In honor of the mighty Richard Thompson playing the Philadelphia Folk Festival this weekend, we got the man on the horn to talk about Fairport Convention, reuniting onstage with his ex-wife/partner Linda Thompson, his new album and why he won’t be playing “Calvary Cross” at the Folk Fest. Look for it this week. Here’s a taste…
PHAWKER: You were a teenager when you founded and led Fairport Convention?
RICHARD THOMPSON: Correct, yeah.
PHAWKER: Do you miss anything about those days, and are there any parts that maybe you’re glad to have behind you at this point?
RICHARD THOMPSON: (laughs) I miss being young; that was quite exciting. That’s definitely changed. I think there’s a kind of freshness and an originality about the first time that you come to something, you know, the first time you come to music, the first time you come to new ideas.And I think the rest of your life is trying to keep that ability to be naive, to see things for the first time, but when you are young it just happens to you naturally, so I miss that. And I miss the music scene in the 60’s, which I think was very exciting. At the time we thought it was normal, but as decades passed it does seem to have been an exceptional time; a very open-minded time musically, where you had a huge range of styles, and audiences or record buyers seemed to be very open-minded about the kind of music they’d listen to.