Since 2004 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place.
In the early 70s, Bishop began gigging as a singer-songwriter (though he’s no fan of the term) in Urbana-Champaign, including at the folk festivals the Red Herring presented each fall and spring. The artists who participated could get their songs included on the aforementioned LPs, and Bishop contributed “White Lines and Road Signs” and “Kissed You Again” to the two volumes of Folk and Music From the Red Herring compiled in fall 1971. At publication time, a copy of the second LP was on sale through a local record shop for $225.
Bishop moved to Los Angeles in 1982, because the Chicago club scene had slowed down and he had no management. He wrote a play called American Express that was staged in LA, directed by Second City cofounder Paul Sills and featuring Saturday Night Live veteran Laraine Newman. He cowrote the tune “Trials of the Heart” for the 1986 film About Last Night and began collaborating on screenplays. He sold several to Universal and Trimark, but in most cases the movies were never produced—and when they were, the scripts had often been rewritten so heavily that he barely cared anymore.
Mandy Patinkin sings “Mr. Arthur’s Place,” a song that Thom Bishop wrote in his Red Herring days.
Bishop’s own version of “Mr. Arthur’s Place,” from the 1996 album Feed Me a Dream
