Folk legend Thompson amazes crowd

As the wind and rain blew down Kirkwood Tuesday night, a stream of baby boomers and college hipsters took refuge in the Buskirk-Chumley Theater, buzzing with anticipation over the night's performance. Only one of Richard Thompson's perennial stops in Bloomington could bring such a generationally diverse crowd together.\nRichard Thompson first made a name for himself in the late 1960s with the British folk-rock band Fairport Convention and has been recording and performing steadily since then. He's never really achieved significant commercial success but has garnered constant critical acclaim and, as Tuesday's show indicated, a devoted cult following.\nAlthough he's experimented with backing groups of various sizes on his records, the Richard Thompson live experience is a one-man affair. Clad in black from head to toe, he straps on his acoustic guitar and launches into one classic after another. As expected, the set borrowed heavily from the recently released "Action Packed: The Best of the Capitol Years," a compilation of gems taken from his last half-dozen records.\n"I know some of you think 'The bastard only writes two good songs per album," he joked from the stage about the greatest hits package. "'Why should I buy twelve when I only want the two?'"\nBut any fan of Thompson knows he's written a good deal more than one disc's worth of classics. So thankfully, he included a number of pre-Capitol favorites, including three from one of his finest albums, 1982's "Shoot Out the Lights." That album's closer, "Wall of Death," a live favorite which finally came during the second encore, was punctuated with a medley of Bob Dylan favorites. Thompson switched out lines from Dylan's "She Belongs to Me," "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," "Like a Rolling Stone" and "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" at a dizzying pace as the audience laughed and tried to keep up. Other pleasant surprises included an off-the-cuff rendition of "Stardust" (in honor of the song's composer, Bloomington native Hoagy Carmichael), and the rollicking Egyptian singalong "Now My Daddy's a Mummy."\nThompson is definitely road-tested -- he's got the stage presence and easy audience rapport that can only come from thirty-plus years of constant touring. His songs are often dark, cynical tales of lost love and missed opportunities, but the man himself is warm and engaging. Literate, moving, and handy with an acoustic guitar, Richard Thompson is one of modern music's best-kept secrets.