The Lone Bellow’s “Morning” muse

When the Lone Bellow put together its second full-length, the group sent photographer Mackenzie Rollins down to Georgia to capture an image for the album’s cover. Though based in Brooklyn, the Lone Bellow’s frontman Zach Williams and vocalist Brian Elmquist, having grown up in Acworth and Sandersville, respectively, wanted Rollins to capture that little visual piece of home.

For four days, Rollins visited the popular Louise’s Restaurant, a stone’s throw from Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park. Though known for the dead fish on the walls, the smell of burned bacon, and staff who Williams says “do not give a crap,” Rollins found inspiration in one of the frequent customers, an elderly dolled-up woman who always sat in the same spot, sipping coffee, seemingly without a care in the world. It’s a simple visual, though one that speaks volumes to the tone and themes of the Lone Bellow’s latest album Then Came the Morning (Descendant Records).

“After a while, you can’t just rely on seeing beautiful things to find something good in your reality,” says Williams, who along with Elmquist and singer/mandolin whiz Kanene Pipkin formed the Lone Bellow. “It’s got to come from somewhere else. I think this record is trying celebrate that fight.”

Two years ago, the Lone Bellow released its self-titled debut album, thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign (as Zach Williams and the Bellow), and a little help from their musically inclined neighbors in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood. The Lone Bellow was met with critical acclaim, and thanks to singles such as the country/folk “Green Eyes and a Heart of Gold,” and the fireside-feeling “Two Sides of Lonely,” the trio was hailed as Americana darlings, and drew comparisons to Mumford and Sons, and the Lumineers. In what the Wall Street Journal referred to as “the first great album of the year,” Then Came the Morning, produced by the National’s Aaron Dessner, finds the group treading the lines of what is and isn’t country, folk, rock, blues, and every subgenre in between. A neighbor, Dessner encouraged the band to record the album at New York’s Dreamland Studios, an old church, where the audio bleed and natural acoustics found their way into the group’s recording process. Well, that and what Williams refers to as elements of Las Vegas Elvis Presley and Harvest Moon Neil Young.

Having written 40 songs inspired by personal, fan, and family stories, Then Came the Morning’s final 13-cut track list feels like a conversation with old friends about everything from forgiveness in light of heartbreak (“Marietta”) to one’s willingness to carry on (“Then Came the Morning”).

What makes it all work, even more so than the critically hailed debut album, is the perfect harmony between the voices of Williams, Elmquist, and Pipkin, and it’s something they say comes with the everyday grind of being together on the road, and taking their different life perspectives to form one cohesive vocalization. “You can’t have a good time singing with someone over and over again, every night singing the same songs, if you’re harboring something or you don’t know how to fight fair; you don’t know how to take care of each other,” Williams says. “I think that since we’ve been in a van for the past two years we’ve really had the opportunity to love each other well, and try to be aware of the things going on around us.”