Courtesy of The Opera Bell Band
Friends who attempt to describe the Opera Bell Band have an enjoyable time doing so, spending no small amount of words trying to nail down what the band’s exactly about. As for the group itself… well, they have a little bit of fun doing the same.
Three members of the group (Shane Devine, vocals and guitar; Kristina DeYong, vocals, slide whistle, kazoo, washboard; and Jess Adkins, accordion, sax) had a good time trying to nail it all down. Here’s how a round of descriptions went, when the trio was asked what they tell unknowing folks about their group:
Devine: "One description that works is new novelty."
Adkins: "I like cartoon folk."
Devine: "But 'folk' doesn’t exactly get it…"
DeYong: "There’s experimental jug band. Or cartoon country."
Devine: "So far, I still like new novelty. Somehow, it’s both broad and specific. And a lot of the songs are novelty songs."
DeYong: "Our friend said one that I liked. 'It’s not children’s music, but it’s music that makes you feel like a kid again.'”
Adkins: "Maybe we’re outside genres."
Maybe so. But the band (rounded out by Jake Everett on bass and guitar; Grant Martin on trumpet and jug; and live performances by a rotating-cast emcee known as Butternut the Pilot) is releasing an album of this playful sound, with a combination album release and shrimp boil at Off Broadway on Saturday, June 15, beginning at noon. The album, Bell Slide, will be hitting digital and store releases between now and then.
Whereas their sound’s description is freewheeling, the band’s official description of their album is precise: “Recorded live on analog tape by Kevin Buckley (Grace Basement) and mastered by Brad Sarno, the album exhibits the band’s acoustic strengths and their influences from Cajun, country, pop, Latin, and traditional folk music. Organic sound effects (horns, whistles, animal calls, chains, etc.) and a self-invented instrument (called a ‘birdbath’) provide an impressive and unexpected soundscape. Two songs include Ryan Koenig (Pokey Lafarge, Rum Drum Ramblers) playing bones and slide guitar, which compliments the many instruments such as xylophone, banjo, trumpet, flute, and accordion, played by the band throughout the tracks.”
As a group, the Opera Bell Band hopes to play around with video regularly, and their first offering for Bell Slide is a labor-intensive production called “Green Lemon Buggy.” The stop-motion animation was put together by Devine and Adkins in the latter’s apartment. It debuts here today, a compilation of more than 2,000 individual shots, executed with an old-/new-school combination of colored construction paper and an iPad. The process called for dozens of hours of work for the primary shooters, with occasional marathon sessions that stretched as long as eight hours.
“Once we got into it, it was hard to stop,” Adkins admits. “I was having stop-motion dreams.”
The song “Green Lemon Buggy” does a good job of introducing the band’s overall aesthetics, which includes a yellow-clad lineup that switches instruments not just between songs, but during them.
While the group’s gone through some lineup changes, Devine says, “We’ve lost some people and the sound has changed a little bit. But I personally felt as if the record was meant to stand alone, it wasn’t meant to reflect the live act. We recorded it live as a band, but as a live act there’s more attention to the theatrics of the show, the performative aspects to it. There’s a lot on the album that we wouldn’t be able to replicate live.”
Here's the web premiere of "Green Lemon Buggy" by the Opera Bell Band:
