Teddy Thompson – The future’s so bright…
“I was living at the Oakwood Apartments in L.A.,” remembers Wainwright. “It’s transitory housing, and the place is teeming with child actors who are practicing their lines at six in the morning, and having their mothers scream that they’ll never make it in Hollywood. It’s very Day Of The Locust.” Duly inspired by the sad faces printed on milk cartons, hallways jammed with “Full House” hopefuls, and ruminations on what it means to lose one’s childhood, Wainwright enlisted Thompson to help him complete the song. “I brought it to Teddy because it has a country aspect to it,” he explained, “and he is such an amazing roots/Americana guitar player and singer.”
The album’s final, hidden track, a duet with Emmylou Harris on the Everly Brothers’ “I Wonder If I Care As Much”, cemented Thompson’s reputation as a stunning singer in his own right. But what didn’t come through loud and clear on Teddy Thompson was his artistic voice; many of the songs lacked the visceral punch evident on Separate Ways. Looking back, Thompson wishes he had spent more preparing material before entering the studio. “I like about half the songs on the first record, and the rest could have been stronger,” he says.
Which is not to say that he disowns the disc. Not at all. “What I’m most proud of is that I recorded it in the way that I did,” he says. “I made it very quickly, and I didn’t fuck around. I tried to make it as honest a snapshot of that point in my life as possible.”
“I figure that anybody is going to look back on their first record, or hear it playing out somewhere, and think, ‘God, I sound horrible.’ I do. I’ve been listening to some of the old songs today, because I’m rehearsing for a tour, and I’m going to do a couple songs from that album, and I think, ‘I sound like a completely different person.’ But I’d much rather look back and know I did them honestly, as the person I was at that point, rather than spending years in the studio tweaking knobs and auto-tuning and filtering things. That would be a lot harder for me to listen to.”
It wasn’t until two years later, after parting ways with Virgin, that Thompson really began to hit his stride, when he came on board to help his mother end her seventeen-year recording hiatus with her 2002 Rounder Records release, Fashionably Late. He wrote or co-wrote six of the album’s ten tracks, contributed guitar and vocals, and assisted with production.
“It was a strange dynamic, just because I was expected to know what was going on, and organize things for somebody else,” he reflects. “But I got very into it. I discovered that I actually quite enjoy the production side of things, sitting back in the control booth, listening to somebody else’s music, and making decisions.”
More importantly, the project helped Teddy get back in touch with his own aesthetic core. “My mom’s music is utterly without pretension, totally heartfelt and honest,” he says. “And that was a good reminder, as to what we should all be thinking about: The song is the most important thing. Let’s not worry too much about the record deal, or the producer. Get back to basics.
“Until I decided that I would just start making the next record myself, I was a bit lost. I had a bit of a spell where I was thinking, ‘If I’m going to make another record, I have to get another deal, and I have to get another lawyer, and start sending out demos.”
After his work on Fashionably Late, such professional concerns dissipated. “Why not just concentrate on getting the songs first,” he figured, “and we’ll worry about everything else later.”
Thompson spent the next three years making his follow-up album. “I didn’t want to rush into it, and finish it too quickly,” he says. “And I made sure that I kept writing and really felt that all the songs were strong.”
Thomspon was content to forgo seeking a new label in favor of simply making a record that met his expectations. But while he jokingly contends that he is “quite lazy” (“I don’t particularly push myself too hard”), which made crafting the album in piecemeal fashion less frustrating, Wainwright stresses that Thompson does know how to manage his creative and leisure time in a complementary fashion.
“He works very, very hard on his music, whether it’s in the studio or touring,” says Wainwright. “When he gets down to business, he’s a lot like I think his dad is — he has that Richard Thompson drive and professionalism. When he’s on the job, he works around the clock, but then he knows how to throw it all out the window and have a good time. It’s very much night and day.”