ROCK’S second-generation songwriters are always referred to via their parents. Unfair, but unavoidable.

So here we go: Teddy is the son of Richard Thompson and his long-ago ex, Linda. He gets his voice from his mother and plays the guitar well but without his father’s virtuoso brilliance.

Teddy is smart and wholesome, which is at odds with the tragic-comic sad songs, in which his own failings are writ large.

Tonight, he plays with a four-piece band, aside from a solo interlude. Much of the material is from A Piece Of What You Need, a collection of elevated pop songs with elements of folk, country and rock. Many in the self-out crowd, including the trio of burly blokes in front of us, sing along.

Although a Teddy novice, this reviewer caught the title track, as well as The Things I Do, What’s This?!!, and the intriguing Jonathan’s Book, about a writer with a dream never to be fulfilled.

Teddy has a pure, soaring voice – an unconvinced friend in the audience compared it to Roy Orbison’s – and songs that mostly connect, although some blend too easily into each other. He is a good performer, too, and the fans leave happy.

Certain songs really work, such as I Wish It Was Over. Teddy does seem to be emerging as an artist in his own right, although he still has to find a distinctive style.

Put the stumbling support slot from Tift Merritt down to a bad night, or the singer not having “her mojo”, as she put it.