Bishop

I've been playing guitar now for about forty-five years.  I started when I was 16 or so while living outside of Fort Walton Beach on the Gulf Coast of Florida.  In those days, the music on the radio in the Deep South was quite eclectic.  Blues, R&B and Country  could be heard on the same stations. We lived a good distance from town so I spent a lot of time glued to the radio listening to the local stations and WTIX and WNOE out of  New Orleans whose signals crossed the Gulf loud and clear. Late at night I'd listen to the legendary John R on WLAC in Nashville and he'd play all the great R&B and Blues sides in between ads for Ernie's Record Mart, Royal Crown Hair Dressing and 100 live baby chicks!  For a kid with a guitar and a radio it was a wonderfully rich environment.

On one of those late nights I heard Ray Charles's primordial slow Blues "I Believe to My Soul" for the first time.  And when the chorus sang "I believe, Yes I believe" something about the way the voices sounded touched me profoundly.  It was at the same time deeply mysterious and revelatory, and it was like a doorway to the Blues opened up and in I went.

So that got me started, and one way or another the guitar, and the Blues and R&B, have been central to my life.  

About the same time, I discovered Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner and Thomas Wolfe. These writers among others, along with all the great song writers of the era, influenced me greatly in my own writing. As such, I tend to write narrative verse over Blues and R&B based chord progressions. I've traveled a lot, and the songs are reflections of things I've seen here and there. There's a good deal of social comment in them, which puts them more in the R&B vein than straight ahead Blues.

As a guitarist, I'm very much in the Southern Telecaster school. I've always preferred Telecasters for their vocal qualities. Depending on how you squeeze the strings, the notes can sound sweet or funky and everything in between.

For several years now my gal Dana and I have been living in Sevilla, Spain where we've got a band going. This site is about the music we play.

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