 Born in Seattle, Washington on February 14th, 1950, Roger Fisher discovered a love for music at a very early age.
In 1965 he began laying the foundation for his own style of guitar playing. Designing instruments, playing guitar with a violin bow and generally being willing to try anything to produce interesting, unique music was his passion.
As founding guitarist of the rock group Heart, these adventurous energies made themselves globally known through the sales of more than fifteen million albums. Having left that group in 1979, a musical rebirth began that took ten years to reach fruition. The first album to emerge from those years of work in his recording studio was "Standing, Looking Up," an instrumental effort that portrays earthly birth and the subsequent reaching out to other worlds and wonders.
Since then, he joined former Heart buddies Mike Derosier and Steve Fossen, as well as former Sheriff members Freddie Curci and Steve DeMarchi to form a group called "Alias". In the year and a half they were together, they had a number one single, a number ten single, and were on several national TV shows, including two performances on the Tonight show - once with Johnny Carson and once with Jay Leno.
Since 1968, Roger has toured North America repeatedly, playing in all but two of the fifty states, playing in all but two of the provinces. He has been on television shows that broadcast for more than 60 million people in Europe, played the biggest shows in Japan's and Canada's histories, performed for as many as three hundred thousand people at a single rock show. He has toured Japan, Australia and the USSR in addition to North America and Europe.
Roger has three sons, Roger, Evan and Dylan (yes, he's named after Bob) and two lovely daughters, Michaela and Lily.
Other Recordings:
Acoustic Reign Project (2003 on Sol Disk)
Reviewed by David Lewis at Cadence Magazine, February 2004
ACOUSTIC REIGN PROJECT,
SOL DISK 321.
Depths / I Don't Need This / Waves (The Storm) / Heat-1. 55:52
Jim Knodle, tpt; Brian Kent, ts; Roger Fisher, g-1 only;
Reuben Radding, b; Jack Gold, d. March 17, 2002,
Woodinville, WA
Brooding free-Jazz anchored by the firm yet simple rhythm tandem of Radding and Gold. Listen to them evoke the lulls and sustained fury at the onset of "Waves (The Storm)" to encapsulate the shifting rhythms of nature. The piece evolves out of fury into exquisite lyrical exchanges between Kent and Knodle's refined mute work before Radding's fierce arco re-establishes the menace and fury of the storm's returning salvos. "Depths" evolves into an intensifying free-form chase between Knodle and Kent, yet this lucid quartet dialogue assumes organic shape and sketches in many gradations along the way -- the sustained lyrical interlude at the mid-point of this performance shows how the members of this unit listen to one another to evolve a collective exploration of fresh sonic terrain. A great measure of the majestic sweep of "Depths" is to compare the contrasting arco styles that Radding explores, from the busy musings of the first half to the gravity of his poignant interlude around the fifteen minute mark. This is absorbing and engaging collective music making of the first order that tangibly realizes the transformative power of the art. "I Don't Need This" is as an abstract freescape that sounds like a flashback to vintage Art Ensemble of Chicago and is therefore a definite plus in my book, as it was the AEOC that really opened up to me the beauty, force, and shifting collective focus of abstract music as an improvised art form of the highest order. Guitar player Fisher fits in well with the ensemble and supplies further color to the shifting dynamics of "Heat" which ends with a solo by Gold who concludes the ritual with the sound of the unexpected, an apt way to end a substantial musical feast. |
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Acoustic Reign Project (2003 on Sol Disk)
Reviewed by Rotcod Zzaj at Improvijazzation Nation - Issue # 64 Reviews
Acoustic Reign Project - ACOUSTIC REIGN PROJECT: Not a lot of liner notes, but I can tell you, the opener ("Depths") is a killer... a 19 minute free-jazz epic, it features some high talent from the Great Northwest... Jim Knodle on trumpet, Brian Kent on tenor sax, Reuben Radding on bass & Jack Gold on drums. Seems (to me) to be a lot of "talk/response" play between Knodle & Kent, with heavy bass & drum as a framework for the horns to talk & dance against. The recording is superb, capturing ev'ry little moment/note. Some listeners will be put off by the length of the pieces, but they wouldn't be th' kinda' listeners who understand this kind of free-play anyway. Some beautifully strange sounds on the second cut, "I Don't Need This" (frogs kissing?), but th' winner for me was track 4, "Heat", which also features guitar by Roger Fisher... Fisher truly understands how to integrate his guitar into the freeform landscape, not "stealing" anything from any of the other players. This is a VERY solid free jazz album... a "must listen" for players who want to go out in their explorations, as well as for listeners who don't want to hear "just th' same riffs"... this gets a MOST HIGHLY RECOMMENDED from us, as well as the "PICK" of this issue for "best recorded improv". Contact at info@soldisk.com , or purchase on the site at http://www.soldisk.com/ |
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