Sir Richard Bishop will return to Australia in October 2026 for his first tour of the country in two decades, bringing his acclaimed solo guitar performances to four intimate east coast dates.
by Paul Cashmere
American guitarist, composer and Sun City Girls co-founder Sir Richard Bishop has announced his first Australian tour in 20 years, with a four-date run scheduled for October 2026. The rare visit comes just months after the release of his latest album Hillbilly Ragas and ahead of the arrival of its companion record Hillbilly Erotica, due on July 31 through Drag City. The tour will take in Bendigo, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, offering Australian audiences a rare opportunity to see one of experimental music’s most distinctive guitar voices in an intimate live setting.
For followers of adventurous guitar music, Bishop’s return marks a significant moment. While many contemporary guitarists draw from established traditions, Bishop has spent more than four decades developing a singular approach that crosses folk, improvisation, psychedelia and musical forms from around the world. His performances are known for balancing detailed composition with spontaneous improvisation, making each concert a unique event rather than a reproduction of recorded material.
The Australian dates arrive at an active period in Bishop’s career. The guitarist’s 2025 album Hillbilly Ragas continued his long-running exploration of global musical influences and unconventional guitar techniques. Its companion release, Hillbilly Erotica, is set for release only weeks before the Australian shows, placing the tour at the forefront of his latest creative chapter.
Bishop first emerged in the early 1980s as a founding member of Sun City Girls, the influential experimental group he formed with his brother Alan Bishop. Across a 26-year career, the band built a formidable catalogue that included more than 50 albums and numerous cassette and vinyl releases. Their work became highly regarded within underground and avant-garde music circles for its refusal to adhere to conventional genre boundaries.
Although best known through Sun City Girls, Bishop’s solo career has become equally significant. His first official solo album, Salvador Kali, was released in 1998 through John Fahey’s respected Revenant Records label. The record established many of the themes that would define his subsequent work, combining technical guitar mastery with influences drawn from multiple musical cultures.
A steady stream of releases followed, including Improvika, Fingering The Devil, Elektronika Demonika, While My Guitar Violently Bleeds and Polytheistic Fragments. His 2009 album The Freak Of Araby expanded his sonic palette further, paying tribute to Egyptian guitarist Omar Khorshid while exploring Middle Eastern musical traditions through a full-band setting.
Beyond his recording career, Bishop has collaborated and toured with a diverse range of artists including Will Oldham, Animal Collective, Devendra Banhart and Bill Callahan. In 2010 he also formed Rangda alongside Ben Chasny and Chris Corsano, creating another outlet for expansive improvisational music.
His influence extends beyond performance and recording. In 2003, Bishop joined Alan Bishop and Hisham Mayet in founding the Sublime Frequencies label, a project dedicated to documenting and releasing obscure and underrepresented music from Africa, India, Southeast Asia and other regions. The label became an important platform for preserving and sharing recordings that may otherwise have remained inaccessible to Western audiences.
While Bishop has remained highly respected within experimental music communities, his work exists largely outside the commercial mainstream. That position has helped preserve an artistic independence that continues to define his output. His concerts are often characterised by unpredictability, with carefully structured passages giving way to extended improvisations that reflect both his technical command and his willingness to take risks in performance.
For Australian audiences, the tour offers a rare chance to experience a musician whose reputation has been built through decades of innovation rather than chart success. The venues selected for the run are deliberately intimate, allowing audiences to witness the nuances of Bishop’s playing at close range.
The October dates are presented by Solitary Count and represent Bishop’s only announced Australian performances. With new music arriving immediately before the tour and a catalogue spanning more than four decades, the shows are expected to draw both longtime followers and younger listeners discovering his work for the first time.
Dates:
Wednesday 21 October 2026, Bendigo, Trash Cult
Thursday 22 October 2026, Melbourne, The Curtin
Friday 23 October 2026, Sydney, Marrickville Bowlo
Saturday 24 October 2026, Brisbane, Season Three
Tickets on sale now through solitarycount.com.au
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