Then Came The Morning is The Lone Bellow’s title track off of their new album that is due to be released at the beginning of 2015. The follow-up album from their self-titled 2013 debut, which is produced by The National’s Aaron Dessner, exhibits that they have not lost their “sleekly soaring charm”.
Zach Williams, the lead singer and principal songwriter, first came to songwriting during a terrible tragedy. While William’s was still living down south, his wife was devastatingly injured in a horseback riding accident, which led physicians believing that she would leave the hospital a paraplegic. Miraculously doctors at the Shepard Center in Atlanta thought otherwise and soon enough, after months of rehab, she regained the ability to walk. Throughout this catastrophe, Williams had been writing down all his thoughts into a journal and his good friend, Caleb Clardy, suggested that he turn his writings into songs. Williams expressed, “I started reading my friends these journal entries. I was writing in a kind of rhyming form because it helped to keep my mind focused. Caleb said, these are songs, man, you need to learn how to play the guitar and sing at the same time.”
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Williams and his wife decided to pack up and head to New York City to pursue their creative paths. Several of their friends followed and they created a tightly kit community in Brooklyn, where Williams started as a solo artist backed by a hired band. Following a soul-searching trip he’d taken with his wife, a pile of deeply personal songs arose. These are the songs that Williams took with him to Dizzy’s Diner in Park Slope, Brooklyn where his old friend, the Lone Bellow’s guitarist Brian Elmquist, was working. Williams had asked fellow singer Kanene Pipkin to the diner and the trio performed. It was there that Williams realized that he should quit what he was doing and “just make music with these people”. That morning was the beginning of what became the Lone Bellow.
Take a listen to the title track from their new album, which Williams points to a very different inspiration of Vegas-era Elvis.