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Bell sings songs for the town

The shadowy blobby-blob in the animated video version of Doing Sound, a song from Danny Bell's latest album Songs for the Town, is meant to look like that. It's symbolism.
Danny Bell Songs For The Town

The shadowy blobby-blob in the animated video version of Doing Sound, a song from Danny Bell's latest album Songs for the Town, is meant to look like that. 

It's symbolism.

Doing Sound is on the second album released by Danny Bell and His Disappointments with help from Good Egg Records and Pulp City Music.

"I'm drawn as a black bobby-blob because that's kind of supposed to be the job of the sound tech, I guess - just be in the back making things sound good and not really being seen yourself," Bell explained. "It's kind of like you're seen as a shadow at a party. You'd like to be part of it and you kind of are but you're also working and have responsibilities and stuff like that. It's all a joke but there's truth to it."

The album addresses issues like depression, small-time music industry satire, social division and the thoughts and aspirations of two dogs, according to Bell's website.

Songs for the Town was created during fall 2019 and was ready to be released in the spring, with a tour booked that would have taken the musicians halfway across the country and into parts of the U.S. but the world had other ideas.

"I am surprised how it didn't break me to cancel the tour," Bell said with a tiny laugh.

And to avoid breaking, Bell decided to bounce back by creating a sort of recording studio in his house where he's been recording lots and working on demos for whatever comes next, he added.

"I've also spent a lot of time on the stuff we're selling on the website right now," Bell said.

The 'we' Bell refers to includes his wife, Evann Campbell, also known in the animation world as Silky Hen and the 'stuff' is some very cool swag.

The animation that Campbell created is time consuming, Bell said, especially the work put into the video for the recently released song River Bank. 

"We're also working on animation for future projects," Bell said. "It's been a lot of fun."

Bell's first album was called Good Timin' Man and it was inspired by a man he knew growing up in Minnesota. Bell attended the local university more than a decade ago and decided to stay and that's how he became a PGer.

Songs for the Town saw Bell on drums, accordion and vocals while Brin Porter added upright bass, and Chloe Nakahara was on fiddle.

He also had help from more friends when they needed to be yelling and smashing bottles and stuff.

"It's really good to have the support of a group like that," Bell said. 

"Some of the songs I had been playing for a long time and I had a good idea how they were going to come out in the studio and then there's ones like River Bank where I hadn't really played them live much where we were really able to explore."

So with some finagling Bell was able to match what was in his head to what was recorded so it worked out great. And now we get some intel on how the sausage was made as Bell shared some secrets.

"At the end of River Bank it gets really heavy and we had a box of nuts and bolts and screws and metal things that make a 'ding' sound and so we put a microphone over it on the floor in the studio and I was just dropping the box to make the 'wheesh' - like a chain sound," Bell said. "Then I was hitting the base of the mic stand with a mallet and we used this giant bass drum with a hard mallet on one of the songs that I hadn't really played much - Safe on the Hart - it's just things that I wouldn't do live and hadn't even considered doing - stuff like that. The bottle smashing on Doing Sound - same idea. There's a cement room next to the studio and we built a little box and we threw a couple of bottle in the middle of the box with a microphone on it to get the perfect bottle-smashing noise."

Connor Pritchard at Pulp City Music helped Bell through the process.

"Connor is a really special person," Bell said. "Often when you're working with other artists they will put their ideas forward and sometimes if you don't want to go in that direction some people take offense or get held up on it for some reason. Connor isn't that way. He's really easy going and he has tons of ideas and he's never offended or bogged down by you not going with his idea, you know? It's just a really easy collaboration with lots of great ideas that you wouldn't think of yourself."

For information about the latest album and other stuff visit dannybell.org.