A benefit concert & beer tasting for the Thirsty Ear Festival featuring folk-n-roller
CHIPPER THOMPSON

Thompson lives in Taos, New Mexico, but he grew up in the heart of the Tennessee Valley — a microcosm of the Old South with both cotton fields andd Appalachian foothills—where he was well grounded in the musical traditions of his Scots-Irish ancestors, as well as regional blues. Thompson's deft handling of guitar, mandolin, bouzouki, dulcimer, and banjo make him a viable threat, whether cranking out his own brand of "folk & roll" or teaming with other musicians for bouts of Appalachian/Celtic folk songs. "We wanted to play and record songs with the same intensity and near-apocalyptic passion we'd heard on old field recordings," says Thompson of his collaboration with Mason Brown on Am I Born To Die, a wonderful, bloody body of traditional Appalachian and Scots-Irish songs. "So often folk music has a flowery, sweet image, but that's not how it's performed by the old-time singers in the pubs in Ireland. We want that smoldering sound."