Richard Thompson

Despite a few lackluster albums during the nineties, we’re quite fond of Thompson’s studio releases—last year’s The Old Kit Bag stuck in our heads deeply enough that we wound up happily exploring further all the way back to his sixties work with Fairport Convention. But the deep-voiced king of British folk is really at his best live onstage, where his warmly sardonic sense of humor and improvisational gifts can come to the fore. He’s still one of the more innovative and nimble-fingered guitarists around, and has a fine feel for the surprising cover song—he might launch into a mock-serious version of Britney Spears’s “Oops I Did It Again,” or change the triumphal tone of Crosby, Stills & Nash’s “Woodstock” into a haunting, near-medieval lament.
Fitzgerald, 10 E. Exchange St., St. Paul, (651) 290-1221, www.fitzgeraldtheater.org