NO DEPRESSION SESSIONS at Milk Bar: The Lone Bellow

At Milk Bar’s NYC flagship bakery at 29th and Broadway, The Lone Bellow joined us for a No Depression Session and a bunch of cookies. The band followed the ND Session and the cookies with a delightful in-store pop-up show for a few dozen fans who knew about it, plus a few dozen delightfully surprised customers. Opening the session, The Lone Bellow Played “Honeysuckle” from their new album What A Time To Be Alive, leaning into their luscious vocal harmonies that have been winning hearts for the last 15 years.

No strangers to playing near dessert, lead singer Zach Williams told us, “one of the places that we first got started, and we would practice at, [was] the Brooklyn Farmacy and Soda Fountain where Kanene worked, she would be serving ice cream while she was singing.” Now bandmember-Kanene had moved to New York to go to pastry school, attending the French Culinary Institute, the same program as Milk Bar founder Christina Tosi.

Lone Bellow followed with the next song on What A Time To Be Alive, a cover of “Islands in the Stream,” written by The Bee Gees and made famous by Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers. For decades, I thought the melody came from R&B singer Mýa after hearing “Ghetto Supastar (That Is What You Are)” by Pras w/ Ol’ Dirty Bastard & Mýa on the Bulworth soundtrack, back when that song was drifting out of every car stereo in the summer of 1998. Turns out it didn’t. The Lone Bellow’s interpretation blew my mind.

Setlist:
“Honeysuckle”
“Islands in the Stream”

Personnel:
Zach Williams
Kanene Donehey Pipkin
Brian Elmquist