Celtic Connections

Teddy Thompson

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

Rob Adams

FOUR STARS

HIS father is one of the greats, as Teddy Thompson notes in Family, a song he reserves for the encore section. And it’s true. You can hear where he gets some of his darker inflections from, that little twist of the knife in his sense of humour, the self-deprecating observation in lyric or between-song chat.

Thompson the younger has been his own man for long enough now, though, to have taken his own direction and it’s one that more than a few times here suggested that his old man might have been, not Richard Thompson, the great fuser of folk tradition with multifarious guitar mastery, but Buddy Holly (impossible, of course), an Everly brother (surely not) or even George Jones (gulp).

When he was joined by Washington state singer-songwriter Kelly Jones for a handful of boy-girl duets they were so well matched that a fantastical storyline for the television music soap Nashville flashed across my mind. Thompson probably doesn’t need the exposure that would offer. He’s doing all right, having developed a biddable audience that doesn’t take much encouragement to join in on What’s This’s “Take you out anywhere, tie you to the kitchen chair” refrain.

He’s a charmer, too, with a voice that, despite a little bit of rustiness – it was his first gig in a while, he conceded – carries immediately appealing melodies with conviction and a guitar style that, without making the obvious comparison, makes him easily self-sufficient whether strumming with vigour or finger-picking gently but purposefully.

On Family he seems almost to be apologising for not living up to the rest of the gang; he doesn’t need to on this showing.