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Tilly And The Wall: Friends, Frozen Pizza, And Love

by Allison Carter
10/29/2006



What sort of band would you listen to when there is a slight breeze, sunny and the smallest amount of cloud cover in the sky? If you dig unconstrained amiability on such a day, perhaps Tilly and the Wall would be just right. They are a band from the quiet Midwest - Omaha, Nebraska - an amalgamation of Neely Jenkins, Kianna Alarid, Derek Pressnall, Nick White, Jamie Williams (soon to be Presnall), and newly added Mason Brown. They're all experienced musicians with a few bands under their belt, but Tilly and the Wall have now been together for four and a half years. I got the chance to talk to Neely Jenkins about the band and their upcoming Atlanta show.

Tilly and the Wall have released three albums, the most recent of which is Bottoms of Barrels. On each of these albums they gather their inspiration "...from our friends who are in bands, visual artists, as well, basically everything around us." Wild Like Children, an earlier release, contains references to Nick and Derek's hometown of Atlanta, like North Avenue in "Night of the Living Dead." On Bottoms of Barrels, the song "Lost Girls" is "based on some paintings Henry Archer did."

They began touring to support Bottoms of Barrels on October 8th and will be coming to The Variety Playhouse in Atlanta on October 30th. Atlanta is always a special trip for the band. "Nick and Derek grew up in Atlanta, in Dunwoody, and their families still live there, so we love to go there because we get to meet all of their friends. Its like a big party when we go there."

While touring they have been doing some things differently, like staying with friends in each new city, instead of hotel rooms. So far, their friends are kind enough to leave food out for the band and give up space in their houses to keep the band more comfortable while on tour. Neely recalls one of their culinary mishaps. "We were trying to make food but they didn't have an oven that worked, so instead of cooking it in the oven we cooked it in a frying pan."

Staying with friends is not the only thing that might set Tilly and the Wall apart from other bands. They also use a tap dancer rather than drums for their percussion. When they couldn't find a suitable drummer for the band, Jaime Williams was the lucky tapper who was picked. She had been tapping since she was a small child and had previously tapped in another band. Though it would seem that tapping would produce a tiny sound for a club show, Jamie is made the focus of the show and their sound guy does an exquisite job of picking up the taps.

Take the chance to check out the tapping, and the feeling of optimism and amiability that saturates their music. "It's so much fun to perform for people and make them smile." Not to mention the whole band is doing what they love.

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