{"id":715526,"date":"2026-07-28T14:37:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T14:37:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/715526\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T14:37:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T14:37:13","slug":"richard-thompson-shares-cocaine-walking-booze-talking-new-album-october-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/715526\/","title":{"rendered":"Richard Thompson Shares \u2018Cocaine Walking, Booze Talking\u2019 \u2014 New Album October 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t5<\/p>\n

Richard Thompson has shared Cocaine Walking, Booze Talking, the first single from his 20th studio album. Hippies, Thugs and Heroes follows on October 16th via New West Records, a 12-track set he produced with James Frazee and recorded at Hobosound Studio in Weehawken, New Jersey, a short walk from his own front door.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a hustling London song, and Thompson crowds it with people: a \u201ccarousel queen\u201d swamped by the big city, a soldier quoting Shakespeare, \u201ca Kings Road Hippie\u201d, \u201ca Sauchiehill thug\u201d. The playing struts and frays behind them before splintering into a psychedelic solo \u2014 a reminder that the guitar work on a Thompson album is never decoration.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

That cast is the album. Old friends and false gurus, beloved musicians and former selves, some drawn from life and some invented outright. Thompson only heard them as a single body of work once the recording was done. \u201cYou look over the body of songs you\u2019ve written and ask yourself, Which ones are kindred spirits?\u201d he says. \u201cYou look for commonality among the songs, and it\u2019s also a joy when you realize that certain songs seem to be brothers and sisters.\u201d<\/p>\n

The band is largely the one that made Ship to Shore: Taras Prodaniuk on bass, Michael Jerome on drums, David Mansfield on guitar and fiddle, and his wife Zara Phillips on backing vocals. What changed was what Thompson brought them. His home demos this time were far more worked-out. \u201cIt\u2019s so much fun to mess around at home and disappear down in the basement for hours at a time,\u201d he says. \u201cI even bought myself a drumkit. So I was able to present more complete demos to the band. You could say there\u2019s much more of my identity being transferred to the final product.\u201d He still left room for the players to add their own ideas, but calls the album \u201cless them and more me. But I\u2019m never strict about what I want to hear on a record. I\u2019m always interested to see what they come up with, and I always want to see where a song takes me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Proximity helped. \u201cI think this is why this album came together so quickly. We could just steam through at high speed and not labor over everything.\u201d The crew cut live, sometimes in as few as two takes and rarely more than four, which is where the record gets its urgency.<\/p>\n

Hippies, Thugs and Heroes follows 2024\u2019s Ship to Shore<\/a>, which Danny Neill reviewed for KLOF Mag. He found nothing there resembling a wind-down: \u201cthe Richard Thompson of 2024 is a singer-songwriter enjoying the most vital of late golden periods, producing work to stand favourably alongside any from his previous fifty years.\u201d Thompson had already headed off the retirement question himself \u2014 \u201cI\u2019m not intending to hang up my plectrum anytime soon,\u201d he said at the time, \u201cif I don\u2019t write, if I don\u2019t perform, I get frustrated and I feel like I\u2019m not being the human being I should be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking to Neill in the same month<\/a>, Thompson explained that the six-year gap before Ship to Shore had left him with a stockpile rather than a drought. \u201cBasically, covid put a bit of a spanner in the works. Two and a half years really; we couldn\u2019t tour and certainly couldn\u2019t put out a record in that time. So that really hit the schedule pretty seriously. I did a lot of writing, which was very handy. The two EPs that we put out, I wrote this album, I wrote the next album, I wrote a musical play, and now I don\u2019t know what to do with myself I\u2019m so far ahead.\u201d He didn\u2019t say what that next album was.<\/p>\n

Hippies, Thugs and Heroes will be available digitally and on CD and standard black vinyl. A limited clear with black splatter vinyl edition with autographed insert, and a limited CD signed by Thompson, come via independent retailers. Rough Trade has a limited pink marbled vinyl edition with an autographed insert and a bonus flexi-disc of the Cocaine Walking, Booze Talking demo. A limited yellow with black splatter vinyl edition with autographed insert and a limited signed CD are available to pre-order now from New West Records<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Thompson\u2019s UK dates all land before the album does. August is festival-heavy, taking in Cambridge Folk Festival, Fairport\u2019s Cropredy Convention, FolkEast in Beccles and Beautiful Days in Ottery St Mary, with a show at St Georges Church Hall in Beckenham in between. September brings Buxton Opera House, Lighthouse in Poole, the Subscription Rooms in Stroud, Bromyard Folk Festival and the Wiltshire Music Centre in Bradford-on-Avon. Two US shows in November, in Elkton, Maryland and Montclair, New Jersey, are the only announced dates that fall after release (see dates below).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Hippies, Thugs and Heroes Track Listing:<\/p>\n

Sorcerer\u2019s Apprentice<\/p>\n

Cocaine Walking, Booze Talking<\/p>\n

Pauper\u2019s Grave<\/p>\n

Unsung Hero<\/p>\n

Make Believe You Don\u2019t Know Me<\/p>\n

She Burns It All<\/p>\n

Everybody\u2019s Stealing<\/p>\n

The Soul In Me<\/p>\n

Pipe Dreams<\/p>\n

The Big Smoke<\/p>\n

Stringer<\/p>\n

Siren<\/p>\n

Richard Thompson On Tour:<\/p>\n

August 2 \u2014 Cambridge Folk Festival 2026 \u2014 Cambridge, United Kingdom
August 14 \u2014 Fairport Cropredy Convention 2026 \u2014 Banbury, United Kingdom
August 21 \u2014 St Georges Church Hall \u2014 Beckenham, United Kingdom
August 22 \u2014 FolkEast 2026 \u2014 Beccles, United Kingdom
August 23 \u2014 Beautiful Days 2026 \u2014 Ottery St Mary, United Kingdom
September 4 \u2014 Buxton Opera House \u2014 Buxton, United Kingdom
September 10 \u2014 Lighthouse \u2014 Poole, United Kingdom
September 11 \u2014 Subscription Rooms \u2014 Stroud, United Kingdom
September 12 \u2014 Bromyard Folk Festival 2026 \u2014 Bromyard, United Kingdom
September 13 \u2014 Wiltshire Music Centre \u2014 Bradford-on-Avon, United Kingdom
November 20 \u2014 Elkton Music Hall \u2014 Elkton, MD, United States
November 21 \u2014 Outpost in the Burbs\u2019 Concert for Toni\u2019s Kitchen \u2014 Montclair, NJ, United States<\/p>\n

Hippies, Thugs and Heroes (October 16th, 2026) New West Records<\/p>\n

Pre-Order: http:\/\/newwst.com\/hippies<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"5 Richard Thompson has shared Cocaine Walking, Booze Talking, the first single from his 20th studio album. Hippies,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":715527,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-715526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=715526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/715527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=715526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=715526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=715526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}