Another album from Vancouver's the Bills? Yes please!

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The Bills had an eight-year gap between albums.

Marc Atkinson was destined to be musical. Mom and dad both taught classical piano so young Marc went for guitar, though not before he got his Grade 10 in the Toronto Royal Conservatory piano course. And he drummed. In fact, when he first went to Malaspina College to study music, it was a toss-up which instrument he would focus on. He only chose guitar because he thought it was his weakest link and that making it his major might help him improve. He improved.

Now widely considered one of the finest acoustic guitarists/composers around, he has released four CDs with the Marc Atkinson Trio, co-starring Joey Smith on bass and Chris Frye on guitar. Filled with an increasing number of original Atkinson material as time went on, there's a nod to the virtuosity of Gypsy jazz guitar great Django Reinhardt throughout.

Around the same time as the trio began recording in 2000, Atkinson also launched what was then called the Bill Hilly Band, now just the Bills. That meant adding yet another instrument to his arsenal: the mandolin.

"When the Bills were formed we all decided to take an instrument that none of us had ever really played before," says Atkinson. "We didn't do it with the idea that we're going to goof around on them, we really wanted to learn. It was very inspiring so we all worked really hard on our instruments."

For mandolin guidance Atkinson turned not so much to bluegrass as the dazzling Russian-born jazz/swing player Dave Apollon, whose 50-year career spanned vaudeville through the 1940s, when he actually played with Reinhardt, until his death in the early '70s.

There have been three all-acoustic Bills releases over the years comprising a variety of material from traditional to classical to old standards and originals, all delivered with great verve and virtuosity.

"We're all Beatles fans and the way they did it, they learned hundreds and hundreds of tunes to understand the genre before they started writing their own," says Atkinson. "We thought, 'Let's do that with folk music. Let's learn hundreds of folk tunes and once we've done that then we're going to start composing our own. At the same time, let's learn new instruments.'

"We were just getting together having beers and playing music but then we toured around Europe for a couple of months, busking, and the band really came together. When we came back we decided to record our first album and we hit the folk festivals and we haven't turned back since."

Except the last Bills album came out a long eight years ago. A few months ago Atkinson and Chris Frye were talking about how they really needed to make another and that their favoured studio, Joby Baker's Baker Studios in Victoria, was available two months hence.

So over those two months Frye and Atkinson, the only two original Bills, sketched out melodies and harmonies and together with the rest of the current band, Adrian Dolan (fiddle, accordion, vocals) and Winnipegger Richard Moody (violin, viola, vocals), recorded Yes Please in a month. They composed a lot as they recorded, giving themselves room for pleasant surprises. There are plenty over the 13 tracks, all but one original.

"I'm actually most excited about this Bills record than I have been about any of them," says Atkinson. "I think the songwriting is getting more mature, the songs feel very natural when we play them."

The Bills play the West End Cultural Centre Saturday. Tickets are $20.50 at Ticketmaster; Sweet Alibi opens.

-- Postmedia News

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition September 13, 2012 E4