In 30 minutes or so, Bishop Gunn will take the stage at the Hub, a new music hall in Monroe, La.
I’d seen them twice before but this would be my first time talking to the band from Natchez, Miss. Through a series of email and messenger exchanges, I’d carved out an interview session with Bishop Gunn and I was headed back. Their handler Hogan punched numbers into a key pad and opened the door to the Green Room where the guys were seated or standing around a couch.
We make friendly introductions and I grab an open spot by drummer Burne Sharp.
They were a regional act just a few years back, and they made good music. They posted cool videos for YouTube, cranked out an EP in 2016 with tracks like “Let the People Know,” “Eye of a Hurricane,” “Have You Way with Me,” “Bank of the River” and “Riders” and followed with the album Natchez, in 2018, which delivered songs like “Southern Discomfort,” “Shine,” “Makin’ It” and “Alabama.”
But the world keeps spinning and Bishop Gunn continues on an odyssey that is damn impressive when you walk it back. In 2019, they’ve played in 14 countries and 40 states while headlining shows and also opening for name-brand acts, including Guns and Roses and the big one – the Rolling Stones at NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas.
“That was pretty rad,” says Sharp, who is sitting beside me on a couch. “I think it’s still sinking in over time. It’s kind of like saying, ‘You can understand how far the sun is away. You can’t really grasp that.'”
Friends in the industry like Kid Rock and Justin Timberlake pushed open some doors, along with advocates behind the scenes. And they’ve been easing their way into the spotlight with their honest take on Southern rock infused with just the right splash of muddy water, Mississippi soul.
“You really begin to realize how small the world of live music and entertainment is,” Sharp says. “For instance, it was the exact same production crew for the Stones show as it was for the Guns and Roses show a few months later. All the same stage managers and system techs.”
We don’t have much time, but I’ve got a few questions for the guys and they’re always eager to tell their story. Or at least the first few chapters. …
The band needed a name for a gig at the annual Natchez Balloon Festival.
In 2014, the band was a loose confederation, for sure. Drummer Burne Sharp says the band’s former guitar player hastily created a flier and splashed a name across it. Nobody workshopped the idea. No focus groups. Nothing like that.
It was just a name borrowed from a tombstone in a hometown cemetery, the final resting place of the sixth Bishop of Natchez, John Edward Gunn.
“Bishop Gunn.”
“He found pictures of all of us from our old bands and put it together,” Sharp says. “He put Bishop Gunn across it, and that’s actually how we found out about the name. We just saw the flier on Facebook. It was kind of random.”
Random works sometimes, and that’s true of Bishop Gunn. In assembling the band for the local hot-air balloon event, they lured in a talented local lead vocalist named Travis McCready. He worked days as a welder, just like his dad, but his heart wasn’t in it. He’d been making music by night anyway, and McCready was ready to chase his dreams.
“We were asking around town and keeping our ears open,” Sharp says. “Pretty much unanimously around town it was always, ‘If you’re trying to do rock and roll, it’s Travis.’ We actually followed his other band around a couple of weekends in a row. We watched their shows and talked to him on break. Finally one night, he agreed to come jam with us. We went to the guy’s house, went upstairs where the drums and everything was. This was like two ‘o clock in the morning after one of his shows.
“We started singing loud and we were jamming. All of a sudden the power cut out. We were like, ‘Damn, the power went out!’ Travis was like: ‘Naw man, your mom cut the power.’”
Power or not that night, there were sparks.
Bishop Gunn kicked around the Delta for a while. They opened for the Revivalists in Monroe, La., (my first look) and built a nice local following. But they wanted more.
The original foursome didn’t last when it came time to expand their territory. Sharp and McCready remained though, and they kept the quirky name. In 2017, they found their new guitar player, Drew Smithers, jamming outside an antique store after they’d moved up to a farmhouse in Leiper’s Fork, Tenn. They completed the foursome with another Natchez musician, bass player Ben Lewis, who is a former Marine.
More randomness. But it’s was clicking.
“Things just kind of came together,” Sharp says.
The original Bishop Gunn was getting some love locally but Sharp and McCready had a grand vision for what they wanted to accomplish.
“We pulled the band apart and moved up to Nashville,” Sharp says. “We were just writing and recording and producing our own songs. He had an acoustic guitar and I had a Cajon and we were just sitting beating on that shit, trying to get people to look at us. That’s how the song ‘Shine’ came about.
“We were singing to the situation we were in. Then we got fortunate enough to find these two cats over here.” He gestures toward Lewis and Smithers, hovering to our left.
Lewis says he knew McCready for about eight years, and they’d been in a few cover bands together.
“I’d fill in if he needed a bass player or something like that,” Lewis says. “The band I was playing with, he’d come in and sing a song with us. Then he was telling me about Burne. ‘He’s got a studio and it’s a pretty nice place. Bring some stuff up there and let’s record.’ I took a song up there, and me and Burne hit off pretty well. And had a good time. ”
Says Sharp: “We knew it was good because we instantly started joking with each other in the studio and having a blast.”
While Lewis is another Natchez native, Smithers was born in California and grew up on the East Coast. He’d moved to Nashville from Chicago about seven years ago with his own musical dreams. And just in case you wonder if he has the Southern-fried bona fides for this bunch, he reminds you that his mother is from Mobile, Ala., and he once opened for B.B. King – in the late blues legend’s hometown.
“When I got started playing guitar, I was really into like open tune, slide, playing without a pick, Delta blues, Mississippi music,” Smithers says.
The band gets a huge kick out the way they discovered Smithers, who was playing outside an antique shop in Leiper’s Fork. They start calling him “Antiqua” when the story comes up.
But Sharp says he and McCready couldn’t believe their ears when they first saw Smithers strumming. “We’re like, ‘Is this a joke?’,” Sharp says. “Why is this bad-ass guitar player playing outside an antique store?”
They’re having fun, so I ask the guys to offer up quick scouting reports on one another. Their answers are … interesting?
Sharp on McCready: “Crazy, wild-ass motherfucker who sings real nice.”
McCready on Sharp: “I’m going to try to say less than he gave me. I’ll say he’s like the race-car driver and the pit crew. Shake and bake.”
Lewis on Smithers: “I love Drew. He’s one of my favorite guitar players. I steal a lot of his licks. He don’t think I be listening.”
Smithers on Lewis: “Ben is a guy you can rely on. I’m really fortunate to be in a band with him.”
McCready and Lewis write most of Bishop Gunn’s songs. McCready is always finding time to make notes on his phone, and his lyrics consistently reflect their collective experiences.
“I write music when we’re touring,” McCready says. “I write in the days in between. I keep logs of ideas and lyrics and hooks. I constantly pull out my cell phone and record licks and stuff. While we’re riding down the road, between sound checks. Stuff like that.”
Their journey has been as incredible as it sounds. They’ve gone from playing Natchez haunts like Smoot’s Grocery to sharing the stage with Mick Jagger.
They just emerged from Fame Studio in Muscle Shoals, Ala., recording their second album, which should come out in the spring of 2020, and they’re serving up samples of the new music during recent live shows. Playing the bigger venues and roaming the country gave them an enhanced perspective to expand their horizons.
“We noticed a few things missing where we could fill in the blanks for a live show,” Sharp says. “We definitely used that as an ingredient for the new album.”
McCready said fans that follow their music will sense the literal and philosophical movement of the band when they listen to the new stuff. They left their Natchez nest to go worldwide in the last 10 months, and you better believe that’s shaping their sounds.
“Actually it started on some of the later songs on the last album,” McCready says. “Songs like ‘Wheels’ and ‘Makin’ it.’ They were almost written, back when we thought we were moving. But it was regionally, so we were still home. It fit a concept of the album Natchez because within a couple of states, we were still home, even though we were venturing out and playing gigs, we were still on the tit, so to speak. We thought we were at the table.
“This one is a lot of the real road stuff. There’s some stuff on here that was written a couple of years ago but being in that head space of where you thought you were going to be. Like a quarterback who throws to where the receiver is supposed to be. Whether they are there or not, that is the play. But it came into its own. Natchez is a stationary concept. This one we call Gypsy Cadillac. I don’t know if I should say that yet.”
Says Sharp, shrugging: “Working title as of now.”
My time is running short so I ask them, what’s next for Bishop Gunn?
“I think we’re just thinking, let’s get this record out,” Smithers says. “But keep touring, playing for bigger crowds.”
Says Lewis: “I think we’re going to be able to really say something with this album.”
Adds Sharpe: “More of a platform than Natchez.”
Speaking of Natchez, they still love their town of origin and it loves them back. They were headliners at the Balloon Festival in 2019 and hosted their own Bishop Gunn crawfish boil the past two years. Natchez Brewing Company even labeled a beer in their honor.
Although I’d never really met any of the band members before this night, the conversation flows like they are old acquaintances. Maybe it’s because they are active on social media and share so freely with their growing group of fans, known affection ally as “Gunners.”
“You learn that as you go too,” Lewis says. “That’s something we started off not really knowing much and just figured it out.”
Their online following has its own Facebook Gunners group that keeps the chatter going. The band interacts there almost daily.
“The community of Gunners is what makes this so cool to me as well,” Sharp says. “It’s like a group of thousands that has become best friends, virtually and physically as they all start meeting at shows. Then it’s like a whole network of people all centered around one thing. It’s really cool to see how that’s developed over time.”
Bishop Gunn is gracious during the 16 minutes, 18 seconds they share. The informal session also includes two shots of Jack Daniels for me and a Coors Light that McCready hands me as I head back out to watch their show.
I boomerang the title from one of their songs as I hit the door, promising them to “Let the people know.”
Y’all, Bishop Gunn is “Makin’ it.”
- Have Gunn, Will Travel: How a Natchez, Miss., Rock Band Spread Like Kudzu - December 2, 2019
