The favourite gypsy. Ryan has traveled all over the world to see the sights but always comes back to stay for a few months at a time. Ryan has changed his repertoire over many times. He is a brilliantly ragged guitarist who can finger pick roots music, crunch the dirty Thurston Moore and Lou Reed or play like hes on an Al Green record. Ryan once did a Led Zeppelin night as a fundraiser for the T.Ho hockey team and he played all of the guitar and sang it all night long, and it sounded great. He is unbelievable sometimes. Ryan is a sought after backing musician for his skills as a guitarist and bass player. He is now a full time member of OX and a sideman for Kate Maki. Ryan is now professionally known as Ryan Bishops, to make things a bit easier to explain to the rest of the english world.
Current bands: Ox, Kate Maki, Junction Creek, Ramble Tamble
Former and occasional Bands: The Fitties, Shady Grove, Traveling Minstrels of Death, The Bender Brothers, The Tom Waits Birthday Party, Wreck Beach
Albums: Junction Creek Burning by the Riverside Cassette 1995, Wreck Beach Tavern CD 1998, Junction Creek s/t CD 1999, Junction Creek Gray Matter CD 2000, Junction Creek Silver Spooned and Hammered CD 2003, V/A - On The Nickel CD 2003.
Website: www.ryanbishops.ca
Repertoire a ton. Ryan has done entire nights of Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Funk, Bluegrass. From time to time, Junction Creek will pick an entire album to play for one of their sets, such as Velvet Underground- Loaded or The Beatles- Abbey Road B-Side. On Acoustic nights Ryan plays a lot of old timey music from bluegrass, country, The Grateful dead, the Beatles, The Stones, Dylan and more. You will also catch him doing songs from Van Morrison, The Flaming Lips and others.
Junction Creek - JC Consists of Ryan, Brother Dan, Jeremy Sylvestre (PhD candidate at UofT) on drums and Nick Krawczuk (pharmacist) on bass. When this band appears on the calendar, they will generally be doing a lot of the recorded songs of Junction Creek. - outlaw country, ragged rock and roll and more.
. .Ox - Founded by Mark Browning on the west coast, OX now consists of Mark, Ryan, Sarah Craig, Mark Koetsier and occasionally diamond Dave Jeffrey. Some of the songs of Ryan and Sarah are worked into the OX repertoire making this a true new band. They are touring all over the place and Ox's Dust Bowl Ballads record is still charting all over the place.
Ramble Tamble - the most recent incarnation of Ryan covering popular music of the last 60 years. Dylan, old time country, Stones and more. Line-up will usually include some or all of Dan Levecque, Marc Donato, Paul Loewenberg, Chris Dardick, Nick Krawczuk, and Ryan.