RT: I just tried to develop ideas around that solo format, to write songs for it, and to develop a guitar style for it. The only way you really work up an act is to do it, unless maybe you’re a comedian and you can stand there in front of a mirror and tell jokes to yourself! I think you just have to perform.
The thing is not to be satisfied with the style of the folksinger sort of singer-songwriter; to come out and push the limits of what you can do to accompany yourself as a singer, on the guitar.
There can be something kind of seductive about somebody who’s very introverted onstage, who stares at those shoes, strums, doesn’t say very much — and draws you into their world. I think that can work, in terms of performance, though it’s not the right way for me. I was nervous onstage, and didn’t want to be standing there looking nervous, so I figured I’d use some bluster, use the personalities of a couple of male friends of mine…
ND: Would you like to name names?
RT: Uh — no! They were a couple of loud bass players who shout in restaurants. I decided to be loud onstage, tell jokes between numbers, so if the songs were kind of quiet and introverted, there’d be some contrast. I could put the audience a little off-balance; they wouldn’t know what to expect. There’s probably more mileage in being the silent tortured genius, though; maybe I should have stuck with that.
ND: There were times, in the mid-’80s, where people would compare your vocal handling of your own songs to Sandy Denny’s, and to Linda’s, and not so positively. But at your show here in Nashville a few weeks ago, I was really struck by how expressive and spot-on your singing can be today, and on challenging, dramatic songs, too — “1952 Vincent” or “King Of Bohemia” for two.
RT: Oh — I have improved! Absolutely. From being out on the road, year after year. In my head, I always knew what to do, how to phrase — but it’s a matter of having the tonsils to pull it off. And now I think I am a reasonable singer of my own material. It’s about opening up your lungs, and figuring out how much pressure to put on your vocal cords, which comes from practice.
ND: Given that choice you have of the more intimate acoustic show or a Richard Thompson Band electric bash, do you have a preference?
RT: No; I enjoy both, and like the contrast. It’s like having a whole other life or career. I don’t get tired of music because I have these two contrasting opportunities.
ND: So though the new album is all-acoustic, we need to talk about your electric guitar work. When you were already playing that instrument onstage, as early as age 11, who were your guitar heroes?
RT: My early ones included Les Paul and Django Reinhardt, from my father’s record collection, and then, for rock ‘n’ roll it was Scotty Moore, Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, and Cliff Gallup, who played with Gene Vincent, and also Hank Morgan of the Shadows. He got such a great tone out of a Stratocaster; he was a great pioneer of that instrument.
ND: With your distinctive sound and attack, you’re rarely compared to other electric guitar aces at all. Do you see any working guitar players as musical kin?
RT: Well, there are plenty of great players out there. But I’m not really in the musical mainstream; I’m a little bit off to the side — just because of the influences on what I play. And I’m glad about that! If anything, I’ve worked at trying to be an individual, and having true roots in my music, and a root that’s true to the country I come from, and the heritage that I have. So I play a little different.
ND: It’s interesting, though, that American music has had a continuing role in your mix, all through the years — even as you were pegged as the Anglo or Celt folk-rock king. There were Jerry Lee Lewis songs, Cajun numbers, and Buck Owens’ “Together Again” in your live shows. Did these things first seem a charmingly exotic music for you — as the Morris Dance songs and “Blackleg Miner” sorts of old English ballads have to be, in part, for fans from this side of the water?
RT: I thought that it was exciting music; growing up in the ’50s in England, rock ‘n’ roll like that saved us all, saved our lives — for which we’re just eternally grateful. I suppose we did try to bring a slightly European influence to those, rather than just play straight Jerry Lee or something.
ND: In the late ’80s and early ’90s, old friends of yours like bandmate John Kirkpatrick complained in print that you were being “Americanized” in location, use of musicians, studios — and sound.
RT: Well, they had a point! In the ’80s and ’90s, on the records I made, there was pressure to fit in with American radio formats and to use American musicians. I’m more my own boss these days, and I can pick and choose musicians and make the records that I want to — not that I care where a musician comes from.
RT: That early interest in one sort of American music, Cajun, was pretty surprising, because there weren’t that many people bringing those sounds into rock ‘n’ roll in the late ’60s.
