No artist to emerge in the 2nd half of the ’60s has gone on to have a more productive and vital career than Richard Thompson. His vast and ever-growing body of original material is marked by consistent intelligence, taste and emotional purity.
Click here to see a video of Richard Thompson (one of Rolling Stone magazine's Top 20 guitarists of all time) being interviewed and playing tracks from his latest album 'Sweet Warrior'.
Proper Records have released Richard Thompson's new album to superb reviews from all over the press.
Artist Biography
While still a teenager, Richard founded and led Fairport Convention, which was to British folk-rock what the Byrds were to the idiom’s American equivalent—meaning more Childe ballads and less sunshine. 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, including the exquisite Pour Down Like Silver and culminating in the devastating Shoot Out the Lights, charted the ups and downs of a relationship with unstinting candor. The last twenty years have seen a steady supply of critically acclaimed solo albums, including successful major label releases like Rumour and Sigh and a number of “homemade” discs available only through BeesWeb.
Click "next track" to view Richard playing another song acoustically.
His vast and ever-growing body of original material is marked by consistent intelligence, taste and emotional purity—which is why so many of his songs have been covered by other quality artists, a stellar list that includes the likes of Elvis Costello, Bonnie Raitt, Del McCoury, Graham Nash, X, Los Lobos and Bob Mould. And Thompson is among the most distinctive of guitar virtuosos, capable of breathtaking drama and sublime delicacy, depending on the song and the amp setting, if indeed an amp happens to be employed. Over the course of his career, Thompson has earned numerous awards and honors, including the Ivor Novello Award for songwriting, the Orville Gibson Award for guitarists, and a spot in the top 20 of Rolling Stone's 2004 list of all-time guitar greats. In February 2006, he was awarded a BBC Lifetime Achievement Folk Award.
With his intensive touring schedule and frequent recordings, Thompson is a perpetual motion machine, and he’s never been more productive than during the last two years, which have seen the release of Live in Providence (a band recording on DVD), Austin City Limits (CD and DVD from the TV show), the Thompson composed and played soundtrack to Werner Herzog’s film Grizzly Man, the five-CD box set RT: The Life and Music of Richard Thompson (Free Reed Records), the ambitious musical retrospective 1000 Years of Popular
Music (CD and DVD) and Front Parlour Ballads, an intimate acoustic LP
recorded in his home studio. And now in May 2007 his new "electric" album
Sweet Warrior. A detailed biography and discography are available at www.richardthompson-music.com/bio.asp
A song from Richard Thompson's latest album "Sweet Warrior" has been nominated for a BBC Radio 2 Folk Award for Best Original Song.
Proper Records have released Richard Thompson's new album to superb reviews from all over the press.