Richard Thompson • Songwriter Session, 2012
Live Music • 1h 5m
Richard Thompson—singer, songwriter, guitarist, and founding member of the folk-rock band Fairport Convention—shares a nearly hourlong performance and question-and-answer session with an audience at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum during a 2012 Songwriter Session.
Beyond Fairport Convention, Thompson has released more than eighteen solo studio albums, and for this Session, he performs a mix of songs spanning his band and solo releases, including “Woman or a Man” from 1986’s “Small Town Romance,” “From Galway to Graceland” from 1993's “Watching the Dark,” “Bathsheba Smiles” from the 1999 album “Mock Tudor,” and “Waltzing’s for Dreamers,” a song from 1998’s “Amnesia” that he describes as having a “Scottish edge.”
Thompson talks about when other artists cover his songs—performing “Keep Your Distance,” which was covered by both Patty Loveless as well as Buddy and Julie Miller—and shares his thoughts about songwriting, inspiration, guitar playing styles and techniques, and the experience of writing the instrumental “Persuasion” for the 1991 film “Sweet Talker” (with words added later by Tim Finn).
Thompson also speaks to the influence of seeing and working with the Byrds and the Band in London when he was in Fairport Convention, before playing “Mattie Grove” from his Fairport Convention days.
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