Southern-born, Brooklyn-based, indie-folk trio The Lone Bellow has created a sound that mixes folk sincerity, gospel fervor, and heavy metal thunder, but at its heart, they are about harmony-three voices united in a lone bellow. Zach Williams (guitar/lead vocals), Brian Elmquist (guitar/vocals), and Kanene Pipkin (mandolin, bass, vocals) are touring in support of their second release, Then Came the Morning (2015), that testifies to life's great struggles and joys, heralding the morning that dispels the dark night.
CAPA presents The Lone Bellow at the Lincoln Theatre (769 E. Long St.) on Tuesday, October 27, at 8 pm. Tickets are $21.50-$26.50 at the CAPA Ticket Center (39 E. State St.), all Ticketmaster outlets, and www.ticketmaster.com. To purchase tickets by phone, please call (614) 469-0939 or (800) 745-3000.
Long before they combined voices, the three members of The Lone Bellow were singing on their own. Elmquist had been writing and recording as a solo artist for more than a decade, with three albums under his own name. Pipkin and her husband were living in Beijing, hosting open mic nights, playing at local clubs, and teaching music lessons. Williams began writing songs at his wife's hospital bedside after she was thrown from a horse. Happily, his wife made a full recovery, and the journal he kept during this period eventually became his first batch of songs as a solo artist.
When Pipkin's brother asked her and Williams to sing "O Happy Day" together at his wedding, they discovered their voices fit together beautifully, but they lived on opposite sides of the world. Elmquist soon relocated to New York, and Pipkin moved there a couple of years later to attend culinary school. The three got together to work on a few of Williams' solo songs, but after hitting those first harmonies, they decided to abandon all other pursuits.
Soon, the trio was playing all over the city, opening for the Civil Wars, Dwight Yokam, Brandi Carlile, and the Avett Brothers. In 2013, they released their self-titled debut album that established them as one of the boldest new acts in the Americana movement.
After two years of constant touring, they had written nearly 40 songs on the road and were eager to get them down on tape. The trio spent two weeks recording at Dreamland in upstate New York, a nineteenth-century church that had been converted into a homey studio. The singers found the space to inspire the emotional gravity necessary for the material and the acoustics they were looking for.Videos