Lone Bellow’s Zach Williams comes home for solo show

Two years ago, Georgia-born Williams, the lead singer for the Lone Bellow, a hungry band on the rise, was earnest and energetic, chatting with me from his cellphone as he walked the streets of Manhattan.

Now, Williams, who moved to Nashville’s Inglewood neighborhood in January along with band members Brian Elmquist and Kanene Pipkin, talked about having more time with his wife and four kids — thanks to the move and a less intense touring schedule.

“When I lived in Brooklyn, I think I made, like, one soccer game. Now, I am the coach,” he said with a touch of disbelief.

But, he said, he doubts he’ll be asked back.

“Turns out, I don’t know how to play the game.”

Despite squashing his career aspirations as a coach, the move left him more time to get back to the love of music that first brought the band members together — rehearsals in backyards rather than during microphone checks, time for songwriting and getting reacquainted with the bandmates he proudly professes to love.

The Lone Bellow is about to start work on its third album this fall under a new manager and with the help of another Georgian, Dave Cobb.

Cobb has won two Grammys working with alt-country-rocker Chris Stapleton, whose jam with Justin Timberlake stole the Grammy Awards show this year, and producing albums for Jason Isbell, another artist who works the same musical vein.

Williams is coming home this week to Georgia to play the Wildwood Revival in Athens Friday, with the band. Then he'll drive over Saturday for a solo show at Eddie's Attic in Decatur.

He is using Eddie’s to test and pare down songs for a new solo album he hopes to begin working on in the winter while Cobb is working on the band’s album. There is no bad portent for the band in his solo work, Williams said. He has about 65 new songs.

“I played a solo gig at the Rockwood Music Hall (New York) a month ago. And I basically am just trying to figure out which songs I want to do solo and which I want to do with the Lone Bellow, and what it feels like when a song is sung in a room instead of just doing the big band with the big sound. I just want to bring it back to, can a lyric and melody hold up with just an acoustic guitar?

“I am just testing the waters, and Atlanta has always been a kind place for stuff like that.”

While in town, he plans to see his parents, who live in Woodstock, near where Williams grew up, then will head up I-75 to spend time with his wife, Stacy, and her family in Lafayette before heading back to Nashville, which is quickly feeling like home.

Still, he said he misses Brooklyn and the tightknit friends who had moved there with them after college.

“I love the community we had, but, touring from there … I was just gone so often while my kids were growing up. I think we needed to make that community sacrifice so our family unit could be together more.”