The Thompson theme: tough reality
"I suppose I've never been known for writing particularly happy songs. I must have been hit by a depressive virus once, and it kind of ran riot."
Roy Thompson's songs do theme on the miserable, but, though he's still at the stage where he doesn't seem to fully believe in himself, he writes compelling lyrics and performs them with a passion and a seriously good underlying musical talent. And his songs are almost invariably stories.
It is a combination that, if he ever decides to jump totally into it, could push him up there with the best of the international singer-songwriters.
But that's in a maybe future. For just tomorrow he's working on his first CD, which will be recorded by Gordon Turner from Kildare over an unspecified 'period of time'.
"It will be an independent production," Roy says. "It is just something that has to be done. The songs are there, and they have to be let out."
Those who didn't make it to the Ballymore Inn last Monday night missed a preview of what will be on that CD. Roy was playing support to US singer-songwriter Jeff Finlin (the Diary will feature that performance at another time), and the songs ranged through racism, alcoholism, depression, state-sponsored terrorism, and domestic violence.
The one that didn't fit there was a self-portrait of the singer, relating how he developed from the time he was given his first guitar at the age of twelve. It didn't start auspiciously -- 'I cursed the day I picked up that guitar' -- but when singer-songwriters became his heroes, he began to 'fall in love' with it.
He also performed the first song he wrote that he didn't consider was 'complete trash', composed when he was nineteen and living on his own in a mobile home in England. The line 'it's easy to be stationary, harder to move along' sums up a feeling many will emphatise with. We've all been there at some stage in our lives.
Then there was 'How Convenient', which has the recurring chorus 'I'm living in a rathole/looking for the cheese ... won't you help me out please?' "No, it's definitely not autobiographical," he insisted.
His anti-war song of the evening was 'one for George Bush and his like', a modern take on Donovan's 'Universal Soldier' that moves through fighting in Guam and Vietnam to today's conflict in Iraq. 'Humanity is lost in the waging of war ... with each war that's waged and each village that's burned/humanity bleeds and no lesson is learned'.
No further comment needed ...
His second last song was a domestic violence saga in the traditional country 'tragi-song' mode. Not sure of the title, but 'she's all alone' was a regular chorus line. It could have been mawkish, but it is the measure of his lyrical skill that it was compulsive listening. Not to mention the novelistic sting in the tail.
'Keeping it Real' was the final song, and the singer went through some of the good things about the world ("it's the only one we've got"), ending with the idea that 'this is all I need to make me feel'.
A note of optimism in a Roy Thompson song? He'd need to watch himself ...
Brian Byrne.
