Richard Thompson and Six Decades of Mastery to Galway
The Black Box in Galway, Ireland, was on Wednesday the setting for Richard Thompson’s opening of the Galway Folk Festival 2026, with a set that left no doubt about his range as a songwriter and guitarist. In the intimate venue, he filled the evening with material spanning his entire career, from his years with Fairport Convention to songs from a yet-to-be-announced new album. With only his wife Zara Phillips for company, the concert remained spare in its staging but rich in substance.
Thompson opened the evening alone. He started with “I Misunderstood”, a song that set the tone immediately: his guitar playing was precise and expressive, his voice carrying effortlessly through the room. The Fairport Convention song “Genesis Hall” felt like an acknowledgement of his roots, while “Valerie” and “Pharaoh” showed how he has always put that background in the service of his own voice as a songwriter. The Galway audience responded with recognition when “From Galway to Graceland” arrived, one of those songs where the story and the place converge.
“1952 Vincent Black Lightning” drew the loudest response of the first part of the evening. The song has been a touchstone in his live repertoire for years and has lost none of its storytelling power. Thompson accompanied the ballad with the seemingly effortless fingerpicking that has built his reputation as a guitarist. “Beeswing” followed, one of his most tender compositions, and then the lesser-known “Walking the Long Miles Home”, for which he briefly told the audience the story behind its creation.
Midway through the evening, Zara Phillips joined him on stage. Her presence shifted the atmosphere: the harmonies she added to songs Thompson once recorded with his then-wife Linda Thompson, gave those songs a new perspective. That was true of “Withered and Died” and later of “I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight”, the song he has described as his nearest miss at a hit — it came close enough to reach number 41 in the top 40. With Phillips beside him, it sounded less like a historical document and more like a living song.
Thompson also introduced two new songs from a forthcoming album: “Cocaine Walkin’, Booze Talkin'” and “Pipe Dreams”. The first was boisterous and loose in character, the second calmer and more lilting. Both gave a sense of the direction the upcoming record is heading.
The classic catalogue took up more space in the second half. “She Twists the Knife Again”, “The Rattle Within”, “The Angels Took My Racehorse Away”, and “Dry My Tears and Move On” followed one another in a set that held its balance of pace and intensity well. Thompson kept the evening light with dry commentary on the audience and on his own career. When someone called out a request, he responded with the ease of someone who has been handling crowds for decades.
For the encore, Thompson returned to the stage alone. From the audience came a request for “Dimming of the Day”, a Richard and Linda Thompson song, which he duly played. Phillips then rejoined him for “Wall of Death”, a fitting and energetic closing number that brought much of the room to its feet.
It was an evening that showed how Thompson manages his catalogue: not as a museum but as a constantly replenished archive. He played songs that are forty years old with the same attention he gave the two that have not yet been recorded. That he did so in a small room, without a band and without any embellishment, only made it sharper.
