southern records

An Interview with Sir Richard Bishop, A third of the Sun City Girls medicine show, and solo acoustic guitar maverick in his own right! During his tour with Devendra Banhart last year, he found time to drop by our studio and record a new album of improvised guitar, informed by his recent live performances, the result 'Fingering The Devil' is now releases on CD and LP on Latitudes. Sir Richard Bishop is touring Europe with Espers and is currently playing a few shows spread over Europe.

WORD: How do you approach writing music as Sir Richard Bishop, is it that different from Sun City Girls ? How long have you been performing solo guitar?

Richard: I’ve been playing solo guitar since the late 1970s. As for approaching songs, I don’t sit down with the guitar and try to “write” anything. I tried that a long time ago and it was a waste of time. I’ve never considered myself a songwriter. For the most part, I just pick up the guitar and play. I’ll improvise endlessly. Eventually, portions of these improvisations might lead to an idea that can be developed into a composition that has some structure, but its more like an outline, with many open areas for experimentation. I can perform it live and it will be different every time. That way, I never get tired of playing it. It’s how I’ve always done it. SCG uses a similar approach but not exclusively.

WORD: Is it a conscious effort on your part to mix your many world music influences into your playing or do you find it comes naturally?

R: Most of the time it’s natural. I grew up listening to Middle Eastern classical music and those sounds were ingrained into my DNA by age 8. This was years before I started playing guitar on a regular basis. It felt very natural to incorporate those eastern sounds once my playing began to develop. With the Indian, raga-style pieces, they too seem very familiar and they now materialize automatically, though they didn’t become part of my repertoire until after my first trip to India back in 1989.

WORD: Most musicians I meet, familiar with your performance, exclaim at your virtuosity and dexterity in playing, they say you must practice frantically to make it sound so effortless, is this the case, how do work on your playing style?

R: I personally don’t consider it practice, at least not in the sense that I am trying to improve my technique or anything like that. Any improvement in my playing simply comes from playing all the time over all these years, no matter what I am trying to do. I don’t put a lot of thought into it because if I do, that’s when I’ll get hung up on something and it kind of gets in the way of the flow of things. I try to keep it as simple as possible by concentrating on the “feeling” of the music as opposed to the technical side of it.

WORD: I love your cover of Over The Rainbow and remember you spliced Nowhere Man with it at the London show last year, are there any other songs you like to mix up and improvise over?

R: Not really, or rather, I haven’t really looked into others. The one I call Nowhere Over the Rainbow kind of materialized by accident. It was just funny at first but the two songs really do seem to complement each other in a way that just works. I enjoy playing that one but the mood of the room has to be right.

WORD: When you tour do you entirely improvise your set?

R: I have on many occasions but certainly not always. It’s kind of on a case-by-case basis. If I have only 30 minutes or less to do a set, I will probably just go off on some tangent. For longer sets, I’ll usually throw in some things from some of my records, but it will probably be “loose” versions with lots of room for improvisation. I also like to include a SCG piece every now and then. So, it varies. I usually don’t know what I’m going to play until I arrive at the venue and scope out the room.

WORD: Have you ever performed as SRB with other musicians, is there anyone you would like to collaborate with?

R: I’ve sat in with Espers and Eugene Chadbourne , and a couple more but it’s usually a spontaneous thing because we’re playing at the same show. I would like to work with others in the future. Ben Chasny and Devendra Banhart are high on my list and both have expressed interest, but everybody is usually quite busy so it’s not always easy to find the time to do it.

WORD: Besides music and film scores, what other things inspire and and inform your music?

R: I have found that I can be inspired by almost anything, whether it's musical, visual, or otherwise. Back in the mid 1980s, I watched a half-baked folk singer at an open mic once who dropped his pick in themiddle of the song. The pick slowly bounced off of a couple of strings and then got tangled up with another one before hitting the floor. It made a series of sounds unlike anything I ever heard from a guitar. Itwas one of those “sound accidents” and that kind of thing happens all of the time. Most people just don’t recognize it as anything but an unfortunate blunder. I can usually make something out of it if I want to.

WORD: Do you really deal in rare books for a living? That must be fascinating, do you have a favourite scarce tome?

R: It’s not much of a living but I have sold rare books for about 10 years now. I’ve made enough to get by, but just barely. My book business has slowed down considerably the last year because I’ve been touring a lot and I hope to do more of that anyway, so the book thing will probably fade out into oblivion at some point. There are a lot of scarce books that I’ve taken a liking to over the years, too many to list here and if I list just one, the others will get upset, fly off the shelf, and attack me…..these are occult books, after all.

WORD: Does Elektronika Demonika exist (Unreleased album of ear-shattering, dark electronics and radio communications gathered from various uncommon global frequencies, some of which were recorded from unauthorized satellite systems)? Would love to hear it.

R: Yes, it does exist and has existed since 1998. It will be released on Locust Music
this summer in a vinyl only edition (just announced in the latest Locust Newsletter). There’s not one lick of guitar anywhere near this record.