Richard Thompson was born in Notting Hill Gate (London, England) in 1949 and is a singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist (guitar, mandolin, Appalachian dulcimer, hammered dulcimer, accordion, harmonium, and keyboards). Over the years, his musical style has spanned many genres such as British folk (a genre that often shares the same communal spirit of traditional American folk - that is, it tends to be more universal than personal - but also has strong elements of traditional Celtic and British music), British folk rock (a genre that was heavily inspired by American folk rock luminaries the Byrds and Bob Dylan but also incorporated elements of traditional British folk), hard rock (a loosely defined sub-genre of rock music featuring heavy use of aggressive vocals, distorted electric guitars, bass guitar, drums, and often accompanied with pianos and keyboards), and alternative rock (a style of rock music that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular in the 1990s). He's best known as one of the founding members of British folk rock legends Fairport Convention and he's also had a stellar solo career with 25 studio albums, an Orville H. Gibson Award an Ivor Novello Award, and a BBC Radio Lifetime Achievement award. He also performs as Richard Thompson Electric Trio (with Michael Jerome on drums and Taras Prodaniuk on bass).