Brighten The Corners Presents american primitive guitarist Sir Richard Bishop, best known for his 26 year involvement with the band Sun City Girls, at The Smokehouse on Friday 10th October. Support comes from C. Joynes.
“Sir Richard Bishop forces one to alter that hoary cliche to ‘jack of all trades, master of…damn near all.’ Renowned for his mercurial guitar-playing for 26 years with Seattle ethno-delic legends Sun City Girls, Bishop has wrought a distinguished solo canon as well. He combines soulfulness and advanced technique with a panache that’s nearly unrivaled among today’s guitarists. Bishop strums spiritual with incantatory ragas, free-folk excursions, crystalline flamenco flourishes, ruddy Appalachian folk, Middle Eastern-tinged fantasias and gypsy arabesques. This is eclecticism done with respect and third-eye-dilating filigree; his compositions attain a sepia-toned wistfulness and a psychedelic complexity.” - Dave Segal (OC Weekly)
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Time: 7.30pm - 11pm
Venue: The Smokehouse, Ipswich
Tickets: £12+bf
Supports: C. Joynes
Age Restrictions: 14+ (14- 15s must be accompanied by an adult)Accessibility: There is step-free access into the venue and the bar / venue is all on one floor. There is a Changing Places toilet across the courtyard from the venue. Please be aware we are a small venue. For further information, please email info@brightenthecorners.co.uk so we can make your visit as comfortable as possible.
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Richard Bishop was born in Saginaw, Michigan in 1960. He is best known for his 26 year involvement with the band Sun City Girls and as an experimental solo guitarist whose work often reflects the shadow worlds of India, the Middle East, North Africa, and other points along the Gypsy trail.
"Technically, I began playing the guitar when I was 11. My parents bought me this cheap Buck Owens styled red, white and blue guitar and talked me into taking lessons. That lasted about three weeks - it just didn't work out.' A few years later I thought I would give it another try and proceeded to teach myself how to play the damn thing."
Richard, along with his brother Alan, left Michigan in 1979 and settled in Phoenix, AZ. In 1981 the brothers joined up with drummer Charles Gocher and formed the long-running experimental underground group Sun City Girls, who, from 1981-2007, produced an extensive discography of over 50 full length albums, 20 one-hour cassettes and a dozen 7” records. Also in the early 1980s Richard was a member of the group Paris 1942 which included Alan Bishop, J. Akkari (Jesse Srogoncik) and former Velvet Underground drummer Moe Tucker.
Bishop’s first solo record, Salvador Kali, was released by John Fahey’s esteemed Revenant Records label in 1998. It was issued under the name of Sir Richard Bishop (the name stuck). The album showcases Bishop's own particular obsessions and roots, drawing from a variety of worldwide sources. Locust Music issued his second record, Improvika (2004), which consisted of nine extemporaneous pieces for solo acoustic guitar. Up next was Fingering the Devil (2006), which was recorded at an impromptu session at London’s Southern Studios on a day off during Bishop's 2005 European tour. This was followed by two more releases from Locust: Elektronika Demonika (2006), a recording of electronic sound experiments, containing no guitar at all; and While My Guitar Violently Bleeds (2007), featuring three extended compositions for acoustic and electric guitar. Richard's 30-minute film God Damn Religion, a seizure-inducing montage of occult imagery was released in 2008 on DVD, also by Locust.
In 2005, Bishop began performing full time as a solo artist, playing throughout Europe and the United States.
Bishop's next album, Polytheistic Fragments, was released by the Drag City label in 2007. It includes works for acoustic, electric and lapsteel guitar, plus two piano compositions. In 2009, Drag City issued The Freak of Araby which was Bishop's tribute to late Egyptian guitarist Omar Khorshid as well as a celebration of the Middle Eastern music that Bishop's grandfather often played for him as a young child.
Tangier Sessions, was released by Drag City in 2015. It consists of a series of improvisations recorded in Tangier, Morocco in 2014 using a 19th century parlor guitar of mysterious origin. Bishop's latest album, Oneiric Formulary, was released by Drag City in 2020. A new LP called Hillbilly Ragas will be released by Drag City on September 26th, 2025.
Additional SRB albums have been released by Unrock; Ideologic Organ; Southern Lord; VDSQ, and other labels.
In 2010, Bishop joined forces with fellow guitarist Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance) and drummer extraordinaire Chris Corsano to create the group Rangda. Three full length Rangda releases have been issued by Drag City with additional LPs on Unrock and Ba Da Bing! Records.
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Over the last decade, C Joynes has ploughed a singular furrow through solo guitar, with a body of work incorporating English folk-tunes alongside North & West African music, and lifting proto-minimalist and improvised techniques from the European classical and avant-garde traditions.
Joynes has released 10 albums to date, including ‘Poor Boy On The Wire’ (2021), his first solo album dedicated wholly to the electric guitar; ‘The Borametz Tree’ (2019), recorded with long-term fellow travellers Dead Rat Orchestra; and ‘The Wild Wild Berry’, a collaboration with singer Stephanie Hladowski (fROOTS Editors Choice Album Of The Year 2012, MOJO Top 5 Folk Albums 2012). He has recorded a number of sessions for BBC Radio 3. He has also played extensively across the UK, Europe and the USA, sharing bills with a broad range of performers including Shirley Collins, Martin Carthy, Marc Ribot, Richard Dawson, Alasdair Roberts, Jack Rose, Josephine Foster, Sir Richard Bishop, Six Organs Of Admittance and 75 Dollar Bill.
Shifting away from the electric guitar of his most recent solo activities, he’s currently exploring the uses of an amplified archtop guitar, exploiting the instrument’s potential by placing intricate parlour music alongside overdriven garage blues throw-downs and the brittle ringing tones of free improvisation.