“The music business hates me. To be honest, the gaps between albums have been mostly due to business. Labels turning over in the past. One label turned into a Nu metal label. Then it’s like, what do we do? With Columbia Records, Rick Rubin went completely radio silent. My last record came out during the pandemic. We did this variety show, which was a fun thing. Amazon saw it and gave us money to make ten fully produced episodes. Then they went silent. I got burnt out. Everything got weird when we were free to go back out. The last record was a one off. Some business things also happened that weren’t great.”
For a musician, continually getting knocked off your musical path is nothing new. When you’re as uber talented as Nicole Atkins, the detours and roadblocks are senseless and unnecessary. She’s been bogged down by them her entire career. Which is ridiculous. Her latest five-year detour has finally ended with the ten-song face smacker Drama. A start to finish shining example of Atkins’s singular vocal range that runs the gamut from Judy Garland to Janis Joplin. With ease.
Atkins strikes both vocally and musically the entire album channeling 60’s mod-rock with Trippin’ on Teardrops and Danny. Her haunting duets Cue the Symphony with Chris Isaak and Curtain Call with Davey Horne should leave your jaw on the floor.
For No One and Softly, As You Were are showcase pieces fully displaying the vocal power Atkins has at her disposal and her complete control of it. Songs like Singing in the Mirror, Like A Stranger, When the Night Falls, and Like It’s the First Time are filled with Atkins’s patented relationship themed lyrics. This time around Atkins dives deeper detailing a difficult journey out of an anti-depressant fueled haze that had her sleeping for days at a time.
While the “never wrong” music executives have continually overlooked Atkins’s immense talent since her 2006 debut EP Bleeding Diamonds, fortunately her musical peers have not. Atkins has filled the gaps between albums working, touring, and performing with musical elite. Elvis Costello, David Byrne, Stevie Nicks, and oodles more. Her lengthy list of credits is equally as wide ranging as her vocal abilities.
It was Atkins’s longtime friendship with Isaak that created the opportunity to finally record Drama. Atkins invited Isaak to sit in with her during a residency at the Analog in Nashville. Isaak kept returning week after week. On the last show of the run, Isaak told Atkins, “I should sign you to Sun Records.” He did, and Atkins had the chance to get a new album off and running.
With Isaak and Sun behind her, Atkins’s smooth road to making her next album was about to hit a major roadblock. Severe depression. Atkins would spend days sleeping. Literally waking up, not believing it was two days later than when she went to sleep.
Atkins joins Slide&Banjo’s Marty Halpern to share the drama on how her latest album came to be. She begins by detailing her journey out of the fog and around her final roadblock. Channeling those experiences into the heart of the material that makes up Drama. “I got really depressed and slept for a long time. That’s what the record is about. I was sleeping for two days at a time and people were asking me, are you depressed? I didn’t think I was this depressed. It turned out the anti-depressant pill I was taking was keeping me asleep. I kept going to the doctor trying to figure out what it was.”
Atkins recalls, “After Chris wanted me to make the record for Sun, I got to the bottom of the depression. I was getting brain scans and all this shit. There was one pill I hadn’t gotten off. I stopped taking it and woke up the next morning. Then I woke up the morning after that. I didn’t want to get too excited, but feeling better kept sticking. I didn’t think I had any songs. When you’re depressed, you can keep doing the things you’ve been doing. You just don’t notice until you take a step back.”
To produce the album, Atkins had one choice, Wilco’s Pat Sansone. The musician, producer, and fellow Nashvillian wowed Atkins with his help on an EP she produced for Davey Horne. His contributions on the bass are also quite noticeable throughtout Drama.
True to form, landing Sansone didn’t come without its challenges. Atkins continues, “He’s the most perfect musical partner I could have ever found. I love how he’s the real deal. He’s interested in the music. Not a mercenary. I knew I wanted to work with Pat. I also knew he wasn’t available when I thought I was originally going to make the record. I kept trying to sign him. Even if I had to take out a loan. I had to do something. It stretched out over a year, and I didn’t think it was going to happen. All of a sudden, he was available. When we were ready to make it, the ice storm happened and everyone lost power for twelve days and our trees blew up. I was like this is never going to happen.”
Finally heading into the recording studio, Atkins breaks down how Drama started to take shape. “For No One was the first song I wrote. Another reason the record took so long is I set the bar so high. It annoys me if someone thinks it’s an Amy Winehouse throwback because they’re not listening to the lyrics. These are the best lyrics I’ve written in my life. I tried to write about modern technology and dating. I used terms that wouldn’t get dated over time. A phone is a glass, or tying a note to a bird is twitter. It’s hard to write a song like that. There are a few songs like that lyrically on the record. It took six years to find them. I’m glad I took the time but hope it doesn’t take six years next time.”
Next up, Atkins shares the unique circumstances that led to Like a Stranger. “I was at Louise Goffin’s writing camp in Nashville. Everybody got together and paired up. I’ve never done anything like that, but I’m down. I got paired up with this really great songwriter, Billy Harvey and DJ Lee. He’s a beatboxer. I thought this is so cool. I hate writing on the guitar. Not all songs are meant to be written on guitar. I write these melodies in my head. I thought it was going to be great writing with a beatboxer. When we got to the bridge he said, ‘I feel you want to go kind of Judy Garland. Right?’ I was like, how do you know me? Yes. That’s exactly what I want to do.”
“The next couple lived in limbo for a long time but were so fun to write.” Atkins adds. “I had a day off and my friend Benny Troken from Spoon called some of our mutual friends to get together. Let’s just have an hour to come up with a new song. If we don’t in an hour, we’ll just go to the bar and talk. We started jamming on the bridge of SOS by Abba and Danny happened. It wasn’t called Danny back then. The music was there. It sounded like Bernadette by the Four Tops. When the hour was up, the sketch of the song was there. We left and despite being in our forties, we’re all feeling like twenty-year-olds ready to take over the world. It was so fun. We almost canceled on each other.”
“We did that again for Like It’s the First Time. I was reading that Gene Wilder book, Kiss Me Like a Stranger. When you’ve been married for a while, you can say kiss me like a stranger. It makes you remember, oh shit, that’s what got me. I kept singing fake words and then sometimes a scrap of a phrase would come. My favorite line is ‘You wanna do right. I want to get even.’ I was worried people were going to think I’m an evil bitch. Sometimes getting even can be fun.”
Drama opener Trippin’ on Teardrops is a standout on an album loaded with them. The rocker has a 60’s London vibe with a hint of Lulu’s To Sir With Love. Written with Peter Moren, the song was another cathartic relief from Atkins’s chronic depression. “I played it and he was like you have to do more with it. He showed me some verse chords that could fit. I was like wow. I kept sleeping for two days. When you wake up thinking it’s Sunday and it’s Monday, you’re like holy fuck. I’ve never cried like that. When that happened, I’d be inconsolably crying. I was trying things so I wouldn’t be crying all the time. That’s literally what the song is about.”
Atkins took an old school approach to create the songs Cue the Symphony and Softly, As You Were. Both were written sitting with a partner on the porch. Atkins concludes part one with her simplistic approach to this pair of songs. “With Softly, I had the chords and Reno Bo said, ‘I’m going to sit on the porch, and you throw lines at me. I’ll tell you if it’s cool or not.’ It was as if I was performing for him. I had a friend who was going through a sad relationship. She didn’t want to play music anymore. I wrote it for her. A week later, I realized it was for me too. I had been floundering at home for years. It was don’t focus on the bad stuff. Just keep playing.”
“With Cue the Symphony, I was sitting with Chris Isaak on his porch. We’d always say, ‘Come on over and we’ll sit on the porch and write a song.’ It’s always when we’re not trying to write a song and talking about something else that the song shows itself. I thought, oh my god this is beautiful. In those last couple of weeks, everything happened.
Coming up in part two, Atkins graciously continues to open up about the highs and lows behind the making of Drama. She details the anxiety filled responsibility of creating videos for several songs. She also explores the continual long-distance relationship with her tour manager husband and how she once again channeled those emotions into the album. Stay tuned.