Artist Interview: Tim Atlas
By: Natalie Schmidt
Tim Atlas has been making music since he was a kid, starting as a drummer, then moving onto songwriting, and as an adult stepping into the realm of production.
“[I got] lost because it is just such a different world than just being a musician or a band member,” Atlas said. “There is so much that goes into every single sound.. It’s easy to become obsessed with it.”
Photo: Tim Atlas
“What I have learned is, less is more,” he stated as he sat back cooly on the couch. Outside the hotel room snow fell slowly down to the street. “It’s an ongoing struggle.. I’m learning every day… I have my good days and my bad days.”
His newest album, Lonely Together aims to connect people through the ideas of social anxiety, introvertedness and the guilt associated with those things.
Compared to his first album All Talk!, released in 2018, he “stripped it more back” for this record. Reflecting back on the creation of this album he states that, “when you make that second record you think, ‘How am I going to top the first record.’”
According to Atlas, he struggled with the creation of this album due to other people’s expectation of what they wanted him to sound like. “As soon as I was like, ‘Ya know what, I am just gonna make something that I love. I just hope that people are on this journey with me.’ That’s when the songs started coming out… I just felt a mental release from all of those inhibitions, like who am I supposed to be.”
To Altas, “music is kind of that release and that outlet for me to be sensitive.” He states that he is generally a pretty quiet, shy person, that keeps to himself and is very introverted. “I just don’t openly say how I am feeling about things.”
When discussing his philosophy about music he says that, “music is supposed to bring people together and it is supposed to make you feel less alone in your insecurities and your thoughts.”
“When I write a song, it is letting someone know I have those same feelings.”
For Atlas, All Talk! and Together Lonely are just the beginning since, “the thing about productions [is that] they never feel done.”