The Atkins Tent Revival (Norway) – Strawberry Lips (single)

This one almost passed me by and technically isn’t 100% Nordic but it’s different, and as I often say that counts for a lot on NMC.

It’s also ‘global’ in nature as you will see.

The Atkins Tent Revival is an Americana/Rock band headed up by Ben Atkins, the lead singer and song writer, who’s out of Waco and as such I do believe to be the first Texan we’ve had herein the Nordic version of SXSW, North by Northwest (I really might start calling it that).

But he isn’t there now; he shifted out to Buenos Aires and from there, if I’m reading social media correctly, to Trondheim two years ago after getting married, and where the (new) Atkins Tent Revival band is based.

His bio says he is a graduate of political theory but I won’t ask him to theorise on Tuesday’s result in that little election held in his homeland.

I can’t advise you of the reason behind the band’s name but I’m reliably informed that a tent revival is a gathering of Christian worshipers in a tent. What I do know is that prior to Trondheim he spent some time in Buenos Aires – about as different to Norway as it can get – and that is where this single, ‘Strawberry Lips’, was recorded.

His rationale behind the song is that “I try to write about things that will make people think of themselves, in both silly and serious ways.

I reckon he succeeded at least to mix humour and pathos on ‘Strawberry Lips,’ which can be interpreted in different ways.

On one hand there’s a sad character, who might be one of those in Billy Joel’s ‘Piano Man’, who has spent far too long alone at the bar and is trying to chat up a girl with a succession of nonsensical patter including the suggestion that, like James’ Tim Booth, when he looks into her eyes he can see her soul.

He’s so far gone that there’s even a hint that she’s a long lost love he doesn’t even recognise now.

On the other hand he’s a real lady’s man who knows that if he confuses the fruit that is the source of her lipstick he might well get a chance to use another sense to discover the truth soon – taste.

Or you can put whatever interpretation of your own that you want to on it. That’s the mark of clever writing.

Musically, well they are billed as Americana/Rock with multiple other genres and styles attached, including hip hop, psych and punk.

But there’s none of those here. This is as soulful and bluesy at the same time as it gets outside of Memphis, verging on gospel at times. It’s what you’d expect to hear on the makeshift stage when you pull up at a bar in, say, Leimert Park in Los Angeles and fight your way through the congealed, hanging smoke with the dulcet tones of Otis Redding on the jukebox in the background and order the first of many Bud Lights and Bourbon chasers from the waitress with the strawberry lips.

Oh and he’s got more than a hint of Joe Cocker about him and there’s a great little guitar outro.

The band is putting an album, ‘Norwegian Brown Cheese Vol. II: Sincerely Yours’, out on 13th December, all recorded mixed and mastered in Trondheim, where they are already well known, with the new local group.

It is billed as “an eclectic selection of folk, rock, gospel, and psychedelic elements that move seamlessly between songs.”

I believe this is the latest band line up:

Ulf Lindgren – lead guitar

Trude Heggstad – keyboards

Aasmund Sivertsen – bass guitar

Eirik Fagerslett – drums

Find him/them on:

Website: https://www.atkinstentrevival.com/