Brooklyn born trio The Lone Bellow consists of friends Zach Williams, Brian Elmquist and Kanene Pipkin. They met about a decade ago and have produced five albums together, expanding their sound from stripped down country-folk harmonies to something a little different.
The Lone Bellow swung by NHPR's Studio D amid an extensive tour promoting their latest album, "Love Songs for Losers."
Transcript
Rick Ganley: You've been on the road all summer. What's it like rolling through day after day, gig after gig? Does it feel like, you know, rinse and repeat or...?
Zach Williams: No, I don't know. I mean, singing is the best part of our day. I think we're like always just kind of waiting for it all day long. You're just traveling. Then you finally get to sing, and then sing with your buds. It’s fun.
Ganley: Just waiting for those two hours on stage.
Kanene Pipkin: Yeah, I don't know. My favorite part of the day is watching Brian pick his gas station snacks. Oh, that's my favorite.
Ganley: Okay. Let's talk road food real quick.
Brian Elmquist: I'm a hunter gatherer. Gathering gummies.
Pipkin: Hunting for combos.
Elmquist: And a little Diet Coke and fellowship.
Ganley: Your past work [is] firmly rooted in that Americana label. [It has] kind of a roots feel to it. This record feels like it might be a turning point. Is it?
Pipkin: I think because the record starts with "Honey," and it starts with that really strong synth pad, it feels like maybe more of a statement, a purposeful statement.
So [Roy Orbison's] house itself is just like just strange. It's kind of like the Frank Lloyd Wrong of the South.Zach Williams
I mean, we just love the song, but I think it's definitely a turn in us knowing that the sounds and the sonics and the vibe are inextricable from the song itself. I think when when Brian and Jacob kind of found that sound for "Honey," it it just lit up all the sensors in our brains. We were like, that is that is "Honey" —that sound.
Elmquist: I think as a band you're always trying to perfect your sound and it should be evolving. For me it was a natural step from our last record. Totally natural— just us trying to push the sound farther.
Ganley: The album title: "Love Song for Losers." Everything okay?
Williams: Yeah, it is a it's a kind of in case you feel the same kind of title, you know?
Pipkin: Yeah, it's self-referential.
Williams: Yeah. You know, we made the record in Roy Orbison's old house, and I think that just that, like, "crying," like, I don't know— it was like there was a spirit in there, and it made its way into the songs and to the music.
Ganley: It sounds like an obvious nod to Roy Orbison. I mean, you know, that to me is a Roy Orbison line.
What's it like recording in an atmosphere like that? What does a studio like that do for the atmosphere of a record?
Williams: So, it was interesting because, for instance, there's this bathroom that definitely wasn't a bathroom at one time. It was a sound booth. It was like a vocal booth, but now it's a bathroom, and it has three too many chairs in it, by the way.
Elmquist: And one too many toilets.
Williams: And yeah, there's two toilets.
Pipkin: And two phones! Like landlines.
Elmquist: So there was some...there was some business happening in there.
Pipkin: Yeah. Some real power moves happening.
Williams: You're fired!
Um, it was just such an insane house. I mean, you know, this guy, Braxton Dixon, that built all these houses for all these old country stars—he would go and collect all of this material on road trips, and then he'd build these, like, mansions out of them. And a lot of them burned down because they're like little matchboxes. And I think that he did all the electrical himself. Um, but yeah, so the house itself is just like just strange. It's kind of like the Frank Lloyd Wrong of the South.
Elmquist: Turning that old house like that into a studio automatically puts you at a disadvantage, which is great.
So you have to embrace that. This is not a drum booth. So what do you want to do? Because we had like really fancy engineer in the beginning there and he's like fancy works with like Sara Bareilles and stuff like that, and everything's so clean and was like, 'This is the most you're going to be able to get these drums away from other sounds. '
Ganley: You can't isolate.
Pipkin: Yeah, you can't control the sound.
Ganley: There's no floating floors, or double pane glass.
Elmquist: I love that though because all that stuff makes it into the record. It makes it yours. You hear some creaks there and you're like, 'don't get rid of that!'
Like, these are the things, at least if we're going to still make records, that make me want to make records, you know?
Ganley: Well, Zach Kanin and Brian, thank you for coming in. It's beautiful music and the alchemy between you three. It's..it's real.
