Hailing from the forests of North Carolina’s Eno River, Violet Bell is composed of Lizzy Ross and Omar Ruiz-Lopez. As a duo with wildly different backgrounds, Violet Bell has a unique perspective on the roots music traditions that inform their sound.
As a kid, Ross bounced from the Chesapeake Bay to New York City finding a wide array of
musical influences – Coltrane, Patty Griffin, 90’s pop rock – into her life. Fifteen hundred miles away, Panama-born Ruiz-Lopez was growing up in Fajardo, Puerto Rico, and soaking up the sounds of Caribbean folk, bachata, traditional salsa music, and the occasional American classic rock. In their twenties, they both found themselves in North Carolina where their musical sensibilities were honed, appreciated, and expanded.
Violet Bell, with their latest single “Mortal Like Me”, captures the dangerous undercurrents that lurk in every holler of the seemingly serene and captivating southern Appalachians. It’s a beautiful, ancient landscape where every mountain top and valley has a story that simultaneously lures listeners in while warning them to stay away. “Mortal Like Me” captures that mysticism and bottles it as best as it can through poignant storytelling, tight harmonies, and dynamic musicianship throughout.
“Joe Troop showed up in the studio for one day, and this was the first track we cut with him on the banjo. This song careens off the rails. It’s a confession; a rowdy reflection from the fisherman in the wake of the selkie’s escape. We find him thinking about why he ever kidnapped her in the first place, and the folly of trying to compel love or contain a wild force. I imagine him waking to the empty bed, finding her gone, and playing it all back in his mind over a bottle of whisky. You get the sense that he knew this outcome was inevitable,” says Bell.
