Beloved of rock critics, largely unknown to the casual punter, Richard Thompson - who plays a rare Irish concert at Belfast's Waterfront Hall next Saturday - is a musician's musician, a songwriter's songwriter and a name to be dropped by successive generations of those in the know. The casual punter is, nevertheless, the one (in multiples of around 2,300 to be precise) the venue's management must be hoping to educate very speedily indeed if this rather daring adventure is to generate a full house.
A bafflingly complex artist, Thompson's soft-spoken and often uproariously wry banter on stage, not to mention the courteously impregnable persona revealed to interviewers, contrasts with the dark, obscure concerns of his writing and a virtuoso guitar style that relies almost wholly on scales, licks and intervals that owe nothing to the traditional well-springs of rock and only a little to the modes of Celtic traditional music.
Revered by the cognoscenti in England as a founding father of folk-rock - lending his singular twang to dozens of albums from Nick Drake to Robert Plant - and, more recently, in America as a pioneer of alternative rock that bred a generation of admirers in the likes of REM, David Byrne and Bob Mould, Thompson's name may be more familiar to Irish audiences by his music on the recordings of more genteel artistes. Mary Black alone has popularised Dimming Of The Day and Crazy Man Michael, Four Men And A Dog introduced Waltzing's For Dreamers to many others while Galway's Sean Keane provided a suitably memorable take on Galway To Graceland.
Conventional love songs, though, are a rarity in Thompson's canon - rather, he is drawn to the darker realms of the human psyche or simply to more curious and frankly unlikely subject material like the imagery of pre-war dance bands, fading circus performers or the vintage English motorcycle - always in richly compelling story-song format.
Last in Ireland three years ago this month, Thompson this time promises a lengthy, solo, acoustic show. Aside from Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen or Bob Dylan, few rock icons of similar vintage - and this is Thompson's 31st year in the business - generate acclaim for their solo performances equal or greater to that of their full-band work-outs. Of such a hallowed quartet he is the least well-known but probably eight out of 10 people who write about music will tell you he's the best. If you believe them, you'll book your tickets now.