[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC Studios in Soho. Thank you so much for spending part of your day with us. I'm really grateful you're here. On today's show, pianist and composer Robin Spielberg performs live in studio. We'll also speak to artist Alvaro Barrington. He's here to discuss his new exhibition at Nicola Vassell's Gallery, which is in Chelsea. It's a beautiful show and Mike Birbiglia's one-man show. The Old Man in the Pool is now a Netflix special. We will check out a conversation I had with him when the show was first on Broadway. That's the plan, so let's get this started with The Lone Bellow.

[MUSIC - The Lone Bellow: Green Eyes and a Heart of Gold]

Alison Stewart: That track titled Green Eyes and a Heart of Gold kicked off the 2013 self-titled debut album of a newly formed trio that started out in Brooklyn. It's a song about being broke in New York City, and it helped catapult the band, The Lone Bellow, to success. Now, Zach Williams, Brian Elmquist, and Kanene Pipkin are revisiting that debut album with a tour that includes three nights of performances here in the city at Rockwood Music Hall to help celebrate the record's 10th anniversary. Since 2013, the band has been on the road with Maren Morris and Kacey Musgraves, collaborating with Brandi Carlile and Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors.

In the past, they worked with producer Aaron Dessner, but last year they went on the self-production route with a record called Love Songs for Losers. The Lone Bellow will be performing tonight, tomorrow night, and Friday night, and first, they're going to perform for us here live in the WYC Studios. So nice to have you all.

?Brian Elmquist: Hello.

Alison Stewart: Hello. Introduce yourselves before you pop a song for us.

Brian Elmquist: I'm Brian Elmquist.

Zach Williams: I'm Zach.

Kanene Pipkin: I'm Kanene.

Alison Stewart: All right, so we're going to kick things off with a song called Honey. Why was the way you wanted to start the album, Love Songs for Losers, with Honey?

Zach Williams: Oh, man. The lyrics of Honey, I came home from a tour and I'd been gone for a long time and I called my wife honey and she was like, "Not yet. [laughter] I'm sorry. You're going to have to be here a little longer than an hour."

Alison Stewart: I like your wife.

Zach Williams: Yes, she's a spicy meatball. I think that there's just something about, like the lyrics are like, "I never call you honey unless I'm feeling lonely." She knows that when I call her honey, it's out of a place of desperation. I think that that led to us naming the record Love Songs for Losers because we were trying to just shed some light on that side of relationships, on the more awkward hard-to-be-around part of being in love.

Alison Stewart: All right, I love all that backstory. This is going to make the song even better. Here's Lone Bellow with Honey.

[MUSIC - The Lone Bellow: Honey]

Alison Stewart: That's the Lone Bellow performing Honey from the album Love Songs for Losers. My guests are Zach Williams, Brian Elmquist, and Kanene Pipkin. Zach, that title, Love Songs for Losers, for a title for an album, I feel like there's a story. There's got to be a story.

Zach Williams: There's a story. You're going to have to edit it.

Alison Stewart: Oh, no.

[laughter]

Zach Williams: No, I'm joking. We found Roy Orbison's old house next to Johnny Cash's burned-down house down in Nashville and we asked the owner if we could make it a studio again and he said yes. I think that making it there may have found its way into that. I don't know, we were thinking about calling it some really boring record title, and then Kanene and I were joking around in the studio and I was like, "Let's just call it Love Songs." I had been listening to a lot of Michael Bolton.

Alison Stewart: As one does.

[laughter]

Zach Williams: Right? I just went through my Michael Bolton season later in life than I expected and Kanene--

Kanene Pipkin: It's and evergreen baby. That's a lifelong thing.

Zach Williams: Then Kanene wrote down "four losers" like three hours later on the same sheet of paper and it just sat on the floor in the studio the entire time we were making the record and I think it just made its way into our little hearts.

Alison Stewart: I love it. What made you just go over there, Kanene, and scribble "four losers" under "love song"?

Kanene Pipkin: I'm just a mean person. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: Your mean streak showed.

Kanene Pipkin: That's mean Kanene right there. No, I don't know. You could call it the fine line between boredom and genius. We wakeboard that.

Brian Elmquist: Oh, wow.

Kanene Pipkin: We wakeboard that on the daily.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Because we're looking back because this is an anniversary tour. I hope you don't mind, I'm going to go back a little, put you in the way back machine. Brian, what were you doing in your life? Where were you in your life? What was going on with you before The Lone Bellow?

Kanene Pipkin: The Dark Ages.

Brian Elmquist: The Stone Age.

Kanene Pipkin: Getting doored by [unintelligible 00:09:33].

Zach Williams: It was a crazy time in New York. It's like 13 maybe years ago. Like 2000, I moved to 2006. The first couple of years I bartended and helped the Italian guy open a couple of restaurants and I was like, "Maybe this is going to be what I do" because I really enjoyed that too, like the beauty of creating a space for people to sit and have dialogue and all that. I was here to do music too. Around 29, I was like, "I got to take this seriously," so I got a diner job at Dizzy's Diners in Brooklyn, rest in peace. It's so sad, I'm still good friends with the owner. Love him, Mateo. Shout out. [chuckles] Basically, I would go to work at 5:00, take a disco nap and go mess with these guys at night.

That's about around the time we all sang for the first time together at Rockwood where we were at the night. We thought it was really awesome. We have it on video. My girlfriend at the time put it on YouTube and we went back and looked at it and it really is not great.

Alison Stewart: It is great.

Brian Elmquist: What we lacked in doing it really great, we had all the enthusiasm, so it definitely was exciting. That was an exciting time in New York and we had a whole scene around Rockwood. It was a great time to be alive for us. That's how it came about my side of things.

Alison Stewart: Kanene, what were you doing right before Lone Bellow started?

Kanene Pipkin: Ooh. I have been living in Beijing just as one does, I guess. I moved there right after I graduated from school and worked as a voice recorder for a university textbook press. "Welcome to Sino-American Language 1," that kind of thing. Then I wanted to go to pastry chef school. Eventually, I wanted to go back to China and try to open a bakery, something like that. I went to the French Culinary Institute on Broadway and Grand, right around the corner. While that was happening, I had met Zach a couple of years before. He and my brother were college buddies and we sang together at his wedding. When I was home from China for that, he messaged me on MySpace.

He was like, "Hey, do you want to be in my band?" I was like, "Well, I live in Asia," and he was like, "If you ever move to New York, let's do it." 2010 I moved to Brooklyn from Beijing and that's when everything started. Yes, I was working at the Brooklyn Farmacy & Soda Fountain.

Alison Stewart: Oh, really?

Kanene Pipkin: I used to bike by Brian at like 5:30 in the morning and we would just wave to each other in solidarity, like, "One day we won't have to get up this early."

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Do you still make pastries?

Kanene Pipkin: I do, man.

Brian Elmquist: Oh my goodness, she does [crosstalk].

Kanene Pipkin: Thanksgiving is like my personal Super Bowl. I just ball out for a few days.

Zach Williams: She's going to be making pastries--

Alison Stewart: Come on up.

Zach Williams: She's going to be making pastries in a couple of days with Christina Tosi-

Alison Stewart: Oh, yes.

Zach Williams: -from Milk Bar-

Alison Stewart: Oh, wow.

Zach Williams: There's going to be cameras and stuff.

Alison Stewart: Wow.

Kanene Pipkin: I didn't know that was going to be filmed.

Brian Elmquist: Oh, yes.

Kanene Pipkin: Oh, man. Eye of the tiger.

Brian Elmquist: You're awesome.

Kanene Pipkin: Yes, I still bake when I get the chance.

Alison Stewart: I like the idea of a companion cookbook sometime with an album. Music to bake by?

Zach Williams: Yes, music to bake by.

Kanene Pipkin: Music to bake by. Oh, you're good.

Alison Stewart: [chuckles] Just things I want.

Zach Williams: She's good.

Kanene Pipkin: She's good.

Brian Elmquist: She's really good.

Alison Stewart: We're talking to The Lone Bellow. My guests are Zach Wilson, Brian Elmquist, and Kanene Pipin. Pipkin, sorry, Kanene. Zach, for those who don't know, you're a part of the story. You turned to music after your wife had a really horrible accident. I'm sorry to bring it up. How did music help you through that period?

Zach Williams: It's funny you mention that. I actually just visited the hospital that saved her life last week for the first time in a really, really long time. Yes, my wife, she fell off a horse on my family's little farm down in Georgia and she broke her neck. She broke C1, C3, C5, and C6 and was diagnosed quadriplegic and we never thought that she was going to move again. She was in a HALO and they did emergency surgery at Atlanta Medical, and then this hospital. I still don't know how they found us, called the Sheppard Center. Found us and they were like, "If you're okay with taking the HALO off and letting us help you, we think that we can help."

We went there and we lived there for a while and they had guest quarters and that's where I first started writing my first songs and it came out of a place of just cathartic. Also, there was an open mic at a Starbucks across the street, so I would go and just cry my eyes out at 5:00 PM at Starbucks. Thankfully it was in the fall, so everybody had their pumpkin spice lattes.

Alison Stewart: There was a date.

Zach Williams: Me and my buds were like, "If Stacey ever gets better miraculously, let's all move to New York City." They were all like they wanted to be writing plays and stand-up and just thespians, basically waiters, everyone. She did and we all moved up and I started playing. My first show was at the 169 Bar in 2005, and then I played on Bleecker Street and all that. Just did the whole thing for several years, and it was a beautiful time to be alive in New York City.

Alison Stewart: Wow, that's a journey. I mean that not in an ironic way, that's a real journey for you and your family. Wow. I was scrolling around Twix, Twitter, X, whatever, Twix, and there's this great tweet you had, "The first two shows of our 10th-year anniversary tour were an absolute blast. We had no idea how much fun it would be to revisit these songs we love so well." Kanene, what's a song that you have a new appreciation for now that you've been playing it again?

Kanene Pipkin: Oh, man. I really think You Never Need Nobody is just probably one of my favorite songs we've ever worked out together. We went through a season where we played it every show, and then we went through a season where we retired it for a little while. I think bringing it back out, just the way people sing that bridge live, there's such camaraderie and you can really feel how cathartic it is for everyone and I love singing that song live for people.

Alison Stewart: Would you sing it for us now?

Zach Williams: Yes.

Kanene Pipkin: Oh, I forgot we were doing it.

Zach Williams: Yes.

Kanene Pipkin: We're going to do it?

Zach Williams: Dude, I was like pro move.

[laughter]

Brian Elmquist: Pro.

Zach Williams: Genius.

Alison Stewart: My life.

Zach Williams: It's so funny, the bridge to this song accidentally has a part where it says loudest scream in the crowd. I was referring to something else, but for the past 10 years, people have taken that as me asking them to scream and it's really fun during a live show.

Alison Stewart: Should I do it?

Kanene Pipkin: Yes, scream.

Zach Williams: Yes.

Alison Stewart: All right.

Zach Williams: It's great.

Kanene Pipkin: Please do.

Zach Williams: It's way better when just one person screams.

Alison Stewart: I'm in.

[laughter]

Zach Williams: All right, here we go.

Kanene Pipkin: That's what it was originally about, just one lonely man screaming.

Zach Williams: Yes. Ready?

[Music - Lone Bellow: You Never Need Nobody]

Alison Stewart: [screams]

Zach Williams: You can do it. Yes.

[Music - Lone Bellow: You Never Need Nobody]

Alison Stewart: That the Lone Bellow performing in studio, You Never Need Nobody. Lone Bellow are playing tonight, tomorrow, and Friday at Rockwood Music Hall. We're fortunate to have them in studio, playing a couple of songs, having a conversation, have a little chat. Hearing those harmonies, oh, they just sound so good. They just sound right. When you're writing, Brian, I'll ask you to start, when you're writing, do you keep in mind the harmonies or is that something that gets layered on later?

Brian Elmquist: I think if we're writing for us, yes. I'm trying to find a course. I think us at our best is a course that the crowd and us carry together. It was always weird to write such sad lyrics sometimes, but we were seeing it as a three-piece, and then it ended up being like a handshake with our audience too, and that's a very cool thing. That's what I'm looking for in the course is at least, and then other than that. You try to make the best song for sure, but when it matches, when it happens, it's gold.

Alison Stewart: This new album, y'all decided to self-produce, what went into the decision to just strike out on your own?

Zach Williams: We have had the honor of working with some wonderful producers from Dave Cobb and Aaron Dessner, Charlie Peacock. They were all great. I think that it was just Brian really brought up the challenge. It was just time for us to do something on our own because when you work with a great producer, they will end up putting their sound on whatever work you're doing. We had never had the opportunity of just that not being a part of it. Yes, Brian produced this thing and it was really fun.

Alison Stewart: What did you learn about being a producer Brian, that you didn't know before?

Brian Elmquist: It's particularly fun when you're in a band and friends with the thing you're trying to produce. It's a separate situation, but it's really fun because everybody has a say. You realize the work is everybody having their say through. It's not the plane. All that stuff is easy. We can put mics on it, but the actual, the finished product, and everybody's got our heart and soul into it, that's how it really is magic. Just figuring the best way to get to the end of that process. I love it. We did, we've turned Orbison's old house into a studio.

We just got back from Muscle Shoals and crazy there too. It's a really fun practice of just us being able to make music faster and not have to wait for people, honestly, because we're a lot more creative than one album every two years.

Alison Stewart: Kanene, what's something on the album that you know is there because you all produced it? You know it made it to the record because of that.

Kanene Pipkin: Oh, you look you have a--

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Kanene Pipkin: I do?

Brian Elmquist: I'm sure.

Kanene Pipkin: I don't know, I just looked at you.

Zach Williams: I know the answer.

Alison Stewart: All right, come on now.

Kanene Pipkin: You know the answer? Yes, you say the answer.

Zach Williams: I think it was the first time that you had time to do vocals like you wanted to,-

Kanene Pipkin: Oh, yes.

Zach Williams: -and you really led the brigade.

Kanene Pipkin: It's funny, I think because harmonies come pretty naturally to us, sometimes they can be the last thing we do, and it's like, "Okay, let's do that." I was just, "Please let me produce the vocals." At least get the performances that I know that they're capable of because that's really the advantage of singing with people every day, every night for over a decade. I'm like, "I feel like I've heard what you can do and I want to make sure it's captured here." Brian sings the song on the record Dreaming that I think is one of the most beautiful vocal takes I've ever heard. It's like, "Yes, this is Brian's wonderful voice and now everybody gets to hear it." One take.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] Oh, no. One take Jake?

Kanene Pipkin: No auto.

Brian Elmquist: [unintelligible 00:26:29] was.

Alison Stewart: Oh, wow.

Brian Elmquist: That was on SM7 like freaking Michael Jackson, bro.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: You mentioned Roy Orbison's house a couple of times. I heard a rumor and tell me if I'm wrong because you know the internet, that you thought it was haunted, it might be haunted.

Zach Williams: There is no question about it.

Alison Stewart: Oh, yes?

Zach Williams: Yes, which will be crazy.

Alison Stewart: Why do you say that?

[laughter]

Zach Williams: Yes, Brian got a little visit in the middle of the night that he wasn't expecting. He had to stay there by himself for a week or so. It's a 7500-square-foot house that only has two bedrooms, and the two bedrooms are, I don't know, 250 square feet apiece. Everything else is these gigantic party rooms, so it's like really creepy at night. Can I tell you a funny New York story, though?

Alison Stewart: I love the New York story. Sure. We're WNYC, don't worry.

Zach Williams: You know Rockwood Musical Hall is such a special part of the city.

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Zach Williams: Stage two opened, I believe in 2008, and I had the honor of cracking that thing open. I was the first person ever to sing on that stage. These next three shows that we're playing at Rockwood Stage Two are the last three shows that will ever be played.

Alison Stewart: Is that true?

Zach Williams: On Stage Two.

Alison Stewart: I've heard stories.

Zach Williams: Yes. I'm really excited for Kin. I'm excited about it being stage one only. I think he's going to curate some really special moments for the city in there, but I am just so excited about this. They're all sold out. It's not like I'm marketing the show. It's just a fun moment.

Alison Stewart: It sounds like you are somebody who believes in the universe a little bit.

Zach Williams: Sure.

Alison Stewart: Having a play, having a hand in the way things go.

Zach Williams: Yes. I don't know who's in charge or what their name is, but yes.

Alison Stewart: My guests are Lone Bellow. [laughter] We're going to finish up. It's so interesting, our next guest is on the line, and it's like, "I'm really enjoying this" because we're like, "Oh, should we do a third song?" He's like, "Yes, do a third song." He's artist Alvaro Barrington. He'd love to hear another song.

Zach Williams: Thanks, man.

Brian Elmquist: Nice.

Kanene Pipkin: It's really nice to hear.

Brian Elmquist: I love it.

Alison Stewart: Anything else you want to tell me before we hear the last song?

Zach Williams: Just edit that last part out.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: It's live, man. Public radios.

Zach Williams: No, I'm joking.

Alison Stewart: It's the best.

Zach Williams: No, I don't have anything else to say.

Alison Stewart: All right. What's the song we're going to hear?

Zach Williams: This is a song called Count on Me.

[MUSIC - The Lone Bellow: Count On Me]

 

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