Say hello to The Atkinsons
By
Hays Davis
| Special Correspondent
Published: June 3, 2009
Dickie
Wood, singer/guitarist for the Richmond-based band The Atkinsons,
enjoyed playing with various local bands for years. There was one
critical problem that he had trouble working past, however.
"He was in another band that played his songs, but there was another
lead singer," said Jamie Wood, The Atkinsons' percussionist/backing
vocalist and Dickie's wife. "Dickie would play guitar and sing
harmonies, but it was kind of like, ‘Before I'm older I want to sing my
own songs.'
"He had just been that side guy, even though they were playing his
original songs, he wasn't singing them, so that's when he really wanted
to start doing something on his own."
Leaving that band and hitting local Open Mike nights brought Dickie
back to square one, and the process was like a musician's version of
tearing down a vehicle and rebuilding it as something he really wanted
to drive. At Matt's Village Pub he met mandolin
player/guitarist/vocalist Jeff Williams, who was running the club's
Open Mike, and over time they decided to put together a band.
Formed in 2003, The Atkinsons' lineup includes drummer/vocalist Kris
Krull, bassist Ricky Breland, and fiddle player Mike Ferry, in addition
to Williams and the Woods. The band's moniker, by the way, was a
spur-of-the-moment idea stemming from the name of someone who happened
to be nearby when the then-nameless outfit was offered its first gig.
Their sound generally falls under the Americana/roots-rock tent,
with distinctive country elements – a la Uncle Tupelo or Whiskeytown.
Live, the band goes for a roughly even split between original songs and
covers that they feel mesh with the group's personality.
"I don't really pick songs to play for people coming to see us,"
said Dickie. "I pick songs to play that we like and sounds good.
There's plenty of them that we know right after the first time that
we're never going to play that thing again. We also know right out of
the box, we should have written this song. It's for us."
The Atkinsons' original material regularly springs from their album,
"American Gothic," a song cycle covering the life of a fictional tragic
figure. Dickie didn't begin writing the disc's songs with a concept in
mind, though once the thread revealed itself, he decided to follow it.
"I just got looking at those songs I'd been putting together and
realized, this is like parts of a puzzle.
"Little by little I started looking through the song that I had, and
there was a definite theme there. I kind of just stumbled into the
whole thing; it wasn't like an epiphany or something: ‘Oh, this is
what I want to do. This is my concept album – when can I start?' I
just realized it was building itself."
The band's sound is so engaging that it's not unusual for an
audience to overlook the darkness of the lyrics, as when the band
recently played the entire album at Ashland Coffee & Tea. "With
the songs on ‘American Gothic,' that tragic hero, so many bad things
happen to him," said Jamie.
"But Dickie's writing is so upbeat…so many times people have heard
songs and said, ‘I just love that song! ‘Headed Down The Road' is just
so upbeat and optimistic.' We're like, ‘Well, it's about dying,'"
laughed Jamie. "A lot of time people, if they're not totally paying
attention to all the lyrics, they think it's just such a fun,
toe-tapping song, they don't even realize that it's a horrible story
line that Dickie's written!"
While family and job obligations generally keep The Atkinsons within
the region for their live performances, the band's appearance on the
PBS TV music series "The Music Seen" has provided them with a growing
national fan base – one that could eventually make the allure of at
least occasionally playing elsewhere irresistible.
"It didn't play in Richmond for about a year, and then, after it
did, PBS would sell the show to other markets, kind of like ‘Austin
City Limits,'" said Jamie. "As of right now, we are in Chicago,
Philadelphia, Alabama, North Carolina, Maryland.
"They are
seeing us on their PBS channel and searching for us on the Internet and
going to cdbaby.com and buying our CD. They have seen us and are
writing us e-mails on our Web site and saying, ‘When are you playing in
Chicago?'
The Atkinsons will be opening for Jerry Douglas this Friday, 6/05,
as part of the Friday Cheers concert series at Brown's Island.