The next time we see Richard

There’s a passage in Nick Hornby’s novel High Fidelity where the girlfriend of Dick, one of the main characters, poses the question, “who is Richard Thompson?”

“He’s a folk/rock singer and England’s finest electric guitarist,” comes the reply. Few who are familiar with Thompson’s vast canon of work over the past 35 years would argue with this contention, though many might add that he is also England’s finest living songwriter. REM, Elvis Costello, Graham Nash and Bonnie Raitt are just some of the dozens of artists who have covered his songs over the years, but despite the acclaim that has been heaped upon him, Thompson remains a relatively peripheral figure, preferring to quietly record consistently brilliant albums and perform for his loyal audiences.

His 25th album, The Old Kit Bag, his first in four years, finds him back on an independent label – after a long spell with Capitol Records – with a slimmed-down band and a collection of dark, lyrically dense songs.

Did the fact that he is now back recording independently bring anything new to his approach in the studio?

“The budget did influence the way we thought about this record,” he concedes. “We tried to do it quickly, make it a fairly live record. But you have to use the tools that are going to find the audience for you. Major labels are not capable of doing that for someone like me anymore. They’ve really taken the corporate route and it doesn’t suit most artists – it certainly doesn’t suit me.”

Thompson’s songs deal with quintessentially English themes; his last album, Mock Tudor was heavily influenced by his early days growing up in North London. Strange then, that these days he finds himself permanently based in California.

“I work mostly in the United States and I’ve commuted back and forth for years,” he explains. “It just made sense to keep my family out here. Actually, Santa Monica where I live now has a lot of Brits around – something like 50,000 in total, most of them in the film, TV and music business. It’s the biggest ex-pat community in the world – you can’t move here for pubs and fish ’n’ chip shops. Being out here probably helps to get some perspective on England, from a distance. It helped James Joyce didn’t it? He moved to Zurich and wrote about Dublin in such an intense way.”

As far as current music trends are concerned Thompson says that he knows little about what is happening in the charts and cares even less.

“I tend to go back to the ’50s and listen to Johnny Smith, or some of those Nashville players like Greg Martin, and Hank Garland,” he says. “I find I can learn more – they’re doing things that I can get that more from. If I listen to Joe Satriani or Steve Vai I don’t get anything from it. I might think, gosh that’s very clever and technical but harmonically it’s really boring. I’d rather listen to a piano player or a sax player and think ‘how can I get that kind of vocalisation on a guitar?’.

“And I haven’t listened to pop music for about 30 years. When I was at school I’d go and watch Jeff Beck and Pete Townshend play in little clubs. I went to the opera last night, The Barber Of Seville – pretty mainstream and predictable I know – I usually prefer something more esoteric. But opera is something that I can apply to what I do. It’s a place where you can get some really emotional highs musically and it’s got tremendously skilful writing. I would never want to sing like that but it’s great to watch the singers interact with the orchestra.”