Bonnie Bishop Archives - The Heights Theater

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Foy Vance

Hailing from Northern Ireland and deeply rooted in the rich musical history of the Southern United States, Foy Vance has garnered acclaim from fans and fellow musicians alike since his independent debut album release in 2007. Foy released his second LP, Joy of Nothing, in 2013 on Glassnote Records which led to further critical praise and invites on tours from Ed Sheeran, Bonnie Raitt, Marcus Foster, Snow Patrol and Sir Elton John. Additionally, Foy has headlined tours globally to sell-out crowds.

Foy was the second artist signed to Gingerbread Man Records, Ed Sheeran’s label division within Atlantic Records. Foy’s debut recording with the label, The Wild Swan, was Executive Produced by Sir Elton John and released in 2016. In 2019, Foy released two companion albums, From Muscle Shoals and To Memphis, recorded at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama and Sam Phillips Recording Studio in Memphis. His songwriting credits include co-writing four cuts on Ed Sheeran’s 2017 album Divide, the title track on Sam Smith’s latest album Gloria and collaborations with Alicia Keys, Rag N Bone Man, Keith Urban, Kacey Musgraves, Miranda Lambert, Plan B and Rudimental.

Foy Vance's 2021 album, Signs Of Life, marked Foy’s second studio album ‘proper’ on Gingerbread Man Records and was a testament to his abilities as a songwriter. The thoughtful and poignant album was written and played more or less entirely by Vance, with assistance from young Northern Irish producer Gareth Dunlop, and received global recognition.

In 2022, Foy embarked on the Signs of Live + 15 Years of Hope tour, celebrating his latest album as well as the anniversary of his debut record. This year, he’ll be heading out on the road once again to play songs from one of his most impactful album’s, as well as tracks from the rest of his poignant discography for the Regarding the Joy of Nothing Tour.

Bonnie Bishop

By the time Bonnie Bishop released her oh-so-appropriately titled 2016 album, Ain’t Who I Was, she had already experienced several Cinderella-story career moments. First, her idol Bonnie Raitt recorded one of her songs, “Not Cause I Wanted To,” for her 2012 comeback album, Slipstream. Then New York Times critic Jon Pareles named it his Song of the Year, and Raitt’s album won a Grammy. Bishop also got to hear songs she’d penned sung by stars of the hit TV show “Nashville,” while Raitt covered another of her songs, “Undone” on 2016 ‘s Dig In Deep.

Since then, Bishop has learned to accept such experiences — not to mention touring Europe and Scandinavia, earning coveted performing spots on two Cayamo cruises and playing Willie Nelson’s annual Luck Reunion — as her reality, one that’s better than any fairytale.

But as her growing legions of fans may know, the fantastical story twist is that most of these events occurred after Bishop had decided to give up her music career and enroll in graduate school. That was when a mentor hooked her up with Dave Cobb, who was then becoming Nashville’s hottest producer (Jason Isbell, Chris Stapleton, Brandi Carlile). Next thing she knew, she had turned the heartache of a divorce and a hail-Mary leap of faith into a soul-filled album; one that knocked critics out at Rolling Stone, Billboard, the New York Times, the Washington Post and just about everywhere else. The Houston Press declared her the “new queen of country soul” and No Depression practically shouted, “If we can go ahead and choose the BEST album of the year, it's clearly Bonnie Bishop’s.”

That gospel-infused album not only hit the upper reaches of the Americana music chart and reignited her career, it took it to levels she’d never expected, including those farflung adventures and recording with Paul Thorn.

But Bishop has been eager to do even more. This fall, she’ll release The Walk, produced by drummer Steve Jordan (John Mayer, Keith Richards, Robert Cray), a groove-based album that’s light years from Ain’t Who I Was. In the meantime, she’s also recorded new acoustic versions of several songs from previous albums and compiled her favorites into a collection titled House Sessions: Vol. 1 — so named because it actually was recorded in her house, on the grand piano her father left behind when her parents divorced.

While she was waiting to record with Jordan, Bishop and her piano relocated from Nashville to Fort Worth, Texas, into a place she describes as “this cool old house with hardwood floors and big, open windows.” She knew she wanted to record in that house, on that piano. But she didn’t want to use the tunes she was saving for Jordan; instead, she chose to plumb her past. Because she was unhappy with the sound of albums she’d released earlier in her career, Bishop had long ago pulled her 2002-2010 catalog from online services. Consequently, many of her newer fans have never heard those releases. But those who have been listening since her Soft To The Touch days often request her older songs at shows, making it clear they were worth presenting again.

But another emotional connection besides the piano was involved as well.

“There’s something about leaving Nashville and coming home to Texas that made me want to embrace that part of my past,” Bishop reveals. “Maybe that’s part of maturing as an artist; I can celebrate the whole journey now.” Accompanying herself on acoustic guitar and keys, she wound up with nine tracks, three of which had never been recorded. The songs are augmented by just a few other instruments, including upright bass and electric guitar by Fort Worth talents Aden Bubeck and Ryan Tharp, respectively.

“In these stripped-down versions,” Bishop says, “you can really hear the sound of this old house and my progression as a writer. I called it House Sessions: Vol. I because I loved making it so much, I’m already planning to let fans suggest other old songs they want me to go back and record.”

Among the tracks she included is the title song from her 2012 album, Free. “That album felt like my first real piece of artistry,” Bishop confesses. "Until then, I felt like I was trying to evoke a sound instead of creating my own.”

With Free, Bishop had finally found her voice — and laid the foundation on which she and Cobb would build Ain’t Who I Was.

And now Bishop is building again. Though she’s not ready to reveal too many details about The Walk, she mentions, “The songs are not as finite as my older recordings. It’s much more about the music; the jam. The first song is 7 minutes and 36 seconds long. I also made no effort whatsoever to make a radio single.”

She tossed other industry norms aside, too, intentionally crafting an album meant to be experienced on vinyl, one side at a time. “I think these are the best songs I’ve ever written,” she says. “They’re very deep, very much about the struggle as a human being to continue to evolve and keep moving forward, in our personal journeys and in the collective sense. As long as the sun comes up, we have to keep going forward.”

Bishop asked Jordan to produce because she knew he’d create rhythms to keep the music moving, and make it fun to perform and hear — without requiring the storytelling setups singer-songwriters typically deliver.

“I’ll always be Bonnie Bishop the songwriter,” she says. “But I also just want to get up and sing and dance sometimes and not have to read my journal out loud.”

Just a few years ago, Bishop thought she was ready to abandon music. Now she wants to make as much of it as possible, to share her gift however she can. One manifestation is her work with SongwritingWith:Soldiers, which helps soldiers, war veterans and their families express their experiences through the healing power of song. Bishop recently had the honor of performing several of these songs at the 2019 Congressional Medal of Honor gala in New York.

“I’m just gonna flood the world with music this year,” she declares. “And I don’t care whether anybody thinks that’s a bad idea. Who knows what next year will bring? I want to give all the music I’ve got as long as I’m here.”

No, Bonnie Bishop ain’t who she was. She’s stronger, deeper, more soulful and more sure of herself — and so ready to take this thrill ride of a life from The Walk to wherever it may lead. It’s already been one helluva trip. And it’s getting better all the time.

Seth Walker

Over the last decade, Seth Walker has become recognized as one of the most revered modern Americana artists in the United States; a three dimensional talent who combines a gift for melody and lyric alongside a rich, Gospel-drenched, Southern-inflected voice with a true blue knack for getting around on the guitar. In 2021—following up on his most recent studio album, ‘Are You Open?’ (produced by Jano Rix of The Wood Brothers), as well as, a handful of singles – Walker published a memoir, ‘Your Van Is On Fire: The Miscellaneous Meanderings of a Musician.’

Currently residing in Asheville after stints living in Nashville, New Orleans and Austin, Walker has used those experiences wisely, soaking up the sounds and absorbing the musical lineage of these varied places. With a bluesman’s respect for roots and tradition, coupled with an appreciation for—and successful melding of—contemporary songwriting, Seth sublimely incorporates a range of styles with warmth and grace. All Music declares, “Walker is deft and elegant, weaving together sounds and stories in a way that has a quiet, lasting impact,” but perhaps Country Standard Time said it best: “If you subscribe to the Big Tent theory of Americana, then Seth Walker –with his blend of blues, gospel, pop, R&B, rock, and a dash country—just might be your poster boy.”

Bonnie Bishop

But another emotional connection besides the piano was involved as well.

Among the tracks she included is the title song from her 2012 album, Free. “That album felt like my first real piece of artistry,” Bishop confesses. “Until then, I felt like I was trying to evoke a sound instead of creating my own.”

With Free, Bishop had finally found her voice — and laid the foundation on which she and Cobb would build Ain’t Who I Was.

“I’ll always be Bonnie Bishop the songwriter,” she says. “But I also just want to get up and sing and dance sometimes and not have to read my journal out loud.”

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BONNIE BISHOP – THE WALK

The first thing that registers about Bonnie Bishop’s stirring album The Walk is that the seasoned Grammy winner is no longer trying to outrun herself; she owns whatever has come her way, good wind or ill. It’s an uplifting confessional that she dedicates ‘to all who wander’ – laying down searing, emotionally-charged variations to award-winning producer Steve Jordan’s (Robert Cray, John Mayer, Buddy Guy) powerhouse production. She does so in a voice that aches and arches and grabs and never lets go.

Blessed with an authentically resounding range, a blistering lyrical gift, and OK – she admits it – a couple of inherent vices that any God-fearing Americana/country/soul artist must wrestle with after years of bringing it live and in-color, Bishop has now broken free from the bust-boom mentality of Nashville to walk a line of her own making. The recipe may sound oversimplified, but it’s a frank, funny, ferocious, insightful Bonnie Bishop we encounter on this path; a recharged singer/songwriter full of grace. Her determination to put one foot in front of the other and find the road to reclamation shifted into overdrive when she left Nashville for her native Texas in 2017. Since then, she’s never looked back. The Walk soars as her most honest effort to date. It’s a groove-laden, lyrical lightning bolt from which the tonic of self-revelation pours forth on songs such as the grateful “Every Happiness Under The Sun” and the gut-wrenching “I Don’t Like To Be Alone.” The album’s euphoric closer, “Song Don’t Fail Me Now,” is Bonnie’s most heartfelt testament to date that music absolutely can still heal the spirit.

She framed the seven-song masterpiece in one word definitions as she was recording the album, such as PURPOSE for the album’s opening salvo “Love Revolution” and DOUBT for the moving title track “The Walk.” She captures the frailty of life’s contradictions and conflicts via her effortless vocal reach in bold strokes, bold, yet fragile enough to walk that razor-edge. It’s Bonnie’s desire that fans and critics listen to The Walk from start to finish, “like albums were intended to be listened to,” she says. After returning from a therapeutic retreat that helped her get “un-blocked,” the album was kick-started in a frenzy of writing-collaborations. “The retreat helped create a space of reflection and introspection so that I could deal with things in my past, things that we all eventually have to deal with. I came out of there and immediately made all these song-writing appointments. Most of the album came from that burst of creativity. I didn’t even know I was writing an album, I just knew that the music was coming through me and that I wanted to write honest songs.”

Her reset also included an exit strategy out of a Nashville, a place that had nurtured her, yes, but where she also sometimes felt creatively confined. Her career began in Texas via the road of hard-knocks, playing original music in dive bars and honky tonks across her home state. She came to Nashville in 2008 after signing a publishing deal. There she sharpened her acclaimed songwriting chops by writing with people like Mike Reid, Jimmy Wallace, Al Anderson and others who challenged and inspired her to dig deeper. Her big break would come when Bonnie Raitt recorded a song she and Anderson wrote, “Not Cause I Wanted To,” which would go on to net Bonnie Bishop her first Grammy.

In all, she recorded five very well-received albums, rising though the country/Americana ranks, but finding herself forever on the road. At one point, she even decided to take a hiatus from the stress of the business and enroll in Sewanee University of the South, where she began working toward a masters in creative writing. In 2016, Thirty Tigers convinced her to record a new album with producer David Cobb. The universally acclaimed Ain’t Who I Was brought Bonnie back with a splash, showcasing the more soulful side of the dynamic singer and peeling off some of the Nashville veneer. She also began to steady her aim with what Pop Matters called a ‘slow burning self-reflection,’ armed with a voice and lyrical finesse that Rolling Stone quipped leveled ‘both barrels.’

But it’s more than a trigger-finger twitching on The Walk. Bonnie provocatively shines a light on her inner-self with this album, baring her soul and her love for groove while she digs deeper than she ever has before. “Ain’t Who I Was was successful, and it had some depth, but that album was more about getting me back into the game. The last couple of years I have really started asking myself the more difficult questions,” she says. “Why am I here? Who am I serving? What purpose am I fulfilling with my life?”

She decided to meet those queries head-on with a list of personal challenges which would move her even further out of her comfort zone. She logged a revelatory trip into to the desert, dedicated a year to sobriety, and dove head-and-heart-first into songwriting sessions that revealed even more about her creative process and what fueled it. “I was searching,” Bonnie says, “because I’d lost my sense of meaning. Hell, I even began to doubt my faith.” She even fesses up to a chronic disappointment in the trajectory of her own career – which by any measurable standard has been a damn fine one – with her most recent album drawing rave reviews from not only Rolling Stone, but The New York Times, NPR, Washington Post, and so many others.

“When I was 20, all I wanted was to be a star. I knew I had to let go of those unrealistic goals I set for myself back then because all around me, I saw a world that was also struggling for meaning. I felt like my life in Nashville had been very shallow and I had spent a long time trying to fit in with what I thought people in the music industry wanted me to be. I’d always felt like there was a much higher purpose to my musical message and I wanted to recapture that connection.”

Bishop chose Steve Jordan to produce this project because she had always loved the sound of his drums. “The lyrics on this album were very deep. I wanted Steve to create beats that would help the music move and groove, make it easy for people to listen to.” One of the most riveting songs on the album, the powerful “Women At The Well,” touches on questions of faith and the corrosive human emotion of shame, but has one of the funkiest beats on the album. “Shame is a bitch. It is one of the things that really trips us up,” she says. “When you don’t feel like you’re good enough or you don’t think you have what it takes to go after something you really want, usually it’s shame that is actually holding you back. ‘Women at the Well’ is based on the story in the Bible about the woman who met Jesus while she was drawing water from the well. She was there at the hottest time of day because she was not considered to be a good woman by the townspeople, and she was too ashamed to go to the well in the early morning hours when all the other women would be there. This song speaks for all the girls out who are feeling shamed about something in their past: ‘My name’s Mary and I’m here to say/All my sins have been washed away/I am the one that Jesus saved from Hell/This song’s for the women at the well.’”

“The Walk takes the listener on a journey through my own soul,” she says. “There’s a whole narrative that I hope my audience can follow, starting with the first song on the album, ‘Love Revolution,’ a tune about pursuing a higher purpose, and ending with ‘Song Don’t Fail Me Now,’ about the power of music to heal. Those are the bookends that tie the record together and they kind of sum up why I’m making another album. This music is my gift to the world. I hope that these songs will make the world a better place, that they will help people wherever they are in their life. That’s why the record ends with those “la-la-las” at the end, because I want people to sing along and know that they aren’t alone. We are all in this things called ‘life’ together.”

Bonnie knows something about battling loneliness. In the middle of the album stands the unvarnished gem, ‘I Don’t Like To Be Alone,’ one of the most gripping songs on the The Walk. It’s the only track Bonnie wrote completely by herself. “I felt very vulnerable right after moving back to Texas,” she says. “I was spending alot of time alone in my apartment and there was a night where I kind of had this breakthrough, just facing the fact that I didn’t feel ok being by myself.”

She credits Jordan for insisting that song even go on the album. “It was such a personal song, I hadn’t really played it for anybody. I was reluctant to let Steve hear it because it wasn’t a message I was comfortable putting out there. It made me feel very naked. Of course, that ended up being his favorite song and he insisted we put it on the record. Then he came up with that sick groove and that’s when I knew I had picked the right producer. Steve was pushing me out of my comfort zone and creating the right kind of beats that made deep songs like that one danceable.”

“The journey I took to make this album is personal but it’s really one that we all take. It’s the journey of life. It’s full of ups and downs. There are good times and bad times, times when you’re struggling with the unknown, struggling to understand what it all means. And then there are times when you learn to be thankful and make music amidst the chaos and strife. To me, that’s the hardest part of being human, the not knowing. These days I hear it as a mid-tempo beat. It’s the song that never ends, like the heartbeat of humanity. Steve created the soundtrack for that feeling. Every track on this album ties in with the notion that with life, you have to just take it one day at a time. This album is the sound of me learning to be OK with that.”