Bill and The Belles Archives

Happy Again – Bill & The Belles

Sometimes titles can be misleading, or even a misnomer. That’s clearly the case with Bill & The Belles’ deceptively titled sophomore set, Happy Again. At first, the discrepancy isn’t very obvious other than the fact that it’s in parenthesis; the group’s giddy saunter and retro ragtime — similar in style to an old-time string band with banjo, fiddle, and some perky piano playing — is generally conveyed with what appears to be an irreverent attitude.

The sway and swoon of the campy and contrived Make It Look Easy, the nonsensical nursery rhyme imbued in The Corn Shuckin’ Song, and the fiddling finesse of Taking Back My Yesterday add to the impression that this quintet is an upbeat bunch. So too, the folksy faux weeping on Sobbin’ the Blues (think Alice Guthrie reciting Alice’s Restaurant), and faux yodeling heard on Blue So Blues, also add a mix of kitsch and catchiness.

Still, there’s a dark demeanor present at the heart of these songs which seem to suggest that the happiness they strive for is well beyond reach. Leader Kris Truelsen wrote these songs in the aftermath of his divorce, and for all the confidence and clarity that seems to shine on the surface, depression and disappointment are predominant themes.

“I need to be happy, I used to be gay, the sun used to shine down upon me each day,” Truelsen laments on the title track, before continuing, “…now I am lonesome, and lost in a daze, cuz she’s gone, she’s gone away.”

There’s no shortage of songs that echo those sentiments. “I’m indifferent, I don’t care,” he insists on the deceptively simple Make It Look Easy, while Sobbin’ the Blues, Blue So Blue, and People Gonna Talk add to a litany of sad circumstance. While a song such as Bye Bye Bill — a fanciful tale of a man’s drinking date with a whale (!?) — provides a rare carefree caress, but it’s an exception rather than a rule as far as the overall theme is concerned. Indeed, Happy Again revolves around contradiction. Delightfully giddy on the surface, it’s an album mired in sorrowful circumstance, and as a result, that despair can’t be dismissed.

Happily, there’s at least some mirth in the music that prevents Happy Again from belying its title entirely, and producer Teddy Thompson is careful to ensure that’s evident. “Get up and give it one more try,” the group urges on the song of the same name. They then end the set with the otherwise optimistic Good Friends Are Hard To Find, a genuine ode to friendship and fidelity. The lesson offered is this — life may not be easy, but it’s worth any price in perseverance.

Aidan VanSuetendael to Bill and the Belles

Bill and the Belles have announced their newest member, Aidan VanSuetendael, who joins the band on banjo.

The east Tennessee-based group plays an interesting mix of old time, bluegrass, and swing, primarily focused on the sounds of American music in the period prior to WWII. They have come to prominence in the past few years both for their clever stage show, and for serving as hosts of the revived Farm and Fun Time radio/television show aired on Radio Bristol.

Farm and Fun Time had been a popular and long-running radio show on WCYB in Bristol in the early days of bluegrass music, which combined the morning farm reports and weather with live bluegrass and old time music. The show featured regular performances by seminal groups like The Stanley Brothers, Flatt & Scruggs, and Jim & Jesse who would appear daily for months at a time. When the new Birthplace of Country Music Museum opened in Bristol back in 2014, they brought the show back to life, complete with old time radio-style live commercials, in a variety show type environment. It airs on the second Thursday of each month before a live audience, and is rebroadcast on multiple PBS affiliate stations across the southern US.

Kris Truelsen, guitarist and vocalist with Bill and the Belles, shared the band’s welcome to their new member.

“We are thrilled to introduce this wonderful new addition to the band, and can’t wait to feature her three finger and clawhammer banjo playing! Aidan grew up in South Florida where she first cultivated her interest in traditional American music. That interest deepened during her time at Denison University in Ohio, and carried her to Nashville where she currently resides. We are so happy to welcome her to the Bill and the Belles family, and can’t wait for you to meet her!”

Truelsen also mentioned that they will be releasing a new album soon. In addition to Kris on guitar and Aidan on banjo, Bill and the Belles are Kalia Yeagle on fiddle, and Andrew Small on bass.

The September edition of Farm and Fun Time will be VanSuetendael’s first show with the group, which will be filmed sans audience this month, on September 10 at 7:00 p.m. The show is live-streamed via Radio Bristol. Guests include The Po’ Ramblin’ Boys and 49 Winchester. You can watch the video livestream on the Radio Bristol Facebook page.

More information about Bill and the Belles can be found online.

Bluegrass Jamboree final concert – full video

When the final concert of the 2018 Bluegrass Jamboree tour took place in Berlin back on December 4, the promoters had a multi-camera video crew on hand to capture the action. And the final edit has been released for everyone to watch online.

Each year the Jamboree brings three North American bluegrass, old time, or Americana acts to Germany at the end of the year. US and Canadian artists love to make the trip, as organizer Rainer Zellner always treats the performers well, and allows plenty of time for sightseeing and sampling the delights of Bavarian cuisine.

Zellner shoots the video for promotional use in future Jamboree tours, which run for several weeks, typically starting just after Thanksgiving.

In the video, you can watch full sets from The Brother Brothers, Bill and The Belles, and Jeff Scroggins & Colorado, plus the big finale at the close of the show. It runs for nearly two and a half hours, so get comfortable before you click play.

Rainer tells us that he is working now on a two-CD set called Bluegrass Jamboree – The First 10 Years, which will include audio selections from the first decade’s worth of shows. More details to come on that.

Information is now posted online for the 2019 Jamboree series, featuring Chicken Wire Empire, The Price Sisters, and Hoot & Holler. Shows are booked across Germany from November 22 through December 15.

That’ll Be Just Fine video from Bill and The Belles

Bill and The Belles are back with a new single and video, demonstrating their unique modern mastery of the pre-bluegrass string band sound. It’s part vaudeville, part string swing, and always all acoustic.

Under the direction of guitarist/vocalist Kris Truelsen, the group specializes in the sort of tight vocal harmonies that were popular during the big band era. But with newly-composed songs, the music has a freshness and vitality that has won fans in the bluegrass, old time, and acoustic country communities.

As the house band for the revived and reformatted Farm and Fun Time on Radio Bristol, Bill and The Belles are reaching an audience all over the world.

This new video is for That’ll Be Just Fine, written by Truelsen, a song that tells the familiar tale off being ready to move on to a new chapter in life. Kris is accompanied by Kalia Yagle on fiddle and vocal harmony, and Helena Hunt on banjo and vocals, with Andrew Small on bass, Jon Atkinson on drums, and Andrew Fletcher on piano.

We see them in the studio at Big Tone Records cutting the track live, in direct-to-tape analog, just as the great artists of the 1940s and ’50s would have done.

You can learn more about the group online.

Smile, It’s Christmas from Bill and The Belles

Don’t get them wrong, Bill and the Belles love the holidays. They live for gatherings of family and friends, snow days, sparkles and cheer, as evidenced by their fourth year hosting the Johnson City Jingle Bell Jamboree (a holiday roots music review), and their annual holiday music videos that come out each December.

But this year’s video is different: Smile, It’s Christmas reminds us that the holidays ain’t just eggnog and mistletoe. Sometimes the world loudly expects joy and cheer when you just don’t have any to give. Written by Kris Truelsen, Smile, It’s Christmas delivers downbeat material in an upbeat way, with the ironic wit of Roger Miller and a vocal arrangement nodding toward Phil Spector-level lushness. Fans of Bill and the Belles know the band’s knack for making simple, refreshing music videos, and Smile, It’s Christmas definitely delivers: against a peppermint backdrop, the trio toys with contrasts, giving viewers a little bitter with their sweet.

The video also marks the debut of banjo player and singer Helena Hunt in the band. From Waynesville, North Carolina, Hunt grew up steeped in traditional music and went through the region’s Junior Appalachian Musicians program. Currently attending East Tennessee State University studying Biology and Old Time music, Helena is a wonderful vocalist, a force on the banjo and banjo ukulele, and a total delight to watch and hear.

Learn more about Bill and the Belles online.

Tristan Scroggins reports from Bluegrass Jamboree

Jeff Scroggins & Colorado playing in a barn turned venue from the middle ages
in Ravensburg in a picture captured by Kalia Yeagle

This report from the ongoing Bluegrass Jamboree tour is a contribution from Tristan Scroggins, mandolinist with Jeff Scroggins & Colorado, one of the three US bands entertaining German audiences during the 2018 tour.

Greetings from Berlin!

We’ve been in Germany for two weeks now as part of the Bluegrass Jamboree package tour and tonight we’re playing our twelfth show in a row. This is the Jamboree’s 10th annual tour and has alumni including Michael Cleveland, Town Mountain, Della Mae, and Gabe Hirschfield. Each night, three bands perform in a different town. First up are the Brother Brothers, a brother duet with bluegrass roots featuring striking harmonies and powerful original songs, followed by Bill & The Belles, an old time country group with new, original material, and my band, Jeff Scroggins & Colorado, a traditional bluegrass band with a highly personal take on tradition.

We all get up at the end of the night and our joined by the tour’s producer, Rainer Zellner, a good mandolin player himself, for a few final numbers together. Rainer, along with his wife, Ille, keep things running from their station at the front of the “Banjo Bus” which drives us all over the country.

So far we’ve played mostly in the South and West in venues big and small but always for excited and engaged audiences. One of our favorites was our show in Schlitz (where the beer came from before Americans changed the recipe). We played at a hall in a music school in a beautiful town full of colorful exposed-beam buildings. During our time off we followed the cobblestone roads up to the castle at the top of town, where one of the towers had been completely covered with red cloth and adorned with a decorative flame to make it the tallest Christmas candle in Germany.

This rivaled the tallest Christmas tree in Germany which we saw at the Christmas market in Dortmund on our first night. The Christmas markets are ubiquitous wherever we go. These outdoor markets offer many homemade goods and regional foods sold out of small booths. We’ve consumed a lot of bread, sausage, and hot mulled wine. My favorite was the market in Ulm which was situated underneath the tower of the largest cathedral in the world. Many others enjoyed last night’s market in Dresden. It’s proximity to the Czech Republic brought in more unique crafts and foods such as Trdelník, a bread covered in cinnamon and sugar, wrapped around a wooden dowel, and slow baked rotisserie-style over coals.

Our show in Dresden was interesting as well. We played in Dreikönigskirche, a church that was destroyed during the bombing of Dresden towards the end of WWII. Nearly 80 percent of the city was destroyed, but the baroque altar remained intact, and a new church was built around it. The giant, beautiful hall made the Brother Brothers’ harmonies even more ethereal than usual. When they sing its like they are sharing one set of vocal chords. And while their harmonies are reminiscent of the Delmore Brothers, the Louvin Brothers, or even Simon and Garfunkel, their music, which is mostly original, feels both very familiar and yet very modern, often commenting on social issues of the day. Though they usually travel with other instruments, twin brothers David and Adam Moss are stripped down to only guitar, fiddle, and voice, delivering a powerfully raw but cosmically in-sync show each night.

Similarly, Bill and the Belles have been delivering performances that sound amazingly like live recordings from and old radio show. Kris Truelsen, host and head conspirator behind the revival of the Farm and Fun Time radio show in Bristol, VA, has managed to write songs and even jingles that are relevant today, but seem like they easily could have been written 60 years ago. Their bouncy rhythms and airy harmonies transport you through both time and space, while the driving fiddle and banjo of Kalia Yeagle and Grace Van’t Hof glue audiences to the edges of their seats. Andrew Small joins them on bass providing a solid foundation, humor, and occasionally twin old-time fiddle.

Since I play with Jeff Scroggins & Colorado, I’m not sure how to say how good it sounds without tooting my own horn, but I do think that it sounds like good bluegrass, as always. We’re playing a lot of material from our new CD coming out in January, and my Dad is still trying to get used to the Grundy banjo he just picked up during his tour in Australia. Greg Blake is a vocal powerhouse, as always, and Ellie Hakanson has been singing more lead as she does on the new record. Nico Humby is with us from Canada and often rounds out the four-part harmonies on Gospel numbers, but also delivers entertaining lead singing. I’ve been working on crosspicking a lot and have been trying to shoehorn that in as much as I can.

Performers reading this will appreciate that we have one of the best sound engineers I’ve ever worked with traveling with us. Daniel Machnik runs the sound so well that we hardly even notice we’re playing into mics – though we imagine he’s bored since all three bands essentially use the same two Ear Trumpet mics for the whole evening. Even the sound checks seem like a formality.

We’ve mostly been passing the time by playing cards and trying to exercise when we can. While near the southern border, Nico and Kris went on a run that took them through both Switzerland and France.

Today we’re playing at a theater in Berlin that’s across the street from one of the oldest airports in Europe, which was decommissioned in 2008 and turned into a recreational space. The Brother Brothers played on Deutschlandfunk Kultur radio today to promote the show. The radio station was created after the second World War, and during the Cold War served as the voice of the German Democratic Republic, broadcasting western music and news into East Germany.

We’ve been driving and playing everyday so there hasn’t been much time for sightseeing, but we did manage a trip to the Haribo outlet and picked up a bunch of candy to bring home for Christmas.

We still have eleven shows left so we’ll check back in at the end of the tour! Be sure to follow us all on Facebook and Instagram for more pictures and updates.

Finger Pointin’ Mama video from Bill and The Belles

Just ahead of tomorrow’s release of their debut, full-length album, Dreamsongs Etc, Bill and The Belles have released a second video from the project on Jalopy Records. It’s more of their pre-bluegrass string music, part swing… part tin pan alley… and all in good fun.

Finger Pointin’ Mama tells of a naughty gal who stays out late drinking with the crowd, and comes home to tell her trusting man what he’s doing wrong. Well, he is plum tired of it and is letting her know.

Bill and The Belles are Kris Truelsen on guitar and lead vocals, Kalia Yeagle on fiddle and vocals, Grace Van’t Hof on banjo and vocals, and Karl Zerfas on bass.

You can find Dreamsongs, Etc on Friday, August 24, wherever you download or stream music.

Wedding Bell Chimes from Bill and The Belles

Though it may sound like heresy to some true believers, there was actually enjoyable stringboard music prior to the development of bluegrass with Bill Monroe in the late 1940s. A good many talented artists performed with banjos and fiddles between the tin pan alley era of vaudeville and the arrival of Flatt & Scruggs in Nashville, and much of what they did influenced what followed their time in the limelight.

It has been the mission of Bill and The Belles to focus on the sound of that interregnum period with joy and lighthearted humor, as many of you have witnessed during their reign as hosts of Farm and Fun Time, recently resurrected on Radio Bristol and recorded at the Birthplace of Country Music Museum in Bristol, VA.

The band is the brainchild of Kris Truelsen, lead singer and primary songwriter, who chose the name as a tribute to Bill and Belle Reed, who sang together in the 1920s from their home in Johnson City, TN. His goal is to capture that sort of plaintive singing that was popular in the light entertainment offered in theater revues of their time, accompanied by an acoustic string trio.

They have an album, their first, set for release this year called Dreamsongs, Etc., consisting of Truelsen’s songs supported by Kalia Yeagle on fiddle and vocals, Grace Van’t Hof on banjo and vocals, and Karl Zerfas on bass. Pre-orders can be placed now online, and include an immediate download of the record’s first single, Wedding Bell Chimes, featured in the video below.

Look for Dreamsongs, Etc towards the end of the summer on Jalopy Records.

Mistletoe Minnie video from Bill & The Belles

From east Tennessee comes a new secular Christmas song from Bill and The Belles, an annual tradition for the band, in their quirky, post-vaudeville/pre-bluegrass string band sound.

This one was written by Kris Truelsen, a.k,a. Bill, with the assistance of his Belles (Kalia Yeagle on fiddle and Grace Van’t Hoft on banjo) and Karl Zerfas on bass. It tells the story of Mistletoe Minnie, a somewhat slinky lady of the evening who has endeared herself to the singer.

They filmed it in a number of iconic spots in Johnson City, TN. Locals should recognize the settings.

Bill and The Belles serve as the house band for the resurrected Farm and Fun Time program on Radio Bristol. It is produced before a live audience on the second Thursday of each month at The Birthplace of Country Music Museum in Bristol, VA. The next show is on January 11 with guests Flatt Lonesome and Uncle Shuffelo, and Saint Hollow Hootenanny. Tickets are available online.

Bill and The Belles send Santa on vacation

ETSU’s Bluegrass, Old Time, and Country Music Studies program seems to churn out some of the best in the world of traditional music. As is the case with Bill and the Belles, an old time country-esque group based out of Johnson City, TN.

The band has been quite busy this past year, having locked down several appearances at festivals throughout the east coast, including IBMA’s World of Bluegrass. They’re also becoming known for their music videos. Their most recent work, Santa’s Hula Holiday, debuted on social media yesterday. Written by band leader Kris Truelsen and Matt Morelock, the song proposes Santa needing a bit of a holiday himself. The track features Kris (guitar, vocals), Kalia Yeagle (fiddle, vocals), Grace Van’t Hof (banjo ukulele), Karl Zerfas (bass), and Ed Snodderly (Hawaiian resonator guitar).

It starts after a a bit of Mele Kalikimaka, Hawaiia’s #1 Christmas song.

That red suit may be a bit warm in the islands of Hawaii, but I’m sure he deserves it after delivering all those presents to the good little boys and girls.