Eric Thompson

He took up the guitar as a teenager in Palo Alto in the early 1960s, when few folk guitarists played much beyond rhythm. In the Black Mountain Boys of fall 1963 and January 1964 he played guitar and sang with Garcia on banjo and guitar, David Nelson on mandolin and Robert Hunter on bass. Live tapes of that band, among them “Barefoot Nellie,” were released in 2018 on Before the Dead, ATO Records’ collection of Garcia’s music from 1961 to 1964. Thompson also played guitar in Garcia’s Asphalt Jungle Mountain Boys, with Jody Stecher on mandolin, and in Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions.

With the New York Ramblers, whose members included David Grisman and Winnie Winston, he won the band contest at Union Grove, North Carolina. He flew to Nashville to record Beatle Country with the Charles River Valley Boys, an album of Beatles songs arranged as bluegrass that Elektra released in November 1966. He played lead guitar, with Jim Field on rhythm guitar, Bob Siggins on banjo, Joe Val on mandolin, Buddy Spicher on fiddle, Craig Wingfield on Dobro and Everett Lilly on bass. Rounder reissued it in 1995.

In the 1970s he played old-time music with the Spare Change Boys. He also took up tenor banjo, organized the Graineog Celidh Band around the County Clare musicians Joe Cooley and Kevin Keegan, and spent six months in the west of Ireland learning from older players. His solo album Eric Thompson’s Bluegrass Guitar (Kicking Mule, 1979) was recorded at 1750 Arch Studio in Berkeley with Tony Rice on rhythm guitar and David Grisman, Rick Shubb, Sandy Rothman, Paul Shelasky, Todd Phillips and Mark Shubb among the players. It was later reissued, with added duets with Grisman, as Thompson’s Real. Two Guitars (Flying Fish, 1986), a duet album with Alan Senauke, ranged from bluegrass to Irish reels and Greek rembetika.

Through the 1980s he toured in the United States and abroad with the Blue Flame Stringband, with Kate Brislin, Alan Senauke and Suzy Thompson, and with the Backwoods Band. Trips to southwest Louisiana drew him to Cajun music, and in 1983 he formed the California Cajun Orchestra, which made two albums for Arhoolie. He later recorded with the Todalo Shakers and the Bluegrass Intentions and formed the string band Kleptograss with Paul Kotapish, Corbin Pagter and Mark Schatz. As a sideman he has recorded with Mike Seeger, Alice Gerrard, the Savoy-Doucet Cajun Band, Jody Stecher and others. He has taught at the Puget Sound Guitar Workshop, Augusta Heritage and the Port Townsend Festival of American Fiddle Tunes. He wrote the book Playing Bluegrass Guitar and instructional columns for Flatpicking Guitar and Acoustic Guitar magazines.