The Duff Thompson Interview
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 latest work is a dark, alienated, and swaggering duology of albums titled Shadow People and Shadow People II. Created over two weeks of intensive recording during a Montreal heatwave in 2021, the Shadow People series comprise 19 total tracks split across two albums. Thompson rented out the studio space at Sud-Ouest Recording Service and produced and engineered the recordings himself, bringing along with him a 16-track reel-to-reel and songwriter/musicians Steph Green (drums, lap steel, pump organ, vocals) and Kyle Taylor (drums, piano, vocals) as his backing band and assistant engineers.
Shadow People 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 and Shadow People II are a more cohesive collection of songs that push his music further into the world of garage and indie rock. Shadow People was released October 27, 2023, to be followed by Shadow People II on June 21, 2024, out 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. In addition to his own project, he has spent many years recording, and performing as a backing musician for numerous other artists, as well as co-running the DIY label Mashed Potato Records. Along with the October 2023 release of Shadow People, the past year saw Thompson performing across the US, Canada, and in Europe, ending with a six-week co-headlining tour alongside Steph Green, with sold-out dates in numerous major cities in North America.
—From Thompson’s site
When and where were you born?. What was your childhood like growing up? When did you first begin to fall in love with music, more specifically the guitar and song-writing? Was this something that was relevant growing up in your household?
I was born in the late '80s in Southern Ontario. Childhood was fairly average and non-descript. I grew up in the suburbs in a safe neighborhood, with lots of other kids and a park down the street. The kind of place where the neighbors would peer out their window and spy on you because there was nothing else to do. I always loved music from an early age. My family was pretty musical and that was a big part of family gatherings with people passing around the guitar to sing songs. My parents both played and sang a little, two of my uncles played pretty well, as did two of my older cousins who were in a rock band. When I was 12, my uncle gave me one of his old electric guitars and an amplifier that he made out of a boombox. The guitar was one of those BC Rich guitars from the '80s that had a big horn coming out of it by the fretboard. The horn had been sawed off. Songwriting became a thing when the same uncle gave me a Tascam 4-track when I was 14. That's when I fell in love with recording. Hearing myself being played back at memade me feel like I was a real musician.
What would you and your friends do for fun growing up? Who were some of your earliest influences in your more formative years? When and where did you see your very first concert? When did you realize you wanted to spend your time pursuing music?
I don't really remember much of the specifics of the activities before age 10. Probably stuff like riding bikes, play fighting, etc. I played hockey and some other sports. Teenage years were mostly spent playing music, skateboarding and various forms of shenanigans. Like most kids in the '90s, if you weren't into Puff Daddy, Notorious B.I.G., or into the various girl, or boy groups, then you found yourself listening to "Alternative" music. Stuff like Nirvana, Green Day, Blur and whatnot. My first concert was Green Day in Toronto, probably in '99, or 2000. Realizing that I wasn't ever going to play in the N.H.L., sometime at age 10-12, was when I started pursuing music in what I thought a meaningful way was.
Did you participate in any groups, or projects prior to setting out as a solo artist! When and where did you make your live performance debut and what was that experience like for you? How would you personally compare playing music live vs. recording it?
I played in a couple different punk-styled bands as a teen which were the home for any songs I was writing. Local punk bands were really the only bands that were playing shows outside of their highschool and for the most part, a lot of other kids would attend them. I liked all kinds of music by then, but I was probably trying to write music that would fit into that mold so that I could play shows and have people actually like what I was doing. My 20s were a time of really writing all kinds of styles. Though most of the songs still weren't that good, a certain sound started to develop which really isn't that different from what I'm doing today. In fact, there are even some songs on my last two albums that include some of those songs. I started playing at local shows when I was 14, but my first show as a solo performer was years later, which really felt like some sort of turning point. Playing live vs. recording really are two separate art forms. There's an adrenaline rush that happens when you perform that gives it a certain energy that you can't replicate in a studio. There are no second takes, and everyone at a show who paid to see you has some minimum expectation that they think should be met. There's pressure involved. I think a great recording is the pinnacle of musical artistic achievement. You can correct for things that aren't working in the process, which you can really take advantage of. I've seen some of my favourite bands play live, and some of them left an impression on me for sure, but I certainly have benefitted exponentially more from their studio recordings, which I can listen to whenever I want, in all sorts of scenarios, for the rest of my life. I really like performing, but I like recording more.
You released, personally, one of my favorite records in quite some time back in 2020 entitled “Haywire”. Tell me about writing and recording that album and what the overall vision and approach was. During a time that was rather difficult to say the least, what was most important to you to express with this wonderful material? Would you mind giving some background to tracks such as “Sleight Of Hand”, “Haywire”, “You’re Pretty Good” and “The Long Haul”?
Thanks! I'm happy you like it so much. I didn't really have an overall vision for the album. My approach was simply to record some of the many songs that I had at the time, with very limited resources. They're more of a collection of recordings I made over the course of a few years in New Orleans. They were all recorded on a two-track or four-track or combination of both. A few of them are completely live, a few had very minimal overdubs and a couple started with just basic rhythm tracks. I would schedule some time to record, see who was around to play in my band, and pick songs that I figured would work with that configuration of people until I had enough good recordings to put out an album. I recorded many other songs that didn't make the cut and a few of them on there had to be re-done a time or two. "Sleight of Hand" was the first song I wrote in New Orleans and I had another recording of it that I made in '17. That one ended up sounding too much like the Travelling Wilburys, so it was scrapped. I then recorded a more stripped-down version on a cassette machine as a demo which I then replicated, more or less, on better equipment. "Haywire" was one I recorded by myself. My initial idea was to have it sound as best I could like something that the CBC in Canada would play. They never did. "You're Pretty Good" was a really old song I had. I can't say too much about it. It has simple, self-explanatory lyrics and a pretty simple arrangement to compliment that. It was recorded live, then I added a second vocal and a distorted organ. "The Long Haul" was a fun one to record. I wrote it at the beginning of my first long stay in the U.S. in my friend's house in San Francisco. I guess it's simply a call to go out and have fun.
As the summer approaches, what are your plans? Is there anything else you would like to further share with the readers?
Yes. I'm releasing a new album on June 21st called "Shadow People II". It's the second part of a duology, the first one being "Shadow People", which I released last October. They were both recorded in 2021 in Montreal at a cool studio called Sud-Ouest Recording Services. Steph Green and Kyle Taylor both accompanied me as my group as we tracked our way through both albums in two weeks. Recording in New Orleans was always in small spaces and thus, benefitted from playing at lower volumes, which was fine but catered more toward a lighter and folkier sound. This time around, in a big open space and with the ability to have loud drums, I was able to experiment a little and get a heavier sound. I had wanted to get back into playing rock music again and this was the opportunity. The new album still has some folky elements to it and with a keen ear, you can imagine how some of these songs could have sounded with lighter production. But the production isn't light and is definitely a lot more rocking than anything I've done in the past. Steph Green and I are co-headlining a tour together starting late June where we have a bunch of shows in the North East, then slowly make our way out West where we'll be touring down the whole coast, then making our way through Colorado. Thanks for the interview!
