"For example, “Fake Roses” takes the form of a letter from Williams’s mother-in-law to her sister. Williams explains, “They have pretty similar lives. And the letter basically says, ‘Your heart is breaking, I hear what it’s saying. You don’t have to tell me anything.’ And I was like, ‘Well where can we go with that?’ "

One night at South by Southwest, the Lone Bellow played to a packed backyard crowd at the Newport Folk Festival showcase, a crowd that obliviously sipped cans of Lone Star in Blackheart’s beer garden while the relatively unknown Lone Bellow set up and tuned. When the band’s first three-part harmony soared over its sturdy wall of acoustic sound, heads instantly rotated toward the rundown lean-to that had been converted into a stage.

The band captivated the crowd for the duration of its set, even cultivating a group sing-along to the anthem “Carried Away”. The experience of being in that crowd felt akin to attending an evangelist revival meeting: everyone was a convert by the end.

Hey Guys,
 
The past 12 months have been a beautiful collision of writing, touring, and collaborating.  We've had the great honor of making our new record with producer Aaron Dessner, engineer Jon Low, and mixer Peter Katis.  
 
After several months of work, we finally released our new record titled "Then Came The Morning" just a couple days ago. The response has been absolutely overwhelming.  Thank you for all of your encouragement and help with spreading the word!  We don't want this time of celebration to slip by without acknowledging everything that has gone into the present.  You all have been an incredible support for us.  Because of listeners like you, we truly felt the freedom to make the album we wanted to make: an album that might be hard to put into a genre, an album whose songs and sonics came from pure imagination and freedom.  You are a major part of that being able to happen.

"Then Came The Morning" is available on iTunes and Amazon, as well as at Target, Barnes and Noble, and local record shops all over.  The MP3 version is nice, but we would like to encourage you to get the physical copy.  

We collaborated with our good friend and photographer Mackenzie Rollins to help us capture the vibe of the physical copy.  

Mackenzie flew down to the Deep South with one thing in mind--to help capture the visual aesthetic of what we've been referring to as "Southern Gothic" in our record.  This term floated around quite a bit during the recording process.  Many of the songs from the album come from stories of our own family members and heroes from our roots.  Mackenzie went to the homes of the actual people that some of the songs were written about.  She has a specific way of documenting moments and a strong discipline of listening.  She rented a car and drove all around the physical places where the distant memories of our roots still live: Lafayette and White, Georgia; Dixie Speedway, Old Car USA, and Louise's Diner in Marietta.  She would spend hours just sitting and waiting for a conversation to come to her.  For instance, the front cover of our album is the product of spending several mornings in a row at Louise's Diner. The beautiful soul in the picture is a woman she met who spends each morning eating breakfast there.  

We intentionally sought Mackenzie out because we wanted to pay our respects to the quiet, beautiful, soul-stirring, mundane stories of our roots.  Those pictures only live inside the physical copies of our album.  

Thank you for telling your friends and family about our new record.  We are honored that you listen to our music and can't wait to see how you make these songs your own.

Peace.
Zach, Kanene, and Brian
The Lone Bellow