Richard Bishop doesn't write music to be heard. He writes it because the alternative is letting it eat him alive.
Six years in the United States Army. One combat deployment. He came back with a Dear John letter waiting and a ringing in his ears that never stopped. Not a metaphor — tinnitus so loud there are days it drowns out everything else. Add OCD and PTSD to that and you start to understand what still standing actually means for this man. It isn't a triumphant pose. It's a daily decision.
He came home to a life that had moved on without him. Rebuilt from scratch. Somewhere in that rebuild he became a father — and that changed everything. His daughter Aryah is four years old. He's raising her alone. Every song he writes, every hour he puts into this, every wall he refuses to let stop him — she's the reason. Not a prop. Not a sympathy angle. The actual reason.
Richard is an independent artist in every sense of the word. No label. No manager. No machine behind him. He writes every lyric himself. He uses AI-assisted production tools to bring his music to life — and he'll tell you that straight to your face because he has nothing to hide and no interest in pretending otherwise. What comes out the other end is raw, heavy, lived-in hard rock and blues-rock built from Drop-C tuning, baritone vocals that sound like gravel and smoke, and songs that don't pull punches.
His debut album Still Standing is eleven tracks of exactly that. Combat. Loss. Fatherhood. Survival. The kind of music that doesn't exist to make you comfortable — it exists to make you feel less alone in the dark.
He practices Norse faith. He operates heavy equipment for a living. He builds bridges — literally and otherwise. He is from Fairfield, Iowa and he has zero plans to apologize for any of it.
No bullshit. No apologies. No regrets.