Six-string shaman Sir Richard Bishop is back, unleashing his new single and video for “Head Bone in the ‘Tater Hole”, on the eve of his latest album, Hillbilly Ragas, which is set for release tomorrow, September 26, 2025, on Drag City Records. The track, one of the album’s nine solo acoustic guitar pieces, is an excursion into the kind of raw, untamed music that Bishop believes gives proper credence to the semantics of “American Primitive” guitar style.
The woodshedder opens “Head Bone in the ‘Tater Hole” with a galloping figuration that hints at a waltz or a Latinate dance, before quickly boiling his ideas into a steaming stew of theme and variations.
Hillbilly Ragas is described by Bishop as the work of an undiscovered mountain man or “hillbilly” creating his own folklore, fueled by moonshine and a “fuck-all attitude”. It’s a woodsy elegy to the “American Primitive” music form on his own terms, carved out in a wild-eyed state of moonstruck transcendence. Following the album’s release, you can catch Sir Richard Bishop live as he tours across the UK and Europe this fall. The tour kicks off on September 26, 2025, in Dublin, Ireland.
Order or purchase Hillbilly Ragas: lnk.to/hillbillyragas