(HOLMDEL, NJ) -- Emerging rock band Bishop Gunn are adding new tour dates throughout the summer, including select shows with Lynyrd Skynyrd, as well as various festival plays and the Outlaw Music Festival Tour supporting Willie Nelson & Family, Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats, The Head and The Heart and Old Crow Medicine Show. They will open for Lynyrd Skynyrd at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel on Friday, June 22nd.
The band continue to support their debut album Natchez (named after the band’s hometown in Mississippi), which entered the Billboard Blues Chart at #4 and theHeatseekers South Central Chart at #8. The record continues to receive widespread critical acclaim:
“Anyone can cite the Muscle Shoals sound as an influence, but few acts can actually pull off making music worthy of such a claim. Nashville band Bishop Gunn is one of those acts…The resulting music is the perfect blend of Nashville and the Shoals, and is the rare album that builds upon its influences rather than resorting to outright mimicry.”—Rolling Stone Country
“With its eleven powerful tracks that pay tribute to the swampy southern blues of their origin, edged with gut-punching rock n’ roll, the album represents the sound of the South as they know it. We can’t get enough.”—Mother Church Pew
“Bishop Gunn emerged, like torchbearers for a new wave of blues to come out of the Mississippi Delta.”—Culture Collide
“…their sound is very much rooted in the history and the surrounding Delta. As Led Zeppelin borrowed from the music of the region, now Bishop Gunn is mining from that famous four-piece. At most times during the 90 minute concert they echoed of Zep with their high-octane swagger-infused performance.”—Music City Nashville
Four songs from Natchez were recorded at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in 2017 with producer Mark Neill (The Black Keys). The album’s lead single, “Shine,” is the first release of material tracked inside the legendary MSSS since it reopened in January 2016. At MSSS, the band recorded simultaneous live tracking of guitars, drums, vocals, bass—something they’d never done before. The album also features a song tracked at Muscle Shoals’ FAME Studios as well as six songs cut at The Purple House, a Leiper’s Fork, TN home studio operated by Grammy-winning producer Casey Wasner.
Bishop Gunn is Travis McCready (vocals), Burne Sharp (drums), Drew Smithers(guitar) and Ben Lewis (bass). Following many years in steelwork in Natchez, McCready decided to go into music full time. After both playing music in various incarnations, McCready and Sharpe connected at the big annual festival in Natchez. A friendship and collaboration formed, rooted in the history and sounds of their home and the surrounding Delta. They added members and Bishop Gunn’s current lineup stuck shortly thereafter. Now, the band members live together, write and have set up a home studio in a farmhouse just outside Leiper’s Fork, TN. They rehearse at a repurposed grocery store in the area.
