On Oct. 23, The Lone Bellow — a Nashville-based rock and roots trio composed of guitarist and vocalist Zach Williams, multi-instrumentalist Brian Elmquist and guitarist Kanene Donehey Pipkin — performed on campus.
The trio offered a homely presentation to a packed audience in Rollins Chapel, which has served as Dartmouth’s spiritual center since 1885. Stripped of musical and technological accessories and equipped with only one microphone, the band performed their setlist — including “Honey” and a cover of John Prine's “Angel from Montgomery” — as an acoustic arrangement, similar to their album “The Restless.” The performance, true-to-form for The Lone Bellow, was characterized by harmonic runs, guitar riffs and banjo accents.
During the performance, Elmquist, Williams and Pipkin stepped up to the microphone and split the audience members into a two-part harmony, directing them when to sing. Elmquist explained that the band believes in the importance of community effort in creating and sharing music.
“We’re just trying to find the best songs for people to sing along to,” he said. “That’s the most important thing to us. We don’t want to be a spectator sport. We’d rather be a community.”
Isaac Lawrence ’27 said the audience participation was his favorite part of the show.
“The most powerful moments were when we could all join in,” Lawrence said. “I’d never experienced that before.”
Daniel Lampert ’25, who attended the show, said the band’s style was “different” from what he expected.
“Only having one vocal mic[rophone] and moving around on stage to dictate whose voice comes through the most was pretty unique,” Lampert said. “It was nice to not have such a boundary of microphones separating the artists from the audience.”
Elmquist explained that The Lone Bellow’s sound is rooted in the spirit of their hometown in Georgia.
“Zach [Williams] was writing these songs, and they were reminding us a lot of what we came from — small-town Georgia,” Elmquist said. “It’s crazy because we were in New York playing basically country music, singer-songwriter type music.”
Audience member Maisie Pike ’26, who is from Georgia, said she resonated with the “familiarity” of the band’s sound.
“It reminded me of other artists that I’ve listened to growing up like The Avett Brothers or Alison Krauss and John Prine,” Pike said. “Hearing [The Lone Bellow] in Rollins Chapel when they first started with the guitars — it was beautiful, and there were only three of them. [There was] such a powerful three-part harmony that they carried throughout the whole show.”
Lampert also said he admired the band’s harmonies.
“Their three-part harmonies are really what brings the heat for their songs,” he said. “They have only three players, and they are all singing with these really strong voices that are each really distinguishable, yet they flow together so well.”
According to Elmquist, the trio’s harmony not only shapes their songs but also invites the audience into a “shared experience.”
“The sound of The Lone Bellow starts from us trying to tell peoples’ stories, and then it is opened to our fans to start singing it with us,” Elmquist said. “When we sing together, it’s kind of like that voice in the wilderness. It all comes together like one voice.”
According to Pike, Rollins Chapel’s architecture lent itself to the performance’s “unique” acoustics.
“The sound was different because it wasn’t three people over three different mic[rophone]s trying to blend over a speaker,” Pike said. “The sound was collecting at the top of the room, and that was the amplifier, less the microphone.”
Elmquist said he valued the venue’s intimate acoustics, which enhanced the trio’s performance.
“It’s fun to come to a chapel like that with one mic[rophone] and just, you know, sing our songs,” Elmquist said. “It works so well in that setting. You really don’t need a mic[rophone] in that complex.”
The ambiance of Rollins was “comforting,” performance attendee Lawrence added. The chapel provided a “reflective” space “separate from distractions,” he explained.
“At that moment, I was in a space where I could be a viewer of phenomenal music, where I was able to appreciate the performance and not focus on the other things going on in my life,” he said.
Pike said she also “felt at peace” while listening to The Lone Bellow’s chapel performance.
“I wasn’t thinking of anything but the music they were playing and singing,” she said. “It truly allowed me to let go and relax.”
