Bonnie Bishop
I had the pleasure and privilege of photographing Bonnie Bishop when she performed a showcase at The Rutledge in Nashville back in the winter of 2009.
I’d only learned of Bonnie a few months earlier at the Americana Music Fest. Well, no, not actually at the Americana event, but a week or so later.
I’d sat down to go through some of the printed material from the conference, and then went online to LaLa.com – the site I had been using as my “celestial jukebox” before it was acquired by Apple and shut down in the spring of 2010 – to listen to the recordings of performers whose actual Americana showcases I’d missed.
At Lala.com, I found Things I Know (Spotify link), a CD Bonnie released in 2009, produced by the incomparably multi-talented Will Kimbrough. By the time I got to the second track, I was hooked. The song is one of those tracks that you keep coming back to, as I did when I first discovered it back in 2009. That one track made me a die-hard Bonnie Bishop fan, so I’m going to post a Spotify player for it here:
Bonnie has done lots of great things since, not the least getting a cut on Bonnie Raitt’s most recent album Not Cause I Wanted To from Slipstream by Bonnie Raitt; Spotify link) and getting a song on to the ABC prime time series Nashville.
Here’s Bonnie’s own version of that song, The Best Songs Come From Broken Hearts:
And last year she released a new CD of original material that includes that track, called simply “Free.” (Spotify link).
As you can see from these tracks, Bonnie Bishop is a musical force to be reckoned with. So when I found out she’d be doing a showcase at the Rutledge, I went right down and asked if it would be OK to grab some shots.
The Rutledge is one of the better rooms to shoot in town. The stage light is better than average, and there usually plenty of room to maneuver in front of the and get creative angles of the performers.
And best of all, when I asked Bonnie if it would be OK to use this photo in my “Joy Of Making Music” initiative, she granted her permission and added, “I love that pic.”
Thanks, Bonnie. I love it, too.
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