ARLENE BISHOP

Arlene Bishop’s new multi media project called Coping Mechanism tells an uplifting life changing story.

The album was composed during the pandemic lockdowns using electronic instrumentation and some voice. The accompanying short film Coping Mechanism: Unmasking My Late Autism Diagnosis tells the story with dramatic instrumental music and moving pictures. And thirdly, in the YouTube vlog of the same name, Arlene talks about the inspiration behind seeking a diagnosis, the successes of being a life long artist, and the challenges of unmasking.

Order yours right now from Arlene Bishop on BandCamp to choose from a variety of digital audio (WAV, FLAC, MP3 and more).  Digital downloads come with an immediate download. Check out the associated Coping limited edition T-Shirt.

Live with an audience, Arlene Bishop and her thirty-person vorchestra recorded a totally unique, heart-bursting, emotional rollercoaster set of big songs and funny between-song monologue.  “A uniquely inspiring experience unlike anything I could have imagined.” said one audience member.

 

Bishop’s goal of connecting community envisioned singers, former singers, and wish-they-were-singers, breaking the wall between performer and audience, all inspiring the audience to sing along without expressly asking them to.  It was a bold yet vulnerable goal.

 

Hoping for open minds, she reached out, word spread, and the vorchestra grew.  Named The Spirit of Adventure for their creative bravery, the growing ensemble learned the arrangements.  Asking Miss John Copping to take the role of conduxtrix when the voices grew from three to six to seventeen (and kept growing), Bishop hosted a series of rehearsals that became social gatherings, performance workshops, vocal coaching, and philosophical talks.  Together with the vorchestra, conductrix Miss Copping, bass (Annelise Noronha), percussion (Cheryl Reid), keyboards (Yawd Sylvester), acoustic guitar, a willing audience, and a room full of microphones and gear engineered by veteran recording artist James Paul (The Rogue), the deep, dark, and funny show about our shared human condition of death emerged.

Check out these excerpts from the 14 track album of serious songs and funny monologue. It’s a real rollercoaster of an experience – and listening to it is just like being on stage with The Spirit of Adventure.

Order yours right now from Arlene Bishop on BandCamp to choose from a variety of digital audio (WAV, FLAC, MP3 and more).  Digital downloads come with an immediate download and CD purchases include a digital download of the album.

Together Tonight by Arlene Bishop & The Spirit of Adventure is available through iTunes, CDBaby, and right now you can order it from BandCamp.

For more music by Arlene Bishop visit the store here on this site.

ARLENE BISHOP
THANK YOU JIMMY SCOPES
THE CABANA ROOM BOOTLEG 1992

Arlene Bishop’s sixth release, Thank You Jimmy Scopes, is a bootleg recording captured at The Cabana Room in the former Spadina Hotel, in front of a talkative room of musicians and artists in 1992.

Jimmy Scopes was the bartender and music booker at The Cabana Room. When they met in 1986, Arlene Bishop was twenty-one and muddling through the death of her boyfriend just months after she had moved to Toronto from art school in Ottawa. She describes herself as an optimistically melancholic insomniac and after seeing a band at The Cabana Room, she introduced herself to Jimmy and asked about a gig. Even though she only had four songs of her own, Jimmy offered her a Monday residency. Those regular shows over several years challenged her to write new songs, to book other musicians to share the night, to promote the shows to new audiences, and to perform under any–– and every––circumstance. “I played to full and empty rooms, during storms and migraines, never cancelling a show, never wanting to let Jimmy down.” Those nights were where she developed her funny-deep-talk-between-dark-song-approach. “I loved making Jimmy laugh and when he said he liked a particular song, it meant a lot. Those residencies gave me focus and a circle of musicians and audience friends that saved me,” Bishop says now, a million years later.

Arlene Bishop now enjoys a songwriting and performance career that has expanded her community around the world. She’s been compared to Neil Young, Tracy Chapman, Leonard Cohen, and Marianne Faithfull. She has co-written songs, penned TV theme lyrics, written screenplays, created a video documentary series, and is always looking for new ways to bring community together with performance. Bishop has performed solo and with bands throughout Canada and France, previously releasing three studio albums, an EP, and a live album that featured a 30-person singing ensemble. It was during the enormous singing project (Together Tonight with The Spirit of Adventure, released in 2017) that recording engineer James Paul revealed he’d captured one of her solo shows in 1992 and the two started sharing Jimmy stories.

This bootleg is a raw piece of audio history that might mean nothing to anyone except the performing songwriter herself, but she’s releasing it as a way to say thank you to the person she credits with launching more than just her life on stage.

“It all started with The Cabana Room, with postering along Queen Street West, with calls to strangers, with sharing the stage and room with people like Ron Sexsmith, Paul Myers, Barenaked Ladies, Jane Siberry, Rheostatics, The Jitters, Bob Snider, Chalk Circle, and so many muso friends who are still a part of my everyday life, and I’m very grateful. Thank you, Jimmy Scopes.”