ATTICUS ANTHEM Bjorn Franklin – Lead Vocals & Acoustic Guitar Johnny Marchetta – Lead Electric Guitar & Vocals Jared McGivern – Drums & Percussion Rob Anney – Bass Guitar Atticus Anthem are from the Midlands, an Alternative British band led by the “softly spoken kid with tattoos”, Bjorn Franklin. After foregoing the traditional routes trodden by his peers, in 2005 lead singer Bjorn Franklin left for America at 18, not knowing where or why but willing to follow a path that would see him move from Boston to New York, and end in Colombia, developing his innate passion for music in all its forms and beginning to hone his craft as a burgeoning songwriter. Forming a strong band of friends on his travels, the rite of passage that saw him playing to anyone who would listen would eventually see him at his most self-aware when he decided to return to England to put together a band. He met drummer Jared McGivern first through extended family, an encounter that left an indelible mark on the drummer’s memory. “Bjorn had been asked to sing at the party we were at, this softly spoken kid with the tattoos tapped me on the shoulder and asked for help setting up his mic and guitar as he didn’t have the first clue about it. You could hear a pin drop in the room when he began to sing, everyone just stopped what they were doing, completely drawn in by him.” Jared immediately contacted his friend, lead guitarist Johnny Marchetta, as they had played together in a previous band. Both shared a love of big beats and chiming guitars, and an ability to know what the other was thinking as they would bounce idea after idea off each other long after band practice had finished. And so it was that as Bjorn was moving around the Americas to find his voice, Johnny and Jared would similarly continue to travel between Birmingham and Nottingham as often as possible to continue what they had started. Locking themselves away for months on end, the song-writing partnership that subsequently developed between Bjorn and Johnny would be the catalyst for the band’s distinctive sound. Excited about what they had begun to create, yet determined not to rush the process at the expense of the songs, it wasn’t until August 2008 that Rob Anney was recruited to provide the solid foundation of the band. Now as a four-piece, new songs formed that would be on a different level to anything any of them had done before. Johnny recalls, ”There was no awkward moment, straight away there was this fluidity as we went about putting things together in rehearsal, whether by luck or judgment we were able to take the core ideas of songs and had this ability to know what would work as a band and what wouldn’t. The different tastes in music of each of us somehow come together and meet in the right place”. Franklin’s searching rock n roll journey is at the very heart of Atticus Anthem, his own voice a rock blues cry set against killer melodies and a sound that has already been compared to Band Of Horses. Lyrically he tells of those experiences, reflecting the negatives of leaving loved ones behind and of trying to find a home in a different country. Inspired by the fictional lawyer Atticus Finch from the film, ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, the band christened themselves Atticus Anthem. Live the band’s strict rehearsal schedule has paid off; their confident musicianship and instinctive delivery is impressive in such a young band, and their versatility is shown in the subtle ‘Southside’ to the soaring, epic and ambitious sound of ‘Movie Nights’. Both appear on their debut, self-released EP ‘Slow Down Gracetown’, released on 10th October 2011.