Millennium Man Richard Thompson Hits the Road with "1,000 Years of Popular Music" By Andrew Clayman Published in The Metro Pulse, January 2008
To put it plainly, Richard Thompson is the gap in your record collection—the guitar god you could have been writing graffiti for, and the singer/songwriter you should have been emulating in your dorm room.
Over the past forty years, Thompson has produced an impossibly consistent catalog of quality work; evolving from the shy, guitar-wunderkind of seminal British folk-rockers Fairport Convention, into an accomplished solo artist and showman. And while the name “Richard Thompson” is only “household” in the homes of a dedicated minority, the 58 year-old remains as determined and ambitious as ever, unwilling to rest on his laurels.
“Well, I don’t have any laurels,” Thompson chuckles. “I think I’m always just very dissatisfied with what I do-- like there are other places to go, that I can do better, and that the work can reach a higher standard. I suppose it’s good to be a little restless, you know? I haven’t really achieved very much at all, and I’d like to achieve something. So I’m always driving myself forward. I’m always thinking, ‘well here’s this project, but how about after that? Let’s have another project and another project.’ I’m always thinking in terms of projects. And it’s just one step in front of the other. It keeps me going down the road.”
Thompson’s travels certainly aren’t limited to the metaphorical kind, either. Still the consummate road warrior, he swings through every shape and size of concert hall, year after year, relentlessly delivering his fans the type of passionate, high-energy performances most grey-beard musicians wouldn’t even care to attempt.
“Well, I think that variety helps the energy, perhaps,” Thompson surmises. “Variety stops you from becoming static as a musician, and it makes things less predictable for the audience. They can come and see you one year performing solo, and the next year with the band, and the year after that, it might be a special show like this ‘1,000 Years’ show.”
Thompson is referring to one of his most popular pet projects yet: “1,000 Years of Popular Music.” It’s the format for his current tour, and believe it or not, it’s exactly what it purports to be.
“Well, this show, it’s kind of a revue of popular music, from about 1,000 AD on,” explains Thompson, who performs the shows with vocalist Judith Owen and percussionist/vocalist Debra Dobkin. “And I must say that we did cheat a bit, and that it really is songs that we like playing, rather than songs that were really popular, in some cases. But we do take on a really wide range of music—an absurdly wide range of music-- starting with various forms of early music up through Elizabethan, madrigals, carols from the 18th century—and there’s probably more of a concentration on music from 1900 onward, just because that’s what we and the audience are more familiar with. So, you know, we cover Gilbert and Sullivan, and jazz, gospel, country, and, well, everything!”
Thompson originally hatched the idea eight years ago, when Playboy magazine asked him to join a number of other musicians in contributing a list of the “best songs of the millennium.” Rather than narrow that down to the latter 20th century—like most of his peers did—Thompson actually took the challenge literally, reaching back hundred of years for noteworthy tunes. Playboy predictably failed to print his unorthodox selections, but Thompson took the ball and ran with it himself, absorbing the millennium canon, so to speak, and turning the concept into a live show and a 2003 CD/DVD release.
“One of the joys of the show,” Thompson says, “is to present this unfamiliar, almost forgotten music to the audience, and say, ‘look, here’s this kind of music from 1400 or 1800 or 1900, isn’t this interesting? Isn’t this great?’ And perhaps the audience will be inspired to go and find more of the same.”
It’s even safer to assume that those fans will be inspired to hear more of Richard Thompson’s own music, whether it’s his oldest fans clamoring for classics like “Wall of Death” and “Dimming of the Day,” or the new generation, downloading Thompson’s 2007 anti-war song “Dad’s Gonna Kill Me” off the artist’s website.
“Well it’s nice to see young faces out there . . . as the old audience dies off,” Thompson snickers. “But you know, it’s always nice when people discover your music. Some people will say, ‘I found you on the internet’ or ‘my father turned me on to your music,’ and I always find that really sweet and rewarding to hear.”
Richard Buckner Veteran Folk-Rocker Still Writing His Own Story By Andrew Clayman Published in The Knoxville Voice, October 2007
A well-traveled troubadour if there ever was one, Richard Buckner is a much funnier guy than his shadowy, rural melodies might suggest.
“I just want to stay out of my midnight shifts at Home Depot as long as I can,” he quips, feigning bitterness in a gruff but affable, alt-country accent. Even after fifteen years with his nose to the grindstone and his “scene” in perpetual flux, Buckner knows how to spot the silver lining in some of his most frustrating experiences.
Exhibit A: His brief and highly tumultuous tenure as a major-label recording artist with MCA in the late ‘90s.
“I learned some valuable lessons,” recalls Buckner, 40, speaking from his latest temporary residence in Upstate New York. “You know, we’re talking about New York and L.A. business ethics, where they look at you strange if you try to be fair with people. So, with MCA, it was an interesting couple of albums. We were mutually hateful to each other,” he laughs. “I wanted to get off the label, and luckily, they dropped me.”
Though MCA had released the acclaimed LPs that helped Buckner earn his cult following (1997’s Devotion +Doubt and 1998’s Since), he was happy to soldier on without them, admittedly disgusted by the business side of making records. After putting out his next three albums on microscopic Overcoat Recordings, Buckner re-emerged in 2004 on the beloved Merge label, home to indie titans like Robert Pollard, Camera Obscura, and the Arcade Fire.
“Merge has been great,” Buckner says, “because it’s a step up in way from a small label, but they’re also just normal, cool people from North Carolina. It’s about the best I could do, as far as getting a cool, powerful label, without dealing with a bunch of stupid, business crap. Because they’re fair-- they’re musicians and artists themselves and they know what it’s like to be a musician and artist. Plus, they’re one of those few labels where you pick up an album and see the Merge label, and you’ll just buy it sometimes, because you think, it’s got to be good. . . . So when Mac from Merge called and said he was interested, I was really fuckin’ honored. It was a big deal to me.“
For the past year, Buckner has been touring in support of his second Merge release, 2006’s Meadow, which was recorded in Brooklyn with help from Guided By Voices veterans Doug Gillard and Kevin March, among others. On the road, Buckner adopted the Kent, Ohio, chamber-country collective The Six Parts Seven as his backing band, continuing a tradition of collaboration that’s been a Buckner calling card in each of the many cities he’s called home over the years.
“Man, I’ll tell you, when you get the ideas and you send out the invitations, and a few of the people you really admire respond back and want to work with you, it’s a real, real good feeling,” says Buckner, who can count diverse acts like Gillard, Calexico, Destroyer, Texas country legend Lloyd Maines, and the Mekons’ Jon Langford among his collaborative posse. “There’s no better compliment than to have other artists appreciate what you do.”
The critics have been quite appreciative of Buckner’s work, as well, particularly his lyrical craftsmanship. While his music can vary from stripped down folk balladry to somewhat more raucous country-rock, his tonality and themes are slightly more consistent, with images of lost loves, long drives, and Econo Lodges helping to reflect Buckner’s own famously nomadic nature (San Francisco, Atlanta, Brooklyn, Edmonton, Phoenix, and Lubbock, TX, are just some his career pit stops).
In the late ‘80s, Buckner actually earned a BA in Creative Writing from Chico State University, near his hometown of Fresno, California, although he admits he would still be writing today with or without the experience.
“I didn’t think I was going to get a creative writing degree,” he says. “For me, writing is kind of a private thing, so I hated taking stories into some group where people comment on it or where they make you write something based on some pointless prompt. It was really a pain in the ass.”
Still, when informed that his interviewer is also, in fact, the holder of a Creative Writing degree, Buckner kindly cites at least one positive consequence of his collegiate days— thus providing exhibit B in the case for Richard Buckner as a glass-half-full kind of guy.
“It does give you a thick skin,” he laughs. “Having to defend yourself in front of a dumb professor who’s been there 20 years and isn’t willing to move or think in a different way—it gets you ready for things like all the punk ass bitches who work for the Village Voice.”
OK, so positivity doesn’t always include unconditional love for those who review your work. Nonetheless, Buckner is considering a foray into even deeper, shark infested waters, as he eventually hopes to take a break from music and put more time into his first love, writing.
“It’s hard switching horses,” he says. “I don’t know if I could put out a book that’d be worth anything. I thought I wanted to do it, then I read the last book by David Berman (lead singer of the indie band Silver Jews) and it freaked me out-- it was so good. Then, I kind of didn’t want to write a book,” he laughs. “I got a bunch of stuff I’m working on and trying to put together over the next year, so we’ll see. But, you know, there are also a lot of really bad examples of musicians putting out books, too. So there’s that whole fear. I mean, you don’t want to do the Jewel thing or something.”
