Marjorie Thompson Press Material

About Marjorie

When Marjorie Thompson takes the stage, tiny and blonde and bearing a smile that carries just a hint of shyness, her demeanor scarcely prepares her audience for what comes next.

The audience can be forgiven for wondering almost at once how so much power -- in guitar playing, in singing, in the songs themselves -- could erupt from such a small package.

But Marjorie Thompson is quite a surprise.

“It’s a joy to discover an artist like this,” enthused Nancy Montgomery in Music News Nashville, echoing the discovery made by numerous happy audiences in the U.S. and abroad during Marjorie’s relatively brief recording and live performance career.

Which isn’t to say she’s new to music. The word “joy” clearly comes to mind when one sees the old family picture of a 10-year-old Marjorie in her room in New York City, proudly holding her first guitar. In a busy and accomplished life, she has sometimes put down the guitar, but not for long.

Marjorie got that first guitar during the waning years of the “folk threat,” when county, blues, and bluegrass were all the rage at places in New York like Gerde’s Folk City. Though she was too young to go to those now-legendary performances, the influence was inescapable and she was swept up in it. She worked hard and soon Marjorie could pick a solid alternating thumb groove with a detailed melody line, no mean feat even for older, more experienced players. And she loved it.

At the same time, she discovered a strong attraction for science, borne of a precollege program in 1969 that galvanized her passion for biology by the age of 15.

As she headed for college at an early age, her passion for music never waned. Sometimes it would take a back seat to studies that led to her doctorate in Biology and a variety of other degrees and certifications. “I’m in to self-improvement,” she laughs.

All the while, though, she played guitar. She was especially interested in the blues licks that were “revealed” to and by the Rev. Gary Davis, the playing of the newly popular Mississippi John Hurt, and the acoustic blues stylings of Jorma Kaukonen, then of Hot Tuna.

In 1999, she saw an advertisement for Kaukonen’s “Fur Peace Ranch” guitar workshops in rural Ohio and immediately signed up. Though perfectly comfortable lecturing to students at Brown University where she was and is Dean of Undergraduate Biology, she was not accustomed to playing guitar for strangers. But her guitar work over the years had paid off -- she could more than hold her own in the demanding advanced classes taught by Kaukonen himself.

Her own teaching skills proved more than helpful -- soon other students were turning to her for tablature and other fruits of her methodical style of study. She kept returning to Fur Peace Ranch (and noted workshops and private studies with such notables as Woody Mann, Mark Hanson, Little Toby Walker, Mike Dowling, Ernie Hawkins, and others). Before many years had passed, she was assisting Kaukonen in many of his classes, then conducting classes of her own at the ranch. She is now also its academic advisor, helping prospective students determine which workshops would be of greatest value to them.

Meanwhile, though happy to learn the music of the blues and country blues masters, she was driven to write her own songs. People who heard them loved them. She was encouraged to perform them -- to actually go on tour! Musical venues agreed. She recorded a demo CD and sent it out; the result was 90 bookings the first year.

She has kept up that pace ever since. She has also recorded four studio albums with Michael Falzarano (of Hot Tuna and New Riders of the Purple Sage fame) producing and with some top-level musicians playing to the side. Of her latest, 2007’s Right By Me, the great Chris Smither said, “I’m tempted to say that I taught her everything she knows, but she’s gone so far beyond anything I showed her I’m afraid I might get called on it.” The album was released to universal critical acclaim.

Touring has taken her around the U.S., as well as Italy, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Though she usually headlines her own performances, she has shared the stage with Acoustic Hot Tuna, Chris Smither, Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks, David Jacobs-Strain, Geoff Muldaur, Guy Davis, Happy Traum, Jack Casady with Box Set, Jorma Kaukonen, Lori McKenna, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Paul Geremia, Richard Shindell, Richie Havens, and numerous others.

She has appeared on numerous radio and television programs, perhaps most notably being featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, and her CDs have found an audience on scores of radio stations.

Much has been made of the fact that in addition to her musical accomplishments, Marjorie Thompson has her academic career and is the mother of seven children. But with a modest smile she downplays those things.

“People don’t come to see the singing dean, or the mother who writes songs,” she says. “They come to hear -- and I owe them -- good music. The music has to succeed or fail on its own. I think it’s succeeding.”

The critics, and audiences here and abroad, enthusiastically agree.