Nicole Atkins: Finding Inspiration On the Williamsburg Bridge

Singer/songwriter Nicole Atkins draws on multiple genres and distills them to something wholly original. Her music has inspired comparisons to artists as diverse as Chrissie Hynde, Stevie Nicks, Jenny Lewis and Roy Orbison, among others. As a performer she has been described as “a firecracker,” “forceful and unfussy” and “nakedly emotional,” and judging by a November performance we attended at Manhattan’s Moscot Music Space, these characterizations only scratch the surface.

Atkins took time out of her busy touring schedule to speak withBrooklyn Roads about her new album, her musical influences and the inspiration she has drawn from her adopted home town.

“I grew up with a lot of classic rock and soul music,” she tells us. “Jackie Wilson was my mom’s favorite singer. He had so much soul and energy…and I just really connected with it.” But it was Traffic’s seminal 1970 album,John Barleycorn Must Die, that made her decide that “this is something I really want to do. It was songwriting, but it was a little bit psychedelic and a little bit jazzy. The whole record just seemed like a really good movie.”

In 2007, those influences eventually culminated in her debut album,Neptune City, which fittingly includes a song about the place she left behind (the plaintive title track), and one inspired by her adopted home town (the rousing Brooklyn’s on Fire.) Atkins tells Brooklyn Roads that our fair borough is “the place where people go if you want to be an artist. Living in Brooklyn, there is so much art and music and like-minded people you run into every day. You never run out of creative people to bounce ideas off of.”  The borough also gave her a more concrete (figuratively and literally) conduit for her creative processes.

“Every morning I would walk over the Williamsburg Bridge just into the city and back. It was my thinking time…where I would get all my songwriting ideas, just walking on that bridge clearing my head, seeing what would come to me. I’m pretty sure I wrote most of the songs from my last two albums on that bridge,” she says.

Among the many Brooklyn music venues where she’s played, Atkins says, “My definite home base, where I first played with my band and where we did our first CD release party, was Union Pool. I love the stage, the bulb lights around it, I love the staff. It feels very homey.” The late, lamented Zebulon was her favorite place to play solo gigs, she adds.

The Williamsburg-Asbury Park Connection

These days, she tells Brooklyn Roads, “I split my time between Williamsburg and Asbury Park, New Jersey,” adding that, “I feel Asbury Park has taken a lot of cues from Brooklyn. The businesses cropping up there and the scenes popping up…it reminds me of Williamsburg in 2002.”

She believes, however, that the latter holds the edge for aspiring singers and musicians. “I tell my friends in New Jersey who want to get their music heard to come to Brooklyn,” because, she says, it is where they will find “people who [really] want to hear it.”

Atkins’ forthcoming album, Slow Phaser, due out on February 4,includes several collaborations with Brooklyn native Jim Sclavunos of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. The two of them were both a long way from home when they first hooked up.

“In May of 2011 I went to London to do a couple of shows.  My manager was friends with him and his wife and she said, ‘you should meet Jim Sclavunos and try to do some co-writing with him.’ I was going through a little bit of a writer’s block.  We got together and went to dinner and a show and just really hit off. The next day we wrote three songs. Jim is a really incredible writer and a really cool person. He’s been a bit of a mentor to me in the last couple of years.”

What She Likes, What She Does Best

It’s not surprising, therefore, that Atkins is a fan of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. She also admires Queens of the Stone Age (“Mark  Lanegan is one of my favorite singers”), Richard Hell (“I’ve always loved him a lot”) and  Anna Calvi (“A singer from England who I think is really amazing”).

She recently added Jim Lauderdale to that list. At the time Brooklyn Roads spoke with her, she was heading for Nashville for a gig and an appointment with the award-winning songwriter. “My publishing company hooked it up…I’ve never met him…I’m very excited,” she told us at the time. The next day she tweeted:  “Wrote a cool song with the infamous Jim Lauderdale today!”

Indicative of the scope of her musical influences, the two songs she tells us she most wishes she had written are Ave Maria and the Santo & Johnny instrumental Sleepwalk. The latter speaks to the musician in her. “I’ve written a lot of instrumentals, but they always end up getting a verse or a chorus on it.” She says that she’s considering more instrumentals in the future. “Maybe some soundtrack work; it’s on my list of things I’d like to do.”

Atkins describes Slow Phaser, which she financed through a pledge music campaign, as a “disco prog-rock masterpiece…still dark and moody like my other ones, but there’s a lot of color to it and some dance tunes.” She also calls it “adventurous,” adding that, “It’s a little theatrical. I tried on my last one to stay away from the theatrics — but that’s what I do best.”