DUFF THOMPSON
BIO
Photo Credit: Minnie Heart and Bill Howard.
Duff Thompson is a songwriter, musician, and producer whose music is a swampy blend of folk, pop, and garage rock. As a songwriter, he has a rare ability to distill emotional complexity into simple, sincere songs that instantly hit the listener on a visceral level. As a producer, he draws from influences that span across decades and genres, merging them into a cohesive and organic sound recognizable as his own.
Thompson’s dark, alienated, and swaggering sophomore release, Shadow People, is the first of a duology of albums recorded during a late summer Montreal heatwave in 2021. Created over two weeks of intensive recording, Shadow People comprises 10 of the 20 tracks captured during these sessions. Thompson rented out the studio space at Sud-Ouest Recording Service and produced and engineered the album himself, bringing along with him a 16-track reel-to-reel and songwriter/musicians Steph Green and Kyle Taylor as his
backing band and assistant engineers. The album also features contributions from Mat Davidson (Twain) on strings, pedal steel, and bass clarinet. Whereas Thompson’s 2020 debut album, Haywire showcased his versatility and folk influences, Shadow People is a more cohesive collection of songs that push his music further into the world of garage and indie rock. Shadow People is out October 27th on Mashed Potato Records.
Thompson started out playing music at a young age, forming and playing in bands until 2016, when he shifted focus to being a solo artist. It was around this time he found himself in New Orleans where he would spend the next few years recording both himself and those around him in the folk/songwriter community he found himself in. It was also around this time that he co-founded Mashed Potato Records, which he continues to co-run with Steph Green in Canada.