J + The Bishops burst back to life with late unexpected buzz


Finding success in music is all about capturing the moment.

You can prepare, you can write great songs, and you can work endlessly on tightening your band and your stage presence. Still, ultimately you’re just hoping to find the right moment that connects you to audiences and propels you forward with all the buzz and energy that any artist craves.

But what happens when that moment unexpectedly comes way later, long after you’ve hung up the project and moved on?

Well, OKC-based funk/R&B/rock outfit J + The Bishops will let you know.

A quintet formed of some of the city’s finest musical talent, J is longtime singer/songwriter Jose Hernandez and The Bishops originally comprised Kendrik McKinney, Ryan Magnani, Alex Coleman, and Alberto Roubert, all major local players, with Coleman and Roubert coming from the once-primed-to-explode Horse Thief.

Shortly following some early singles and some strong buzz around their launch in 2019, J + The Bishops just kind of vanished, crashing like so many best-laid plans into the brick wall that was 2020.

Post-pandemic, all the members re-emerged, breaking out all over the music scene with new projects and associations, but never quite touching or speaking on the promise of what J + The Bishops seemed set to become.

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J + The Bishops (photo by Daniel Mudliar)

But then, of all the platforms, TikTok came to the rescue.

Early this year, music influencer and playlister Fuegostine just so happened to stumble across the J + The Bishops song “Tell Me You Want Me” and blasted it to his more than one million TikTok followers.

It’s a Motown/Stax-style soul jam with the kind of horns, crooning, and staccato lead guitar and bass runs sure to scratch anyone’s itch for pitch-perfect throwback R&B.

The plug blew up the group overnight, finally bringing all that sweet, long-awaited buzz.

“One day back in February, I got a ping on my phone,” Hernandez told me. “Suddenly we had like 58,000 plays on this one song.”

The only problem, of course, was that J + The Bishops hadn’t existed for more than four years.

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J + The Bishops (photo by Daniel Mudliar)

Coming out of the pandemic, the members had all drifted apart and established themselves in different roles across the state’s music scene.

McKinney is probably the city’s most active and sought-after jazz pianist and bandleader, Coleman jumped into Johnny Manchild’s Poor Bastards and co-launched Coat to local acclaim, Magnani joined Jason Scott and The High Heat on their way to countrywide buzz, and Roubert became a member of national breakouts Husbands.

Hernandez himself has been exploring electronics and synth textures in his own personal brand of 80s-inspired indie-soul as Challo, already dropping some of 2024’s best singles.

But with tens of thousands of listeners now discovering their old dormant project, some of their plans are changing.

“We had all these songs that we recorded back in 2019 that we just never got around to releasing,” Hernandez said. “So now we can start dropping those while people are paying attention and then Kendrik and I will be kind of bringing J + The Bishops back.”

Magnani, Roubert, and Coleman are all understandably pretty swamped and committed to their various national tours and new bands, but with their blessings, Hernandez said that he and McKinney are ready to jump back into the fray with some new Bishops to see where this wave might carry them.

“The very next thing is dropping this new single ‘Voodoo,’” Hernandez said. “It’s another track that we recorded back in 2019 and it’s different, it doesn’t have the horns and all that from ‘Tell Me You Want Me,’ but I’m really proud of it and it was the last song we recorded together with that original band, so it’ll be so great to finally release it.”

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Jose Hernandez of J + The Bishops (photo by Britt Phillips)

The track is set to drop on May 17th, followed by a whole new era for J + The Bishops as Hernandez hangs up his Challo persona (at least for the time being) and redoubles his efforts toward the project.

But even though the group was unexpectedly handed the eyes and ears of thousands, Hernandez doesn’t want to fall back on crowd pleasing or playing it safe by trying to recapture the same sound he was playing with five years ago.

“I don’t want to take this opportunity for granted,” he said. “But I also don’t just want to do the same stuff with the same sound as ‘Tell Me You Want Me.’ It’s so cool that people love that track and respond to it, but it’s not really where I am anymore. So while we have all these people’s attention, I want to be able to give them something new that we’re really proud of.”

He and McKinney are already thinking about their return to the stage and ideas for new songs and new directions, maybe reconceived from Challo, maybe infused with more of McKinney’s wild jazz, and maybe pulling from places that no one, including them, even expects yet.

But you can be sure it’ll have that same Prince-like swagger and Motown soul that’s seemed ingrained into Hernandez’s songwriting since the very beginning.

“Kendrik and I have sat around sometimes over the past few years just talking about what a shame it was that J + The Bishops never continued,” Hernandez told me. “So it just feels so good to be given this second chance.”


“Voodoo” by J + The Bishops drops on streaming services everywhere on Friday, May 17th.

You can check out all of their other tracks on streamers and by visiting jandthebishops.com.

Follow them online at facebook.com/jandthebishops and @jandthebishops on Instagram.


Author Profile

Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.