After my culture shock on Tuesday at Legally Blonde, where everyone was so young and speaking in weird American sorority girl accents with voices that could strip paint, I thought that my visit to Howard Assembly Room to see Teddy Thompson, might redress the balance when it came to my facing up to impending doom. Everything was going nicely until it dawned on me that the 50 year-old headliner and his supporting act, Blair Dunlop, 34, were both sons of founder members of one of the most famous folk groups of the Sixties and Seventies, Richard Thompson and Ashley Hutchings. Their band, Fairport Convention, I saw at Leeds University in 1967.
Duly feeling my age, and then some, I sat back and enjoyed the performance from Mr Dunlop, whose set was more of the traditional style of folk, which I discovered by doing some digging, is the genre his dad loved, prompting him to leave Fairport Convention and join Steeleye Span and then the Albion Band.
Armed with only an acoustic guitar, he regaled the audience with both music and anecdotes, settling us down nicely for the headliner. His songs for the evening must have been from previous albums as I have just listened to his new one, Out Of The Rain, which is more upbeat with full backing instrumentation. I let it play through and was very impressed. To form your own opinion please go to https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=v3afIzaYxcE&list=OLAK5uy_mwYoUz8sOHAg4tPBOQd0so9XCdsVp9zqY
To check out the dates on his November Tour and see a video of a live acoustic performance, it is https://blairdunlop.com/
After my obligatory interval ice cream on came Teddy Thompson with guitarist Zak Hobbs and drummer Chris Jones. Further research showed that Zak Hobbs is the cousin of Teddy Thompson; being the son of Muna Hobbs, the eldest daughter of Richard and Linda Thompson. I hope you are following this as there is an exam later. This was definitely not a nepo appointment though as he is a superb instrumentalist, as is Mr Jones, whose lineage appears to be Thompson-free.
The songs were somewhat of a novelty for performers at Howard Assembly Room, as, like Mr Dunlop’s album content, they too were of the three-minute pop genre. A format, which my digging revealed, is a favourite of Mr Thompson’s and one to which he has reverted. Although of similar length, the contents were varied with harder rockers and reflective musings, one of which, The Worst Two Weeks Of My Life, dealt with his kicking several of the habits proving detrimental to his wellbeing.
I was struck by some of the titles of the songs performed, Delilah, Same Old Song, and Baby It’s You, but they were not the familiar ones, merely sharing the same moniker. One thing which did sound familiar though, was the synthesiser riff by the multi-tasking Chris Jones, which bore more than a passing resemblance to Vince Clarke’s melody on Only You by Yazoo.
The varied nature of the songs was further illustrated by Mr Thompson’s first contribution to the encore, when he retook the stage alone and sang a beautiful song whilst accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, before being joined by his two accomplices for another couple of rockers to close the show properly.
There is only one way that you can appreciate the talent of Teddy Thompson, and that is by listening to him, which you can do by clicking on https://www.teddythompson.net/videos You can also check out the remaining dates of his tour at https://www.teddythompson.net/tour-dates Should you be one of my readers in the USA, there are plenty of gigs coming up there, so check it out.
This was a wonderful evening of songs performed by four excellent artists, and lifted my spirits, making me feel that being old is not that bad, although lots of things, as predicted by the title of Teddy Thompson’s new album, out now, will Never Be The Same.
To see what else is in store at Howard Assembly Room, please go to https://www.operanorth.co.uk/event-tag/har/
Photographs by Stan Graham
Tyke It To The Limit 