Self-described gay piano/popster Derek Bishop is embarking on a short tour with gay-fronted alternative country band The Paisley Fields, hitting town Feb. 16 at JR’s.
Bishop admitted that he has a number of reasons to go on the trek besides getting his music heard.
“They are friends of mine and the’re very good about going out and touring to their Midwest roots,” Bishop said about The Paisley Fields. “I said to them, ‘If you’re going to do a tour of the East Coast and South, let me know because I have friends and fans all along.’ We thought it would be good to go somewhere warmer than it is in New York.”
Hopefully the snow won’t imprison them in the city before the tour starts.
Bishop said he’ll be traveling lighter than he usually does for these road shows but he’s hoping to improvise a solution.
“It’ll be different,” he said. “I’ll be going solo with a piano without a whole band but what I’m hoping to do each night is drag a different musician from their band into my set — a drummer one night, a guitarist the next. I have plans for them that they might not be aware of. It should be fun.”
Bishop’s debut album, “Resistance is Beautiful,” had been out for almost two years, but he said he’s still pushing to expose it to new listeners.
“The great thing is that it hasn’t taken off so everywhere I go to promote it, it’s new to these people,” he said. “So it actually has a nice long span of finding new audiences.”
Bishop is also planning to record a new album soon, which sonically will be a natural progression from the organic-pop sounds of his first album.
“The last one felt like a greatest-hits-of-the-1970s album,” he said. “I used instruments that were very of that time. I realized when I was playing the songs live, adding guitar added some oomph to them. I think this one is going to sound more early 1980s and upbeat. We’re definitely going for a more upbeat sound even if the lyrics are despondent and angry.”
Bishop said that while he’s pursuing a more modern sound on his new album, he’s not fully buying into a lot of the technology that has become commonplace with artists of today.
“I was a teenager in the 1980s when it was very synthy,” he said. “I played piano too and remember it feeling not as organic. Around 1986, people stopped playing keyboards and started using computers to play the keyboards. Today, there are some great acts that perform live and half of their instrumentation is coming through a laptop. I’ve got no problem with that. It gives you a much fuller sound, but I’d much rather be entertained by someone who is actually playing the instrument. You get more of their soul and more of the song. That’s what I wanted to do for myself. It becomes a little more cumbersome because when I want to do a show, I have to get a guitarist, a drummer and a bass player. But ultimately, when I listen to what we do, I couldn’t be more pleased.”
Derek Bishop performs 8 p.m. Feb. 16 at JR’s Bar, 2300 S. Croskey St. For more information or tickets, call 215-336-4020 or visit www.derekbishop.net.