Author and illustrator Cece Bell and her new book, “Animal Albums From A to Z” (Photo by Tom Angleberger, image courtesy Candlewick Press)
“Although many animal albums were made during the heyday of recorded animal music, today they are hard to find,” children’s author and illustrator Cece Bell writes in her introduction to “Animal Albums From A to Z,” a collection of 26 imagined records and songs out this month.
The latest work by the Richmond native (now living in Montgomery County) is more than an alphabet book: It’s a handmade homage to album art supported by Bell’s lyrics — sung and performed by a cast of talented musicians from the Roanoke area and beyond masquerading as The Barbershop Beagles, Giggly Stargazer & The Goats of Glam, Weazelle, and other animal acts — on tracks including “I Am an Inspiration to Me” and “Rhapsody for a Rogue Rodent.” A QR code in the book points readers to each song online.
Bell’s original idea was to make an alphabet book about “everything.” “The pages would just be chock-full of everything that starts with ‘A’ that I love, and it was completely out of hand,” she says. “I was struggling with that and trying to figure out how could I arrange all these images for the book, and I was drawing these little squares. I was going to put something in each square, and then I thought, ‘Wait a minute, albums are squares!’”
She then thought of a previous creative endeavor, re-creating album covers from her parents’ collection, “trying to turn them into paintings that were somehow beautiful. ... They were made out of cut paper and collage, and I was just goofing around just for fun, and I remembered that. When I drew those squares, it all came together.”
Some covers are obvious parodies, such as “Slow Surfin’ ’67” by The Sensational Sloth Boys, who are carrying a surfboard across tree branches, similar to The Beach Boys on “Surfer Girl,” and others are pastiches, such as “Porkchop Paradise” by the Psychedelic Piano Pals, which evokes “Disraeli Gears” by Cream and “Odyssey and Oracle” by The Zombies.
ANIMAL ALBUMS A TO Z. Copyright © 2024 by Cece Bell. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville, MA.
Bell made all of the artwork by hand, including concert posters, magazine covers, a vintage nose flute and other memorabilia. She also produced a few music videos — one finds elephant Ella Fontaine singing the jazzy track “An Enchanted Elbow” as the pachyderm strolls past the Charlotte’s Web Antique Mall in Salem.
Once Bell added song titles to the album covers, what started to take shape was closer to a poetry collection, unlike her more narrative works. Lyrics followed, as did plans to turn just a few compositions into full-fledged audio recordings, which then snowballed into a 26-song collection that reflects the music of her youth.
“I was greatly influenced by my older brother, [Ash,] who is about seven years older than me, and he was very much into ’60s pop,” she says. “He would come home from thrift stores and the Record Exchange with these albums, and my parents had this wonderful record player with the most amazing speakers. ... It was a beautiful setup, and it was stuff like The Beatles, of course, and Simon & Garfunkel, Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66, who I’m a huge fan of, Burt Bacharach, Joni Mitchell, all those things. And so I very much worshipped him, or whatever he liked.” Other loves include Thelonius Monk and Dave Brubeck, MTV frequent flyers such as Prince, and Outkast.
A deciding factor for Bell, however, was whether the music was “muddy” or “clean.” The clearer and more melodic the song, the better Bell could hear it through hearing aids she’s worn since contracting meningitis in 1975 at the age of 4.
She thoroughly recounts the episode, which happened while she was growing up on West Avenue in the Fan, in her graphic novel turned Apple TV+ show “El Deafo,” which begins with Bell receiving care at the Medical College of Virginia, where her father was also a doctor, and coming to grips with her new perception of the world. She then spent “a very important year of kindergarten” at J.B. Fisher Model School under teacher Dorn Scherer, who taught her the basics of lip-reading, Bell writes in the book.
Her family moved to Salem in 1976, and “El Deafo” makes it seem like she said goodbye to Richmond forever. The truth is, Bell says, she frequently visited her childhood friend Emma and often visits her brother, who now lives here. “The Fan was such a neat place to be. ... I always wonder what my life would have been like if we had stayed,” she says.
“Animal Albums,” however, wouldn’t be possible without the connections she’s made in the Roanoke Valley, her home now with husband Tom Angleberger. Local musical contributors to the project include My Radio singer JP Powell, a friend since first grade; Bryan Hancock, aka Harvest Blaque; and pianist Sarah O’Brien, whose son Will mastered the recordings and whose father was Bell’s marching band director.
There are big names involved, too, such as famed R.E.M. producers Don Dixon and Mitch Easter. Michael Andrews, who did the music for the “El Deafo” TV show and the film “Donnie Darko,” turned in the Beach Boys-flavored “Sometimes the Soup Is Salty” (a favorite of Bell’s). But almost all of the songs sprang from reference recordings that Bell provided to the artists.
Putting the art, words and music into a complete package last year “was one of the happiest summers of my life,” Bell says. “It was definitely a labor of love. But most of the time, it was a really fun way to make a book.”
“Animal Albums From A to Z” by Cece Bell is on sale March 26 for $19.99. Bell comes to Carytown’s Bbgb book shop for a live music performance and book signing April 15.
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