Bell and Shore

By Dallas Embry

Nathan Bell and Susan Shore are a husband-and-wife team from Riverside, Iowa who perform original acoustic country music. Bell, the songwriter, plays guitar and sings while Shore sings and plays rhythm guitar, mandolin and kazoo.

Bell's influences are Merle Haggard, David Allan Coe, Otis Redding, James Brown, Roger Miller, Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart, among others, and this is evident when you hear him.

Little Movies, their album on the Flying Fish label, is exactly that; a series of vignettes about the past with songs like "The Outlaw Sam Bass" and "Reno's Gone," contemporary times with "He's Been Drunk Ever Since His Wife Went Punk," and the future with "Interstellar Cattle Call."

They will be performing these songs on our stage, as well as "Billy Joe Mexico," the tale of a snake-handling preacher who found religion when he fell off his motorcycle, and "Honorary Texan," which ends with a thumping Bo Diddley riff. They will also be doing songs from their forthcoming album, tentatively titled L-Ranko Motel which they are in the process of recording and hope to have mixed by mid-April.

Nathan and Susan have appeared at festivals and in clubs all over the U.S. and Canada and have opened for such artists as Taj Mahal, Tom Paxton, Kathy Mattea, Greg Brown, and Harry Dean Stanton and the Call, as well as Norman Blake and Gary Morris.

They are bringing their years of experience, their instrumental virtuosity, and delightful harmonies to us for their Homefront debut on April 8th.