courtesy photo

by Chance Solem-Pfeifer

Expressing yourself, confessional songwriting and art reflecting self. Jake Bellows has a two-word retort: “Who cares?”

The longtime Omaha songwriter and former frontman of the now-defunct band Neva Dinova contradicts an entire dictionary of the romantic songwriting terminology with his first solo album New Ocean. Released on Saddle Creek in August 2013, the album postulates using music and art as tools for projecting a healthier, brighter future for humankind and the world, as opposed to a force that propagates one person’s human experience.

While the conclusion may seem obvious to Bellows, he knows the execution of such songwriting is uncommon.

“I think every artist thinks that, too,” he says. “They just haven’t considered what their art is for.”

When Bellows returned to Nebraska in mid-January for a pair of solo performances, he reflected on the broader themes of New Ocean, a record for which his primary influences weren’t musical contemporaries of Neva Dinova but rather diverse thinkers like Nikola Tesla, Joseph Campbell and Hazrat Inayat Khan. For inspiration, Bellows (who now resides in California) dove into theories and principles of frequency that give the sleepy pop album its elemental feeling — that the soundwaves we’re processing are, at various frequency levels, the building blocks of the universe.

For this, the ninth installment of Sessions, I sat down with Bellows at the Aromas coffee shop in Benson to discuss visions of a humane apocalypse, the value of artistic voices in society and a moment Bellows could have sworn he was dying.

Listen to the full Sessions interview with Bellows here:

Table of Contents:

01:45 — Introduction
04:30 — No More Dark Touches
08:05 — What We “Made Up” About Music
15:45 — Art For a Better World
23:20 — Bellows Imagines the World’s End
28:55 — Fighting a Fear of Death
35:14 — Erasing Jake Bellows from Songs

Chance Solem-Pfeifer is Hear Nebraska’s staff writer. In a story of many quotable quotes, he thinks, “We just have to keep in mind that we made all of this up…” is one to live by. Reach Chance at chancesp@hearnebraska.org.