Music • Photography • Writing
I was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of a professional musician, Bob Bishop, who played piano in various Big Bands in the 1930s and '40s. We moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado, while I was still an infant, where my dad worked as a banker during the day and played either solo or with bands at night. I began playing drums in grade school and by high school was performing professionally in rock bands. In college, I studied plant ecology, graduating in 1972 with honors. After working as a landscaper and then owning my own gardening business, I became a full-time musician with various kinds of bands: standards, rock, and country. After becoming the leader in most of the bands I joined, I became frustrated with trying to hang onto personnel and decided to turn solo in 1982, playing acoustic guitar and singing. Soon finding that format limited my repertoire, I began recording drum and bass parts and playing them on a cassette recorder for backing tracks on stage. After adding a keyboard to my instruments and multi-track recorders to my studio equipment, I was able to produce full band sound complete with all the instruments and vocals of a band with none of the problems of hiring musicians. For more personal biographical information about me, click here.
