Lone Bellow’s Georgia roots send songs soaring

“I do really, really enjoy connecting with an audience,” the former Georgian said by phone, “and I consider it an honor to try to create some sort of night or some sort of moment that is kind of a contract between the two of us that, maybe if we work together, we can create something that is worthwhile and beautiful. But it takes both sides.

“It can’t be just the band and it can’t be just the audience. I really appreciate that sort of handshake and the honor of what I’ve had to do for the past little while for work.”

Where does that stage persona come from?

“Wow. I haven’t thought about that,” said Williams, whose family still lives on a horse farm on the border of Cobb and Cherokee counties. “I grew up in a conservative family. And the pastor of the church I grew up in was very excited about life, and he was a very kind man, but he did have a certain way about him when he was preaching. So I wonder if that has something to do with it. And I am very proud of my family’s ability to tell stories. My father, grandfather and grandmother are great storytellers.”

Williams is a pretty fair storyteller himself. The band's self-titled album, which catapulted it in the past year to high-profile performances — from TV's "Conan" and the Newport Folk Festival to a busy touring schedule — is filled with stories of betrayal and hope, of being young and in love, broke and brokenhearted.

Those musical talents came to light the hard way in 2004, during a tough month spent at Atlanta’s Shepherd Center, beginning when a horse that Stacy, his wife of a year, had been riding trotted back to the family home riderless. Williams and a friend found her lying in tall grass, her neck broken. First prognosis: She would be quadriplegic.

“I had a couple of friends (including Pipkin’s brother) that stayed with me in the hospital, sitting in the waiting room, telling me stories, trying to make me laugh,” Williams said.

“I was going through stages of grief and shock, all like, anger, and one of the stages is, you kind of go numb and don’t feel anything. They were worried about me and they asked me to read my journal entries to them. So I did. And I would write in rhyme. I don’t know why. And they encouraged me like, ‘Man you should learn how to play guitar and sing at the same time. Just go try to make these into songs and sing for strangers. It might be a cathartic thing for you.’”

Williams, who had never sung publicly, did exactly that, walking from the hospital to the Starbucks on Peachtree Street near the Fox Theatre for open mic nights.

Then, one of those hospital days between his classes on caring for a quadriplegic, Stacy was telling him about a dream when she twitched a finger. It was the opening movement to her long, slow healing. Her spinal cord had not been severed, as originally thought, but was badly bruised. Feeling crept back into her body.

Unless you knew the story, you would never know she spent a month paralyzed, Williams said.

Williams, Stacy and some of the friends who participated in that second lease on life made a pact to move to New York and chase their dreams.

He turned those experiences and some admittedly tough years in his young marriage into songs both sad and joyous, and he brought those to the table in 2010 when he, Pipkin and Elmquist sang together for the first time in a New York diner.

Pipkin had sung in choirs. Elmquist, Williams’ long-time friend and a former all-state high school football player from Sandersville, had sung in a barbershop quartet and later had a go at Nashville. Trying out one of his songs, their three-part harmony melded into the sound that has come to define the Lone Bellow, Williams said.

During concerts, Pipkin and Elmquist play guitar and mandolin, sharing and amplifying Williams’ energy, their voices soaring until their faces sometimes flush.

Though the band members worked for years separately, success came quickly, once together. In two years, they went from day jobs as music director of a small church (Williams), pastry chef (Pipkin) and waiter (Elmquist), to National Public Radio's Tiny Desk Concert, playing South by Southwest, touring with Dwight Yoakam and a highly praised album. Their second album, "Then Came the Morning," is due out Jan. 27.

Their show Saturday won’t be their first concert in Atlanta; they’ve played local venues from Eddie’s Attic to last summer’s Shakey Knees Festival. But coming home is always nice, Williams said.

“We are really excited about coming to Atlanta and playing, and I can’t believe I just got done doing an interview with the AJC,” he said, “My father is going to freak out.”