally got one when I was 11 years old. I first played in an instrumental band doing The Ventures kind of stuff, then I was in a school band for a few years, and then at 18 I turned professional in the psychedelic clubs around London.”
As a teen in the early ’60s, Thompson co-founded the groundbreaking group Fairport Convention along with bandmates Iain Matthews, Judy Dyble, Simon Nicol, Ashley Hutchings and Martin Lamble. The band was discovered playing in London’s Soho district and they brought their inventive musical mix of blues and California-style rock to America.
By the age of 21, Thompson left that group and began a decade-long musical partnership with his then-wife Linda, and has spent the past three decades as an acclaimed solo artist who tours both solo acoustic and with his electric trio. It’s a life he wouldn’t change for anything.
“It’s just a drive. You’re driven to do it. If you’re not driven, maybe you shouldn’t bother,” Thompson says. “It’s wonderful to still be enthusiastic about what is basically one’s employment, and to have been that way all the way through. I still guiltily look over my shoulder sometimes, thinking, ‘this is too much fun.’”
For three nights—Feb. 2-Feb. 4, Thompson will be playing at Wolf Trap’s Barns stage, in a series of All-Request shows.
“I’ll be playing acoustic guitar, and singing songs from all points of my career—from the ’60s to ones I’ve just written,” he says. “That contact with the audience is the greatest thing, the sense of communication from heart to heart.”
Speaking of new music, Thompson recently released a new CD entitled, “Still,” which has already reached the top 10 on the UK charts in 2016.
“‘Still’ is a fairly autobiographical album, more so than most of the work I’ve done,” Thompson says. “We brought in Jeff Tweedy as producer, who was terrific as a catalyst, as someone to bounce ideas off, and as someone who had a grasp of the big picture.”
For those rare times when he isn’t writing, Thompson says he feels as if he’s a bit off kilter.
“If you haven’t written a song for a couple of weeks, you get itchy. You start twitching. You have to get it out there, whatever it is,” he says. “I’ve been twitching for more than 40 years, which is great.”
