The Lone Bellow

Playing what they call "Brooklyn country music," the Lone Bellow (lead singer and songwriter Zach Williams, singer and mandolin player Kanene Doheney Pipkin, and singer/guitarist Brian Elmquist) are a group of transplanted Southerners who deliver a passionate, soulful, acoustic-based alternative rock Americana. The band began after Williams' wife was involved in a serious accident that left her temporarily paralyzed from the neck down. While hoping and waiting for her recovery (she did recover), Williams began writing a set of haunting songs that dealt with tragedy, hope, and redemption. Following her recovery, the couple moved to Brooklyn. In 2010, Williams, who had been working as a solo act, began jamming with Elmquist, an old friend, and when Pipkin joined in, the trio knew it had a band. Building on Williams' songs, and now working and writing together, they built up an impressive early catalog of songs. Initially the band was known as Zach Williams & the Lone Bellow, but by the time the group's accomplished and powerful self-titled debut album from Descendant Records appeared early in 2013, Williams had dropped his name from the billing, and the band had grown to include Ben Mars on bass, Brian Murphy on keyboards, Matt Knapp on lap steel and electric guitar, Jason Pipkin on banjo and mandolin, and Brian Griffin on drums. The band leaked tracks of a new album late in the year to NPR and Stereogum. The subsequent follow-up album, Then Came the Morning, was produced by the National's Aaron Dessner and Peter Katis and released in late January of 2015.