VIP TICKET BUYERS HAVE 5:30 EARLY ENTRY AND RECIEVE A COPY OF BONNIE'S NEW CD "THE WALK" FROM THE MERCH TABLE.
The first thing that registers about Bonnie Bishop’s stirring album The Walk is that the seasoned Grammy winner is no longer trying to outrun herself; she owns whatever has come her way, good wind or ill. It’s an uplifting confessional that she dedicates ‘to all who wander’ – laying down searing, emotionally-charged variations to award-winning producer Steve Jordan’s (Robert Cray, John Mayer, Buddy Guy) powerhouse production. She does so in a voice that aches and arches and grabs and never lets go.
She framed the seven-song masterpiece in one word definitions as she was recording the album, such as PURPOSE for the album’s opening salvo “Love Revolution” and DOUBT for the moving title track “The Walk.” She captures the frailty of life’s contradictions and conflicts via her effortless vocal reach in bold strokes, bold, yet fragile enough to walk that razor-edge. It’s Bonnie’s desire that fans and critics listen to The Walk from start to finish, “like albums were intended to be listened to,” she says. After returning from a therapeutic retreat that helped her get “un-blocked,” the album was kick-started in a frenzy of writing-collaborations. “The retreat helped create a space of reflection and introspection so that I could deal with things in my past, things that we all eventually have to deal with. I came out of there and immediately made all these song-writing appointments. Most of the album came from that burst of creativity. I didn’t even know I was writing an album, I just knew that the music was coming through me and that I wanted to write honest songs.”
But it’s more than a trigger-finger twitching on The Walk. Bonnie provocatively shines a light on her inner-self with this album, baring her soul and her love for groove while she digs deeper than she ever has before. “Ain’t Who I Was was successful, and it had some depth, but that album was more about getting me back into the game. The last couple of years I have really started asking myself the more difficult questions,” she says. “Why am I here? Who am I serving? What purpose am I fulfilling with my life?”
“The journey I took to make this album is personal but it’s really one that we all take. It’s the journey of life. It’s full of ups and downs. There are good times and bad times, times when you’re struggling with the unknown, struggling to understand what it all means. And then there are times when you learn to be thankful and make music amidst the chaos and strife. To me, that’s the hardest part of being human, the not knowing. These days I hear it as a mid-tempo beat. It’s the song that never ends, like the heartbeat of humanity. Steve created the soundtrack for that feeling. Every track on this album ties in with the notion that with life, you have to just take it one day at a time. This album is the sound of me learning to be OK with that.”