Our latest Off the Shelf guest is Johnny Bell. His latest album, Mountain States, dropped last month and was reviewed by KLOF’s Glenn Kimpton, who highlighted the album’s excellent, wide-ranging and mercurial qualities, as well as its deep sense of place. I don’t know about you, but for me, I’ve always admired how some musicians can capture the sense of a place in instrumental music. For this project, he was also aided by composer and guitarist Andrew Weathers, who co-produced the album — his role was crucial to the album’s immersive feel. I’m very familiar with Weather’s own work; he’s a prolific artist, originally from North Carolina, currently based in Pueblo, CO, and I highly recommend his excellent Bandcamp Subscription, which you can read about here.
As well as re-contextualising the banjo, Bell also set out to “expand the idea of ‘mountain music’ beyond Appalachia to include the Rocky Mountains of the American West.” As the album notes state, “these pieces evoke something starker: arid landscapes, desolation, stoicism, and slow-moving gravity.”
For those who are new to our Off the Shelf series, we basically ask an artist to select ten objects from their home and talk about them. These tend to hold a meaning for their daily life, their musical practice, or the overlap between the two. I was curious as to what Johnny Bell would share, and his choices sit well alongside his latest album (I also now know who to ask about drought-tolerant flowers). Have a look and a read, and if you’re not already familiar with Mountain States, one of my favourite albums of the year so far, I encourage you to seek his music out. You can find it all here: https://johnnybell.bandcamp.com/music.
Before we start, we need a setting:
Off the Shelf with Johnny Bell
Vintage western revolver lamp
This lamp has been part of my life since childhood, when it sat in my great-grandparents’ house, and I was absolutely fascinated by it. As a kid, I would imagine it was a revolver belonging to Billy the Kid or some other notorious Old West gunslinger. I managed to salvage it while helping my great uncle clear their estate after their passing. It now sits on my mixing desk in my music studio space.
It reminds me of the lore of the American West that, for better or worse, my hometown is a part of. It also reminds me to stay connected to the wonder and imagination of childhood that we tend to suppress as we grow up.
Tascam 246 Portastudio
This was a gift from my friend Ryan Parker, who also created the collage artwork for my album Field Trips. I feel incredibly lucky to own one of these, especially in near-mint working condition. It wasn’t functioning when Ryan gave it to me, but all it needed was a new capstan belt. I also replaced the pinch roller and idler tires while I had it torn apart.
The Tascam 246 is widely considered the holy grail of cassette Portastudios, the high point of Tascam’s original four-track line, released in 1985. Analog tape saturation gives a recording a warmth and character that no DAW plugin quite replicates. Working with four tracks and no undo button forces commitment. You make a decision and live with it, which tends to produce a more honest performance than the endless revision trap of non-destructive computer-based editing. Physical faders and knobs, a self-contained mixer and recorder in one box with no routing to configure, and a solid build that still runs smoothly after forty-plus years with no software updates. It’s a highly sought-after tool for anyone working in lo-fi or DIY music where the format’s grain is part of the sound. There are countless projects inside this machine waiting to be realized.
Collection of small rocks found on dog walks
We live close to the Frank Ortiz Dog Park here in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It’s the largest off-leash dog park in the United States–138 acres of dry arroyos, sandy hills, prickly pear cactus and piñon trees with miles of trails and incredible views of the city. That may seem idyllic, but there’s a darker history as well. The large flat social area of the park sits on top of an old landfill, with environmental test wells placed around it to monitor groundwater. Nothing hazardous has been found so far, but it’s a strange bit of land history beneath all those happy dogs.
I take my two young dogs up to the park twice a day. I don’t know if they realize how lucky they are to live so close to the country’s largest off-leash dog park. Over time, I’ve gathered a collection of these small, unique stones that have caught my eye during these walks. It’s sort of a way of bringing small pieces of this complex and special place into my home.
Family heirloom lap steel
This is a vintage 1950s Gretsch Electromatic lap steel that carries a bit of family history. My grandfather, a devoted self-taught guitarist, was attending college in Las Vegas, New Mexico, in the mid-1950s. On one of his visits back home, he gifted the instrument to his younger brother, my great uncle, who was still a teenager living at home. My great uncle cherished it and held on to it for sixty-five years before gifting it to me just before he passed away a few years ago. He felt it was important to return it to someone who could value it and put it to use.
Though I’m not a guitarist, I experiment with it to create ambient and atmospheric soundscapes. This instrument reminds me that I come from a lineage of people who appreciate music-making. Beyond whether you’re a hobbyist or a professional, there’s something fundamental and special about learning to play and care for an instrument, and passing that on through a family.
Apple Tree
We planted this Fuji apple tree in our front yard in the spring of 2014. We had purchased it in a pot the prior winter and brought it inside our house to decorate as a non-traditional Christmas tree for my son’s first Christmas. It was the first fruit tree we planted on this property and is now part of a growing food forest that includes apples, peaches, apricots, plums, and cherries. There is nothing better than a piece of fruit that you harvest from a tree you planted yourself, and learning to properly maintain and prune these trees for maximum health and vigor has been a genuinely rewarding way to connect to this land.
Analog stereo system
This record player (a Technics direct drive SL-Q300), amplifier (a Kenwood solid state KA-5002), and speakers (a pair of ADS L400s) are the heartbeat of our living room. These vintage components were a gift from my partner’s father, meaning she grew up listening to records in the 1980s on the same system we now have in our home. When I was a kid, my parents kept a collection of vinyl, and it was our primary form of music consumption. I have formative memories of thumbing through their records, immersing myself in the large format artwork, expansive gatefolds, tech credits, acknowledgements, and track listings, all while the LP played. It’s an experience that digital streaming will never replicate, and I hope to instill that same love of physical media in my own children. It’s a thrill and a joy to now contribute my own work to the long tradition of music archived on a physical analog medium.
New Mexico landscape oil painting – signed John Cumming
This landscape painting is part of a small collection of original oil paintings that belonged to my great-grandparents, which I inherited when I moved into the home they built. Each of these pieces was a gift from an artist in their community. Some of my earliest memories are of visiting my great-grandparents and getting lost in these paintings. I think these pieces instilled an early appreciation of the beauty of the landscape of this place I call home…I’m always on the lookout for the scenes depicted in these paintings when I’m out exploring my surroundings.
Painting of Sadie by Anna Murphy
This painting is a tribute to my beloved late dog, Sadie. Sadie was a chihuahua-pug mix I rescued from the West Side Animal Shelter in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She’d been picked up as a stray, just a couple of months old, hiding under a parked vehicle. The dog catcher pulled her out by her front legs, and she nipped his thumb. He reported her as a biter, so she was scheduled for euthanasia after a mandatory two-week rabies observation.
I was at the shelter helping a friend look for her dog, and this tiny dog came timidly to the kennel door and offered her belly for a rub through the chain-link. The shelter attendant told me I was the first person to approach her kennel that she hadn’t cowered away from. That’s when I knew it was my duty to get her out of there. I convinced the shelter to let me adopt her, signing a stack of paperwork, assuming personal liability for a dog officially labeled dangerous. She spent the next several years traveling everywhere with me, through a stretch of my life when I was almost never home. Later, after I met my partner and our children were born, she lived out the rest of her life as an adored family pet, though she never relinquished her position as matriarch of the household.
A few months after she died, my partner’s sister Anna, a brilliant and talented artist, surprised me by painting this tribute and gifting it to me. It’s a prized possession that hangs prominently in our living room.
Fresh cut flowers from our flower garden
My partner and I have always had a vegetable garden, but during the Covid years, she started experimenting with growing cut flowers. We live in the high desert, so she’s put a lot of thought and energy into experimenting with perennials and drought-tolerant varieties. The harvested flowers are displayed in simple glass vases throughout our home during the growing season. They add so much color, life, and joy to our home and are a reminder of the stunning beauty and perfect design of the natural world.
Collection of banjo finger picks
I began my banjo journey about twenty-five years ago and throughout that time I’ve experimented with various ways to alter the tone of the instrument: synthetic plastic and animal hide heads, strings of different materials and gauges, bridges of various weights and woods, cello and violin bows pulled across the strings, EBows, and even hanging or placing different objects over the vibrating head to produce strange accompanying sounds. One of the simplest experiments has been seeking out and exploring the many different fingerpick options available. At first, it was thumb picks and finger picks that slip over the tips of the picking fingers. Nylon, celluloid, brass, nickel, stainless steel, I’ve tried everything. Once I fully committed to overhand, or clawhammer style of playing, I became obsessed with finding a pick that could give me a louder, more reliable tone than my natural fingernail. Manual labor, mechanical work, and gardening are not conducive to maintaining a strong, unbroken fingernail, so I’m always on the lookout for a reliable alternative.
Mountain States (May 8th, 2026) Centripetal Force / Ramble Records
Bandcamp: https://johnnybell.bandcamp.com/album/mountain-states