Reviews
Review by: Michael Smith, author of FROM MACON TO JACKSONVILLE - July 1, 2018
After reading CAMP REDEMPTION and SWEETWATER BLUES, I became a serious fan of Raymond Atkins’s writings. With his latest novel, SET LIST, I may have just become his biggest fan. The novel and its main character are more than a little identifiable to me personally. Blanchard Shankles is a sixty-year-old, life-long guitar player who has played in bands for over forty-five years. Now the rough life of a rock and roll musician is catching up with him, landing him in the hospital with serious heart problems and forcing him to look closer than ever into the deepest recesses of his own life. Atkins titles each chapter after a rock song, usually the songs that most of us players of that same age have performed countless times, from “Free Bird” to “Crazy Mama,” “Lucky Man,” and “Heart of Glass.” The conversations and nostalgic memories discussed by Blanchard, and his songwriting partner John Covey, ignite a fire within those of us who recall the music with love and happiness. One side note that I found absolutely cool was Atkins including actual, complete lyrics of many songs penned by Shankles and Covey. SET LIST is an honest, well-written novel for anyone who longs for the days of Grand Funk Railroad, Black Sabbath, or the James Gang—a story of life, love, mortality, and music—a true rock and roll dream.
Review by: River Jordan, author of THE MESSENGER OF MAGNOLIA STREET - July 1, 2018
Ray Atkins’s SET LIST took me back to the times my cousin and I were running wild on the beach, popping in bars for a few sets, then making it on down the road. Maybe on some of those nights we were the girls who characters like Bad Boy Blanchard had singled out to sing “Brown Eyed Girl” or “Black Magic Woman” to. The thing is--the songs, the night, the moment--it all screamed “we are young and we shall live forever.” And later when we realized, as Blanchard does, that may not be so true, the sound of the music always brings us back to possessing a time when life held no stop light. SET LIST is also a story of true friendship--the kind of bond the Celts called a soul friend. Someone who runs with you through all the back alleys and days of your life and knows you better than you know yourself. Atkins perfectly captures that friendship with Blanchard and Covey. Readers will make fast and furious friends with the SET LIST characters, follow them right out to the bus, and eagerly ride along to catch one last show.
Review by: Elaine Little, author of A SOUTHERN PLACE - July 1, 2018
America boasts many authors who can make us feel at home in Buckingham Palace, the Taj Mahal, and various mansions of the rich and famous. There are far fewer artists who have the same flair for making us feel comfortable in unfamiliar yet commonplace happenings and walks of life. In the later decades of the twentieth century, full-time employment as a musician was no longer just for churches, orchestras, and music teachers; clubs and restaurants in all major cities supported live music, creating a large number of “blue collar” musicians who had no trouble finding work despite any lack of formal training. SET LIST takes the reader into that vibrant and colorful era we assumed would never end yet became extinct before our eyes. For those born too late, it’s a glimpse of history. To those of us who lived it, SET LIST is a nostalgic reminder of all we lost. There is no present-day miracle as wonderful as playing real music on a real stage for real money: I feel incredibly sad for all the coming generations of musicians who will never know this experience. Thank you, Raymond Atkins, for remembering those days and their accompanying sound track. As my hair greys, my fingers wither, and my mind is present less and less, it’s great to know that this book will be there to take me back…
Review by: Shari Smith, author of I AM A TOWN and publisher/creator at Working Title Farm - July 1, 2018
Raymond Atkins is a chameleon. This time he is an aging rocker with a heart broken by life and lifestyle, but that's not why you read this or any of his books. You read Raymond Atkins to laugh, to marvel at description and insight, to see yourself in each of the characters he swears are fictional, and to understand yourself and your fellow man a little better. This time, however, he's taking his readers back, back, back to long summer nights of little sleep with the hum of a box fan wedged in a window while the dim glow of the green light on a Pioneer stereo receiver plays the soundtrack of youth pressed forever on vinyl. That he can take us back there, is but one of his gifts.