SCIVIC RIVERS
Scivic Rivers is the musical nom de plume of American singer-songwriter Randy Bickford.
Bickford's songs have earned him wide recognition from fellow lifer musicians and critics alike. Pitchfork described his writing as "tracing a single thought or sketching a single image throughout the course of several bars, building suspense and making you wait patiently for the pay-off".
In 2020, for about six months I was doing a lot of driving back and forth between Danville, where I grew up, and Durham. My father had been diagnosed with lung cancer and was declining rapidly before everyone’s eyes. It got me thinking about my reckless college years, driving home and back to school to see friends, so much more frequently than I ever would again once I was gainfully employed and living on my own. But with my mother living in Reidsville, I had now few ties to Danville left, and the drive would soon turn into something else, at least for a while, permanently.
Three weeks after my dad passed, my friend Neil also left this world. Neil grew up with me, and we both mainlined from our fathers a sort of Lee Marvin strain of masculinity that functioned like a forever chemical in our systems, even if we were clearly always going to be sensitive young art freaks. I thought: Neil might have gotten a higher dose than me.
Some years went by, and the little dust storms these events stirred up in my mind found their way into new songs. It took time to digest. I think it’s a fairly common phenomenon, finding new points of view revealed after the death of a parent or close friend. Some space opens up and light shines in.
I started collaborating on recordings with producer and multi-instrumentalist John Pfiffner. He played guitar all over my last record. John is a spiritual son of Sly Stone. He knows how to harness the angst I tend to sand down. Along with our steady crew, Jimmy Thompson, Charles Cleaver, and Daniel Faust, we amassed a little stockpile of songs, fragments, alternate versions in various stages of deconstruction. Music always takes a long time for me.
At some point I realized that the spine of a record was already complete, and seemed to tell a story as one musical piece. I decided to put it out as “Side A”, if you like, rather than let it wait around for Side B to be completed. I guess it’s an EP but that format tends not to be an intentional choice. Luckily, to paraphrase Reverend Lovejoy, it is 2026, and no one cares.
So here is 20 minutes of music that form a loose narrative, Side A of the story, with Side B soon to follow. Mark Fisher and David Sylvian gave me the permission to feel I’ve earned the otherwise rather prosaic title. When you’re working within such a rich matryoshka doll of images and references, it feels good to speak plainly.
--BRB, April 2026
Bickford's songs have earned him wide recognition from fellow lifer musicians and critics alike. Pitchfork described his writing as "tracing a single thought or sketching a single image throughout the course of several bars, building suspense and making you wait patiently for the pay-off".
In 2020, for about six months I was doing a lot of driving back and forth between Danville, where I grew up, and Durham. My father had been diagnosed with lung cancer and was declining rapidly before everyone’s eyes. It got me thinking about my reckless college years, driving home and back to school to see friends, so much more frequently than I ever would again once I was gainfully employed and living on my own. But with my mother living in Reidsville, I had now few ties to Danville left, and the drive would soon turn into something else, at least for a while, permanently.
Three weeks after my dad passed, my friend Neil also left this world. Neil grew up with me, and we both mainlined from our fathers a sort of Lee Marvin strain of masculinity that functioned like a forever chemical in our systems, even if we were clearly always going to be sensitive young art freaks. I thought: Neil might have gotten a higher dose than me.
Some years went by, and the little dust storms these events stirred up in my mind found their way into new songs. It took time to digest. I think it’s a fairly common phenomenon, finding new points of view revealed after the death of a parent or close friend. Some space opens up and light shines in.
I started collaborating on recordings with producer and multi-instrumentalist John Pfiffner. He played guitar all over my last record. John is a spiritual son of Sly Stone. He knows how to harness the angst I tend to sand down. Along with our steady crew, Jimmy Thompson, Charles Cleaver, and Daniel Faust, we amassed a little stockpile of songs, fragments, alternate versions in various stages of deconstruction. Music always takes a long time for me.
At some point I realized that the spine of a record was already complete, and seemed to tell a story as one musical piece. I decided to put it out as “Side A”, if you like, rather than let it wait around for Side B to be completed. I guess it’s an EP but that format tends not to be an intentional choice. Luckily, to paraphrase Reverend Lovejoy, it is 2026, and no one cares.
So here is 20 minutes of music that form a loose narrative, Side A of the story, with Side B soon to follow. Mark Fisher and David Sylvian gave me the permission to feel I’ve earned the otherwise rather prosaic title. When you’re working within such a rich matryoshka doll of images and references, it feels good to speak plainly.
--BRB, April 2026