The K-ZAP Short Tail (A Blog) – Bellygunner Returns!
Written by SacZAP2 on September 9, 2022
The K-ZAP Short Tail (A Blog) -Bellygunner Returns!
Big thanks to all of you who stopped by our sizzling K-ZAP Booth at the 32nd Annual Chalk It Up Festival over the three-day holiday. Grateful we had a corner location under shade trees (I hugged one), but also because we were right next to the live music stage. So yeah, we were in the “natural” GREEN ROOM. I was there Monday with grand poobah Dennis Newhall and sales honcho John Caselli. It’s always enlightening and gratifying to swap music stories and KZAP memories with festival goers. [Some of them require a release form to be able to talk about.]
A BIG treat was the welcome return of one of Sacramento’s most brilliant and inventive rock bands, Bellygunner. After a five-year hiatus, this all-star team of players led by founder/singer-songwriter Gabe Nelson is a band this city needs to champion. Along with Gabe on vocals and guitar is Greg Williams on lead guitar, Hannah Lingrell on keys & vocals, Shawn Hale on bass and Tom Monson on drums.
After years as the bassist for dozens of Sacramento area bands, including The Mother Hips, and most notably, Cake, Gabe formed Bellygunner in 2012. He had watched their respective creative processes, “how music was pulled together.” He established his disciplined method—“I record melodies and chord progressions on a little hand-held tape recorder and review the files all the time. I don’t really listen to much else these days…I’ve got thousands of melodies in my archive.”
His true touchstone to my ear sounds like 1965’s Rubber Soul, the Beatles’ transformative psychedelic folk-rock, raga-rock offering. Gabe says his influences are broad –“anything really from Air Supply to The Zombies.” What is clear from their debut record, Machine Gun Built For Two (2013), and all that I have heard live since, is that Gabe is a mesmerizing singer with a voice like Sir Paul, an ability to fashion inventive melodies and is a deeply thoughtful, heartfelt and clever writer.
Album # 2 is coming soon, along with more live shows. His plans also include writing a symphony, and movie soundtracks. Just as the most significant pop and rock songwriters were able to draw from jazz, classical, blues and country idioms to create their songs, so goes Gabe and Bellygunner. His bandmates are all well-known players and flourish in all of these genres.
They’ll be opening for The Katie Knipp Band at the Sofia on November 6 (another original, creative Sacramento-based band, of a blues and cabaret vibe.)
(photos courtesy of Philip M. Kampel)
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Amongst the folks stopping by the K-ZAP booth while Bellygunner was playing were two noted long-time music photographers, Greg Savalin and Phil Kampel. It was great to see them, and worthy to introduce them to each other—both have countless backstage tales and mosh pit survival stories dating from the 1960s on, Greg from here and Phil, originally from Philadelphia.
BTW, The Rock & Radio Museum of Sacramento, meticulously curated by Dennis Newhall beginning in 2005, now has permanent home at Sac State. Dennis is ALWAYS looking for new donated archival and current photographs and posters from Sacramento area concerts.
Greg: https://www.imago-images.com/st/0072410368
Phil: https://www.kvmedia-arts.com & http://www.philkampelphotography.com/
— Mindy Giles
