Atlas Road Crew will be making a pit stop in Gainesville for the first time, and vocalist and guitarist Taylor Nicholson is ready to bring everything to the table.
“We’ll bring some loud rock ’n’ roll, so I hope you guys like it,” Nicholson said.
The Southern rock ’n’ roll band with a spark of soul will be performing at The Jam, at 817 W. University Ave., as a part of an extended tour of the east coast. The show will begin at 8 p.m. Friday.
Originally from Columbia, South Carolina, Atlas Road Crew began its music career in 2011 as students at the University of South Carolina playing for bars as a cover band. Nicholson said that with the help of family and friends, the band has been able to envision music as a real career and released its first full-length album, “Halfway to Hopkins,” in February.
Atlas Road Crew now lives in Charleston, South Carolina, where it has built a dedicated fan base and have developed a unique sound.
The diverse set of sounds the album exhibits is due to the band working with three different producers from three different studios across two states. Nicholson said that each producer had his or her own style and technique that brought the album together.
“It was like a mini learning experience working with the different people and their different sounds,” Nicholson said.
The distinct set of soul-driven jams has really struck a chord with the younger crowds who gather around college towns.
Blake Briand, one of the owners of The Jam, said that he has definitely noticed the student audience surrounding the band, but he is expecting a fair amount of the venue’s regulars to come out to the show as well.
“A lot of our regulars do like a bit of a jam band with a Southern-rock vibe. It’s something that a lot of them, I think, would enjoy,” Briand said.
Briand said that he is hoping that this show allows Atlas Road Crew to find an audience in Gainesville that appreciates its music and which the band can build from whenever it performs in the area. The sounds range from upbeat blends of rock ’n’ roll in songs like “Black Eye Sunrise,” to the Southern soul rhythms with a hint of blues in songs like “Low Country Blues.”
Coming all this way as a musician, Nicholson said the learns something new every day, but the most important concept the has learned is patience.
“You kind of want everything to happen overnight or immediate success. But, you know, it comes down to hard work kind of pays off,” Nicholson said.
[A version of this story ran on page 7 on 4/2/2015 under the headline “Atlas Road Crew to bring southern rock to The Jam on Friday night”]
