As he releases new album Hippies, Thugs and Heroes, the 77-year-old British folk legend answers your questions about Billy Connolly, Californian fish and chips and whether he nearly joined the Eagles

Billy Connolly recalled being in a room with you, Sandy Denny, Nick Drake and John Martyn. Did you feel you were collectively doing something special? poscopy
That might have been at the Royal Festival Hall [in 1969], where Fairport Convention had Nick and John as openers and Billy must have been backstage. He’d have been in the Humblebums with Gerry Rafferty, before he evolved from a banjo player who told jokes into a comedian who played a bit of banjo. He was always a fantastic bloke and we’ve been friends for a long time.

There was a great camaraderie between the stable of acts Joe Boyd produced: Fairport, the Incredible String Band, John Martyn, Chris McGregor. We felt different, not special, and didn’t feel successful because we weren’t. None of these people really sold many records in their lifetimes, but people are still discovering them now. This album is my latest attempt to sell some units.

Corn Exchange, Edinburgh
Irish six-piece embark on their biggest tour yet, turning grisly old stories into a knees-up with politically astute, spit-and-sawdust energy

It’s not often you see crowd surfing during folk songs, let alone songs about murderers-for-hire who targeted priests in the early 1700s. But so it is at a Mary Wallopers show, the Irish trad group with a passionate following for their rowdy folk ragers.

Legs and pints go flying as the six-piece, playing banjo and tin whistle, set about Seán na Sagart, a new track which turns a grisly old story into a knees-up. By its breathless conclusion, the hitman is dead and his victims and clients alike get it in the neck from the band. Singer Charles Hendy grins, savouring the punchline: “You can’t trust the clergy with their holy little bits / And ya won’t be thanked by any god for workin’ with the Brits.”

Canada-born singer-songwriter, 82, posts footage of citizenship ceremony to Instagram

Joni Mitchell has become a US citizen, after first moving to the country in the mid-1960s. The Canada-born singer-songwriter, 82, posted footage of her citizenship ceremony on her Instagram account, along with a photo of her next to an American flag, accompanied by the caption: “A journey that began 62 years ago.”

It means that Mitchell can now vote in US elections, something that she had complained she wasn’t able to do.

Ahead of new album Hippies, Thugs and Heroes, the British folk music legend will join us to answer your questions

From Fairport Convention to his musical partnership with then-wife Linda and on to solo albums that still trouble the UK charts, Richard Thompson is an undisputed icon of British folk music – and ahead of his latest release, entitled Hippies, Thugs and Heroes, he’s joining us to answer your questions.

Now 77, Thompson’s career began in his teens when he formed Fairport Convention and struck out into writing new material rather than covers and folk standards: in so doing, albums such as 1969’s Liege and Lief became part of the British folk canon themselves.

Charing Cross theatre, London
Büchner’s jagged masterpiece about a soldier’s descent is told with enchanting and stirring songs that occasionally defuse its stark terror

When Georg Büchner died aged 23 in 1837, he left behind Woyzeck as a bundle of papers that would be ordered and reordered for years to come, eventually discoloured by treatments used to decipher the playwright’s handwriting. His two dozen scenes, with a handful of extra fragments, form a tragic patchwork that is mirrored, in this musical version, by a similar number of stained pieces of cloth stitched into the stage curtains and by the 27 folk songs that thread the story together.

It remains the downfall of Franz Woyzeck, a desperate soldier sinking into madness who grows suspicious of his partner, but – as the first names of its romantic title suggest – the story seeks to better understand both characters. Büchner’s Woyzeck suffers from visions and hallucinations; here they are joined by traumatic battlefield flashbacks. Franz was a war hero, says Marie admiringly, adding a courageous backstory to Büchner’s downtrodden squaddie and suggesting that she sees a glimpse of Franz’s former vigour in the drum major (here named Varg) who brazenly pursues her. In the play, that leads to an affair, but the musical’s Marie fights off Varg when he attempts to rape her and it is the rumours of infidelity that accelerate Franz’s frenzy.

Born and raised in Valparaíso, JM is seen as one of the last of a golden generation after a late foray

At a concert hall in the Chilean capital, Santiago, an 80-year-old man edges unsteadily down a steep staircase. With one hand he grips the metal bannister, in the other he carries a mug of hot water with a slice of lemon, as if heading to bed.

But when the red stage curtain is pulled aside for him, Luis Gómez, or JM as he is universally known, transforms in an instant. He skips on to the stage to a roar from the crowd and launches into a bolero, punctuated by hip thrusts and shuffling two-steps.