WESTBROOK – The Westbrook Performing Arts Center is hosting its first national act next week, with music legend Richard Thompson coming to the center on Wednesday, Aug. 31.

According to an announcement by booking agency Heptunes, this is the first appearance for Thompson in the Portland area in three years.

Thompson, 62, has a reputation as a musician and songwriter, influenced heavily by jazz greats such as Les Paul, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong, as well as early rock ‘n’ roll artists such as Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee Lewis.

Thompson has recorded 40 albums and numerous film soundtracks, as a founding member of the British band Fairpoint Convention, in the folk-rock duo Richard and Linda Thompson, and for more than 25 years as a solo artist. He has written songs recorded by artists such as Robert Plant, REM, Elvis Costello, Los Lobos, David Byrne, Del McCoury, Bonnie Raitt and many others.

He is the recipient of the Mojo Les Paul Award, the Orville H Gibson Award for guitar, and an Ivor Novello Award for songwriting. He has also received the BBC’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and was named by Rolling Stone Magazine as one of the Top 20 Guitarists of All Time.

His live-tour CD, “Dream Attic,” was nominated for a Grammy Award in the category of Best Contemporary Folk Album. In 2010 Thompson was curator at London’s prestigious 2010 Meltdown Festival at South Bank Centre, and was listed on the Queen of England’s 2011 New Year Honours List as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE).

Thompson’s guest will be Robin Lane, a fixture of the 1970s Los Angeles folk scene, where she sang on Neil Young’s “After The Goldrush” album. In the late 1970s she and her group, Robin Lane And The Chartbusters, signed to Warner Brothers. She became one of the first divas to achieve steady rotation on MTV. She and The Chartbusters are putting together a documentary chronicling the group’s history.