Then Came the Morning, the second album by the Southern-born, Brooklyn-based indie-folk trio the Lone Bellow, opens with a crest of churchly piano, a patter of drums, and a fanfare of voices harmonizing like a sunrise. It’s a powerful introduction, enormous and overwhelming, as Zach Williams, Brian Elmquist, and Kanene Pipkin testify mightily to life’s great struggles and joys, heralding the morning that dispels the dark night: “Then came the morning! It was bright, like the light that you kept from your smile!” Working with producer Aaron Dessner of the National, the Lone Bellow has created a sound that mixes folk sincerity, gospel fervor, even heavy metal thunder, but the heart of the band is harmony: three voices united in a lone bellow.
"The feeling I get singing with Zach and Brian is completely natural and wholly electrifying,” says Kanene. “Our voices feel like they were made to sing together."
Long before they combined their voices, the three members of the Lone Bellow were singing on their own. Brian had been writing and recording as a solo artist for more than a decade, with three albums under his own name. Kanene and her husband Jason were living in Beijing, China, hosting open mic nights, playing at local clubs and teaching music lessons. Zach began writing songs in the wake of a family tragedy: After his wife was thrown from a horse, he spent days in the hospital at her bedside, bracing for the worst news. The journal he kept during this period would eventually become his first batch of songs as a solo artist. Happily, his wife made a full recovery.
When Kanene’s brother asked her and Zach to sing “O Happy Day” together at his wedding, they discovered their voices fit together beautifully, but starting a band together seemed impossible when they lived on opposite sides of the world. Brian soon relocated to New York and Kanene moved there to attend culinary school a couple years later. The three got together in their new hometown to work on a few songs of Zach’s, he’d been chipping away at the scene as a solo artist for awhile by then. After hitting those first harmonies did they decide to abandon all other pursuits. Soon the trio was playing all over the city, although they considered Rockwood Music Hall on the Lower East Side to be their home. They opened for the Civil Wars, Dwight Yokam, Brandi Carlile and the Avett Brothers, and their self-titled debut, produced by Nashville’s Charlie Peacock (the Civil Wars, Holly Williams) and released in January 2013, established them as one of the boldest new acts in the Americana movement.
After two hard years of constant touring, the band was exhausted but excited. By 2014, they had written nearly 40 songs on the road and were eager to get them down on tape. After putting together a list of dream producers, they reached out to their first choice, the National guitarist Aaron Dessner, who has helmed albums by the L.A. indie-rock group Local Natives and New York singer-songwriter Sharon Van Etten.
“It occurred to me that it would be fun to get together and make music with them,” says Aaron. “My main interest in producing records is community and friendship more than making money. I already do a lot of traveling and working with the National, so when I have to time to work with other artists, it should be fun and meaningful.”
“Aaron is just so kind,” Zach says. “And he has surrounded himself with all these incredibly talented people, like Jonathan Low, the engineer. His brother Bryce [Dessner, also a guitarist for the National] wrote these amazing brass and string arrangements, and he got some of his friends to play with us.”
Dessner and the Lone Bellow 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. (For Kanene, Dreamland had one other bonus: “I’m a big Muppets fan, and it looks exactly like the church where Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem lived.”)
Aaron set them up in a circle in what had once been the sanctuary, with microphones hanging in the rafters to capture the sound of their voices bleeding together. Most of the vocals were recorded in single takes, a tactic that adds urgency to songs like “Heaven Don’t Call Me Home” and “If You Don’t Love Me.” “There were a couple of times when somebody sang the wrong word or hit a bad note, and we just had to keep going,” says Zach, who says that recording “Marietta” in particular was daunting—especially the moment near the end when he hits an anguished high note, bends it even higher, and holds it for an impossibly long time. It’s a startling display of vocal range, but it’s also almost unbearably raw in its emotional honesty.
“‘Marietta’ is probably the darkest song on the whole record,” Zach explains, “and it’s based on something that happened between my wife and me. The band was getting ready to record that song when all of a sudden my wife showed up with our youngest baby. It was a great surprise, a beautiful moment. So I was able to go out and sing that song, knowing she was there to help me carry the moment.”
“These are true stories,” says Brian. “These aren’t things we made up. We tried to write some songs that had nothing to do with our personal stories, but we just didn’t respond to them. But we’re best buds, so we know each others’ personal stuff and trust each other to figure out what needs to be said and how to say it.” Case in point: Brian wrote “Call to War” about his own struggles during his twenties, but gave the song to Kanene to sing. “The content is painful and brutal,” she says, “but the imagery, the vocals, they build something delicate and ethereal. That kind of contrast illuminates the true beauty and power of a song.”
Says Brian, “We do this one thing together, and we carry each other. Hopefully that makes the listener want to be a part of it. It becomes a communal thing, which means that there’s never a sad song to sing. It’s more a celebration of the light and the dark.”
-Descendant Records
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Call to War
The Lone Bellow Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
You've bared your tears from starry stone
The stage is set so we can fly
But suns will set and hearts are wild
'Til the southern wind puts me 6 feet down
My feet won't rest 'til my love is found
Like pennies down a wishing well?
Wish another day would come
When I would watch 'em far from home
'Til the southern wind puts me 6 feet down
My feet will march on holy ground
Our laborin' may end in pain
While we walk the fields of the same
When called to war from trumpets tall
Love will see the army's fall
When called to war from trumpets tall
Love will see the army's fall
The Lone Bellow's song Call to War is a beautiful yet melancholic ode to love and the sacrifices that come with it, particularly in times of war. The opening lines, "Tables prepared in streets of gold, You've bared your tears from starry stone" sets the tone for the song as an image of grandeur and heartbreak. The reference to tables prepared in streets of gold might imply that these are times of excess, perhaps during the Renaissance or the Baroque period, where even the poorest may have been able to taste some luxury, yet it is also a reference to heaven, a place where, according to the Bible, the tables are made of gold. The next line, "You've bared your tears from starry stone," could be interpreted in a few ways, but I believe it refers to weeping for loved ones who are no longer here, represented by the stars which symbolize eternal life, as well as unrequited love, represented by the coldness of starry and hard stone.
The chorus, "'Til the southern wind puts me 6 feet down, My feet won't rest 'til my love is found," is a poetic but powerful expression of the commitment the singer has to finding love. The southern wind is another symbol, perhaps of death or fate, and the six feet down is a reference to burial depth. It's as though the singer is saying they will continue their search for love even after they're dead. The second verse mentions mountains that fell like "pennies down a wishing well," which could be an allusion to the destruction of something valuable, perhaps a dream or a relationship. Nevertheless, the singer wishes for another day to come where they can observe the mountains in a different light, far from home. The final verse describes the call to war, which could be both literal and metaphorical, but the central message of the song is that love will always triumph over conflict and war, and that when everything else falls, love will endure.
Line by Line Meaning
Tables prepared in streets of gold
A beautiful and prosperous world has been created
You've bared your tears from starry stone
You've shared your deepest emotions in the most vulnerable of ways
The stage is set so we can fly
Opportunities have been presented to us that can help us soar and achieve great things
But suns will set and hearts are wild
Even though we have the chance to make something great, we must remember that life is unpredictable and humans are unpredictable creatures
'Til the southern wind puts me 6 feet down
Until the day I die
My feet won't rest 'til my love is found
I will continue to search for true love until I die
Remember when the mountains fell
Recall the times of great upheaval and change
Like pennies down a wishing well?
Did you ever think those events were just insignificant and meaningless?
Wish another day would come
Desire for time to move forward and for new opportunities to arise
When I would watch 'em far from home
I hope to have the chance to observe and be a part of significant events while away from my home
'Til the southern wind puts me 6 feet down
Until the day I die
My feet will march on holy ground
I will remain determined to live a righteous life until I die
Our laborin' may end in pain
The work we put in may not guarantee happiness and can be hard
While we walk the fields of the same
We all work towards the same goal, even if our paths are different
When called to war from trumpets tall
When we are faced with great challenges and must be brave
Love will see the army's fall
We can overcome these obstacles with the power of love and compassion
When called to war from trumpets tall
When we are faced with great challenges and must be brave
Love will see the army's fall
We can overcome these obstacles with the power of love and compassion
Lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.
Written by: Brian Christopher Elmquist, Kanene Donehey Pipkin, Zachary Ray Williams
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind