As one of the most respected guitarists in contemporary music - he was in the top 100 in a 2011 Rolling Stone poll - Thompson has it within his power to pull out the sonic fury, but talking down the trio has been deliberate.
"If you say 'rock trio' people think you're Rush or something. Or Green Day, where the guitarist is on the extreme setting and the drums are always loud. What we do is play music with a lot of contrast. We do acoustic stuff, quieter electric stuff and also fairly loud stuff too."
That breadth was apparent on the group's 2013 album Electric, where brittle socio-political songs like Stuck on the Treadmill (about the daily grind) shared space with delicate acoustic pieces like The Snow Goose. More recent album Acoustic Classics was intended just for the merchandising tent when he did a solo tour.
"I wanted something on the acoustic tour for people who might have come to a show for the first time and this could be a souvenir. So I did fairly predictable songs, or what I thought would be the most popular selection. Then the record company heard it and thought they'd like to release it, and it charted at number nine in the UK ... which was insane really."
Not really, given the high regard in which Thompson is held. His songs have been widely covered - everyone from R.E.M. and the Futureheads to Elvis Costello - and he has collaborated with numerous artists. One of the standout tracks on Acoustic Classics is Persuasion which has appeared regularly on his set lists. It was co-written with Tim Finn and also appeared on Finn's 1993 album, Before & After.
With such a lengthy back-catalogue - almost 30 albums under his own name - he inevitably has people call out for favourites at concerts. He admits playing outdoor concerts come with their own problems - "You can be a couple of hundred feet from the next stage so if you play quiet you're hearing the other stage underneath your music, you're in F sharp and they're in B flat, it's a mess," - but says they will change their set list accordingly. "If you do a slow song and people start drifting away you think, 'Uh-oh' and you up the tempo a bit. There are festivals where you have to absolutely not allow the attention to drop because that's the kind of festival it is and that's what everybody else on the bill is doing.
"But the other thing with festivals is if you play quieter it can draw people in and that can be a real advantage."
The set list for Womad will include material from Electric, some old favourites and a few songs they've just recorded for a new album with Jeff Tweedy producing. A fair cross-section then, but there's always that lone voice repeatedly shouting out for their favourite?
"I quite like that," he says only half in jest. "It's a bit of audience research. Sometimes they're obvious songs like Vincent Black Lightning or Beeswing, songs I usually do because I sort of have to. Sometimes though it can be completely obscure and I'll realise I'd completely forgotten about that song. It can send me to the back catalogue to relearn it.
"It's sometimes good to know what's on people's minds... although they can shout out for [Lynyrd Skynyd's] Free Bird, which as far as I know is not one of mine."
Who: British guitarist-songwriter Richard Thompson and band
Where: Womad, New Plymouth, Taranaki, March 13-15
- TimeOut
