HILLBILLY RAGAS

Our fave shaman of the six-string is back.
Waving his axe of choice, Sir Richard

Bishop once again summons forth dam-
nable truth and beauty on an all-new

musical kamikaze run through histories

both written and-as of yet-not com-
monly known. Since the dying days of

the 20th century, the composer/ player of

spirited polytheistic guitar recitals includ-
ing Salvador Kali, Improvika, The Freak

of Araby, Tangier Sessions, and most
recently, Oneiric Formulary has worked
feverishly to wrench and wrangle all the
music that has and can possibly fall out
of the guitar from east to west across
this great, totally fucked world of ours.
With Hillbilly Ragas, Sir Rick stretches his
callused hands across the waters to draw
diverse musics back to his shack with the
gladiatorial bloodthirst and balance of
gravitas and jocosity we expect from him
in every hot little moment of play. But
there's more to be said than these merely
glib rantings as to what happens when
traditional music heads for the hillbillies. We asked the man himself to chime
in. Open the door, Richard!
"There were a few different approaches I utilized for this release. First and
foremost, I wanted to go back to basics, to strip away any excesses and keep
it as simple as possible: one man, one acoustic guitar, no overdubs, no effects,
no electricity. Taking several cues from the sounds most often associated with
the so-called American Primitive guitar style, I wanted to avoid any traditional

approaches and instead try something more raw and aggressive, concen-
trating more on rhythm and movement as opposed to anything predictable

or overly melodic, while also keeping my particular interpretive ideas about
East Indian Raga in the mix.
I've always felt that the majority of what is considered to be American Primitive
music, while certainly based on historical American musical traditions, never
really had any sounds that I personally thought of as being primitive-it always
seemed too orderly, too developed, and too safe. Way too safe. I found that
playing with a sort of reckless abandon was the best way to remain outside
of the usual musical language found in this genre of music, while still being
able to establish itself within its framework, through determination and force
if nothing else. It's a much more savage approach, which I believe is how it
should have been all along, in order to at least give proper credence to the
semantics of the form. During the recording process I was envisioning an
undiscovered mountain man or "hillbilly" who had remained hidden in his
own private backwoods; one who never learned, or even heard about, any
traditional musical canon that he was expected to work within. So what we
have here with Hillbilly Ragas are nine pieces for solo acoustic guitar, each
one representing a different excursion into the dark woods-the untamed
explorations of a musical loner, an outsider, maybe even an undesirable,
embodying a peculiar folklore and turning it into sound-creating his own

folk music in the process. He's still out there, fueled by moonshine, his super-
natural surroundings, and a fuck-all attitude!"

-Richard Bishop, 2025