Sometimes, things don’t work out like you wanted.
Initially, I was going to start this off by throwing some lighthearted jabs at what I perceived to be Saginaw, Michigan’s lack of cultural cache. I was going to say, “Sir Richard and Alan Bishop are Saginaw’s biggest claim to fame next to Simon and Garfunkel singing about hitchhiking outta there.” Or something like that, anyhow. But I forgot that a plurality of ? And The Mysterians were from Saginaw (with members hailing from around the Tri-Cities), and about the weird number of standards written by Saginaw natives: ‘All Of Me’, ‘It Had To Be You’, etc. Squint hard enough, and Saginaw can claim Stevie Wonder (his family moved to Detroit when he was four.) So, I suppose there’s something of a lineage there, that the Bishops are a part of, and that legacy deserves at least a little respect.
Of course, with the (possible) exception of ? And The Mysterians, it’s a legacy of leavers. And of course, in 1979 the Bishops left, too. For Phoenix and the desert and Sun City Girls, leaving a copious back catalogue in their wake. In 2025, at 65, Sir Richard Bishop’s based in Portland, Oregon, but even now, in biography and otherwise, continues to foreground his Saginaw upbringing. And I think it might be there, too, in his fifth solo LP for Drag City, Hillbilly Ragas – at least a little bit. You don’t even need to squint that hard to see it.
Hillbilly Ragas finds our man Sir Richard in fine form, flexing his American primitive muscles over nine compositions for solo guitar. Which makes the whole operation sound a bit more polite, more measured than it actually is. No, these are rollicking, shit-kicking folk numbers nimbly played with gusto. Maybe even abandon. And while we’re at it, a sense of humour. Certainly, a lack of self-seriousness.
As is often the case with instrumental music, the titles clue you in. One short and urgent, angular and roughly strummed piece is called ‘Rhythm Methodist’. Perfect. Elsewhere, a dramatic thing that lurches through whip-quick acts like a community theatre troupe on trucker speed is called ‘Head Bone In The ‘Tater Hole’, which can’t help but amplify the track’s madcap, almost slapstick energy. These titles act as something like emphatic punctuation on tunes already overflowing with character. They also belie the keen-yet-puckish intellect responsible for these rough-cut gems.
If I’m honest, I’ve never much liked the term “American primitive”. Obviously, it has certain connotations, but I also think it implies a lack of finesse and perhaps a dearth of sophistication – not to be mistaken for politeness – both of which this album has in abundance, despite its patina of good-natured oafishness and homespun vulgarity. (Not a criticism!) In a brief presser, Bishop is quoted as calling Hillbilly Ragas “an excursion into the dark woods,” but could be it’s more than that. It doesn’t seem so hard to draw a line from it back to his Lebanese grandfather’s oud, to swirling childhood memories of late-night jam sessions in a Saginaw basement.
In the spirit of full-disclosure, I should say that I tried my best to dissuade tQ from giving me this review. I’ve been skewing kinda lazy lately, so I was maybe hoping they wouldn’t. In spite of my steadily advancing age and demographic, I told them, I have somehow prior to this release avoided hearing anything recorded by Sun City Girls or the Bishop bros or, as far as I’m aware, any of their various side projects. I could, I said, only provide an ignorant perspective devoid of context. Anyway, I have since dug into Bishop’s back catalogue and look forward to digging deeper. For me, this latest LP has proven to be a portal into his idiosyncratic universe, and I suspect it could be the same for anyone remotely interested in Bishop but intimidated by the vast expanse of music laid out before them. I mean, the album’s a hoot. How could you not want more?
Sometimes, things don’t work out like you hoped. But on the other hand, sometimes you wind up with Hillbilly Ragas.
