Nicole Atkins Interview

5 months ago 05th May 11:02

It’s just talking about being in your very early twenties and going out and having bruises on your legs that you wear like badges of your youth.

And how did you get involved in music?

I just always sang and when I was really young my uncle, who was a total hippie, turned me on to Steve Woodward’s old band Traffic and Cream and Led Zeppelin when I was in fourth grade.

I became obsessed, really music obsessed, and I always wanted to hang out with the older kids. I got into indie rock too when I was in grammar school I was like ‘oh I want to hang out with the high schoolers.’

And then I started to become obsessed with who is inspiring the likes of Jimmy Page and then I found Burt Jansch and it was really fun for me to retrace bands I like’s musical history, so yeah I’m a music geek.

When did you pick up a guitar for the first time?

When I was thirteen, my mom’s little passed a way when he was thirteen and I found his little guitar in the attic when I was thirteen and I taught myself how to play.

Then there’s the writing side of things how does the writing process work for you?

It’s very subconscious and very lucid, I don’t sit down and just write a song, a melody just comes to me and it usually comes to me when I’m driving, moving, at real inopportune times.

So I will record the melodies into my phone and work on them later and I will make up these fake words and a line will just come, usually I start with a line from the beginning or middle of the song that sound really heavy and I will try and figure out what that line could mean and then I will just make the story around it. And once that starts happening I will start getting all these arrangements in my head and so I sing all of the arrangements, in layers, into my phone.

When did you start writing did it begin at an early age?

No, I was always in bands when I was eleven and twelve, but I only started writing my own songs from the age of twenty.

And who are your inspirations from a musical perspective?

Right now it’s probably the Sun Studio artists like Roy Orbison, Elvis and The Everly Brothers and a lot of sixty eight garage rock psychedelic music then a lot of Burt Bacharach. Am also a fan of eighties more on the romantic side like Slade, The Smiths and Echo and the Bunnymen.

In recent months the UK has had an influx of female singer/songwriter’s what sets you apart from the rest?

Probably that I write my own music, no offence, this is something that I have always done, even though I bring a tradition of fifties, sixties and seventies music more to the forefront, I’m doing them in a way that isn’t retro revivalism it’s just a continuation of a good rock and roll tradition. I consider myself more of a rock band than a diva.

Neptune City was produced by Tore Johansson, who has worked with The Cardigans and Franz Ferdinand, what was it like working with him?

Very funny he is an odd man. We would fight a lot because when I would bring the songs in I thought they were completely done so we would sit in a room for five or six hours, until I was about to jump out of the window, then he would be like ‘ok I think we have it’ and he would be wearing karate pants, I just wanted to burn them.

But it was cool because we both come from a very similar music aesthetic, we both like things that are really creepy that are juxtaposed by really beautiful, we pushed each other to think outside of our boundaries. When I thought I was done he would just be like ‘this is the worst song that you have ever written’, and I’d think it was the best song and then things I thought he was wrong on I fight with him enough until he realised he was wrong.

It was the pushing of each other but it was cool because he wasn’t fancy he was very into like dreams, more like on the lucid and emotional side of living, that’s how I am so it was cool to work with somebody like that .

How did you find the recording process of your debut album?

it was kind of like a mix of really great musical highs but personally it was the Swedish winter so it was very depressing. I was all by myself (laughs) so it was lots of scotch and just getting involved with the record.

Away from music you studied illustration and you have your own mural business how do they impact on your music?

Well I don’t have the mural business anymore; I guess we have got quite popular in New Jersey so I would probably get locked in someone’s closet. The business was more of a way to make money in art it wasn’t very artistic I would paint of a lot of Italian restaurants and lighthouses and people’s houses.

My own art work, my comics, they inspire my songs because the way I was taught art in school was instead of drawing a woman in a field you would take into consideration what the air smelt like and what the ground felt like, what colour the leaves were and how they felt, so it was very sensory and when I write lyrics I take all that into consideration because I want people to step into my songs rather than just hear it.

You have been tipped by Rolling stone as one of the ten artists to watch this year how much pressure does that put you under, if any?

None at all I just thought it was cool I will get to show my grandkids that grandma was in Rolling Stone once.

Finally what is next for you?

We are going to be doing a bunch of summer festivals, we are on the West coast with Chris Issak, we are doing some festivals out here, we are doing the Wireless Festival then we will probably come back over here in the fall for another tour.

FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw

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