The Whistles & The Bells stopped by the LC Studio to talk about their upcoming show for Nashville Sunday Night at 3rd and Lindsley, and to perform two of their songs; “Shadow of Death” and “Last Night God Sang Me A Song”.
Click here to listen to full interview with The Whistles and the Bells
The Whistles and the Bells Bio
All I know is this: the trumpet sounds in the distance and I must stumble towards its plaintive, soprano song. How long has it been blowing without my responding? I do not know. The exodus from my last musical boxing match left my ears dull from thrown stones and plugged with tossed flowers. But, now, their weathering and wilting has given way to resurrection and I hear the beckoning serenade. So, I’m waking my musical legs up from their slumber.
Who knows what my tingling, aching, somewhat atrophied appendages will find as I fight thru the charlie horse of comfortable mattresses and familiar perfume. Penicillin, teflon, LSD, popsicles,…America….were all accidental discoveries. Some more great than others (popsicles>America)….Its all very uncertain. But yet I, forge on in what is either a fool’s march or a faithful pilgrimage across this invisible, swinging bridge. Why follow the brass bellowing? When risk seems to be its one reward? One sacred certainty arms my soul. One sacred certainty continues to push back the whispers of the ever-advancing, ever-retreating army of uncertainties. The unyielding truth that the whistles and the bells is not my identity- even for all the evidence stacked up against my claim in the way of banjos and mandolins and southern fried british electric guitar sound waves dancing with left-footed, knee-buckled lyrics that were the tattered silk soundtrack that scored my awkward youth. Their audible conglomeration points its fingers at me but I am an allusive target to myself. So is it a piece of the pie? yes, but not the pie. I can’t imagine the whole of the pie myself so how can I feed it to you?
And so it will not be my wrecking ball. I intend it to be a wrecking ball. But my buildings’ foundation is indestructible. It is other-wordly. Supernatural. And that certainty leads to fearlessness. And so the whistles and the bells is the chubby child plunging himself into the deep waters of the rec center pool because he knows his father’s rescue is his undeserved reward should his dog paddle prove ineffective.
That said, my heart has its ear to the train track of yours hoping you will “get it”. “Like it” be damned- it’s too cheap a concern. “Get it” is the mistress with more integrity- so I will rest my bar there. If you don’t get it, and let it be noted, I would love for you to…but if you don’t- so be it. I don’t know if I do. Simply, approached the canvass and painted. Simple, though, is my mind’s greatest complexity. So it’s a little more Pollock’s “drip paintings” than Picasso’s “blue period” but maybe, ultimately, more Wile E. Coyote’s “fake tunnel” renderings. We’ll see.
But as the ever-merciful Great Blacksmith’s hammer continues to strike and shape my eggshell skull I am learning that music is not the gateway drug to everything I hate about me that I once thought- I’m the monster I hunt. But my shadow will not scare me back in a hole again. Grace has given strength to my steps. Grace will have to perpetually inhabit my sails if I am to see the harbor of this ships journey. Or…maybe the success of this voyage rest in my pending surrender to this, very much at hand, bathing ocean’s treacherous beauty and not the safety of its harbor. I submit to the sea. And the metaphor. Let the humbling journey begin.
