Teddy Thompson Will Headline Sag Harbor American Music Festival

This year’s Sag Harbor American Music Festival (SHAMF) will take place September 26 to 29. Established in 2010 with its lineup of free outdoor concerts, SHAMF is adding a “restaurant night,” bringing back the alley stage and special evening concerts, and providing eclectic, joyful musical experiences for all.

This year’s headline artist, Teddy Thompson, is scheduled to perform at Bay Street Theater on Friday, September 27, at 8 p.m. Thompson is a native Englishman who adopted New York City as his home. Famously the son of folk-rock legends Richard and Linda Thompson, he emigrated to the States almost 20 years ago, barely out of his teens, to embark on a career of his own.

Thompson joins SHAMF to perform his country inflected originals and selections from his latest album, “My Love of Country.” The simplicity and emotional intensity of classic country – à la Hank Williams, Patsy Cline and George Jones — has been a big part of Thompson’s own sound as an artist.

Local audiences may have heard Thompson performing on the East End as part of the first Guitar Masters festival with G.E. Smith and in concert with Jenni Muldaur in “Teddy & Jenni Do Nashville: A Tribute to the Great Country Duets” at Guild Hall.

“Who do I sound like? I think I sound like myself,” Thompson says, “There’s a strong element of British folky in me, it’s in the blood, and I heard the wonderful music of my parents around me as a young child. Then there was the 1950s American pop and country that I fell in love with, plus the ’80s pop music that was in the charts at the time.”

From a young age, Sam Cooke, Hank Williams, Chuck Berry and the Everly Brothers made up the bulk of his listening, along with select contemporary tunes heard on Top of The Pops — A-ha, Culture Club, Wham!

“As a teenager, I couldn’t talk to my friends about ’50s rock n roll. I was not cool enough to be that different. I’d say Crowded House was the first contemporary band I really found that I liked, that was socially acceptable,” he says. “Today? I like to think my taste in music is Catholic, I listen to whatever catches my ear, I don’t care about genre. There’s only two types of music, good and bad.”

After releasing his self-titled debut in 2000, Thompson went on tour as part of Roseanne Cash’s band. Since then he’s released eight albums, collaborated with good friends Martha and Rufus Wainwright, contributed to numerous tribute projects, and produced albums for Americana singer-songwriters Allison Moorer and Shelby Lynn, Dori Freeman, Roseanne Reid as well as his mother, Linda Thompson.

His latest album, “My Love of Country,” found him collaborating with such artists as Rufus Wainwright, Rosanne Cash and Emmylou Harris. Helping Thompson realize his vision was multi-instrumentalist producer David Mansfield, whose resume includes touring with Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue, scoring Oscar nominated films like “The Apostle” and years of high-profile session work with the likes of Johnny Cash, Lucinda Williams and Dwight Yoakam. “My Love of Country” follows 2020’s “Heartbreaker Please,” listed in the Top 10 Records of the Year by Britain’s Daily Mail and called “buoyant, brilliant and soulful” by Billboard.

Tickets for the concert are $45 ($35 SHAMF members) at sagharbormusic.org.