Twilight’s dimmer switch lowers slowly as the sun sets in the distance, behind the old tenant shack that is now a weather-beaten work of folk art. The tables in the clearing flicker with candles that reflect off glasses of wine.
On the shack’s porch, Swearingen and Kelli, a country music duo out of Nashville, pair ringing acoustic guitars and tight harmonies.
In the audience, Kathy Dolan of Roswell, a long-time live music aficionado, describes the scene at Matilda’s Music Under the Pines as “similar to old Chastain Park, 30 years ago before it became popular.”
Mary Jane Potter, who goes by M.J., ought to know, seeing as how she co-owns Matilda’s. She affectionately calls it “a redneck Chastain.”
The folks at Matilda’s are not redneck in any Foxworthian sense, though. Sure, some salads in Tupperware and beer in red Solo cups have been schlepped in for the obligatory pre-concert picnic, but they are easily outnumbered by the bottles of Pinot Noir and homemade charcuterie plates being passed at the round plastic picnic tables.
Credit: Jenni Girtman
Credit: Jenni Girtman
On seven wooded acres north of Milton with a 250-person capacity, Matilda’s has one other notable difference from Atlanta’s Chastain Amphitheatre: As a rule, the audiences here shut up and appreciate the simple bliss of listening to live music outdoors on an evening in Georgia, when the songs come as sweet and clear as moonlight through the pines.
“It’s really more of a listening room, but outdoors,” says Potter of the lack of audience chitchat. “I try to control (talking over the music) but it’s hard. We tell people if you want to visit, try to do that in between songs.”
“It’s definitely a unique and awesome down-home experience,” says Jayne Kelli, half of this night’s act, who are marking their debut at Matilda’s. “Usually outdoor venues sort of disperse the energy, but somehow it felt intimate with the people. It felt like a little backyard, like you could reach out and touch the audience. It has its own vibe, out underneath the trees.”
Says Nicole Witt of Farewell Angelina, a Nashville-based group of three female vocalists that is a long-time crowd favorite at Matildas, “It’s one of my favorite places to play anywhere, just super magical.
“M.J. and (husband) Mark went to great lengths to make it that way. It is a place for regional touring artists to share their music with people who really love music and who are going to pay attention.”
Matilda’s first-timers Dan Deveau and Marie Thomas carry in folding canvas stadium chairs and set them up just a few feet from the stage but not blocking anyone else’s view.
Credit: Jenni Girtman
Credit: Jenni Girtman
“We love the ambience: open air, out in the middle of nowhere. It’s almost like we’ve been invited to someone’s private farm,” says Thomas, 70, a retired visual arts teacher.
And now, in the get-out-of-the-house summer of 2021, there’s not a face mask in sight.
The audience is dominated by Boomers, with a helping of Gen X and a small sprinkling of Millennials. Matilda’s is family-friendly, but on a recent Saturday evening there are few families with kids. Two couples with four children take over a big round table in the center. The youngsters have their phones out during the run up to the show, but when the music starts they put away their screens and focus on Swearingen and Kelli’s original songs and Simon and Garfunkel covers.
Indeed, hardly anyone in the audience looks at a phone, except a few who occasionally hold theirs aloft to shoot a video clip of the musicians in the soft evening light.
The 100-year-old shack that is Matilda’s stage and brand is covered with with folk art. Stage right of the duo stands a bottle tree, a tall stand of inverted empty cobalt blue glass bottles that calls back to a tradition of enslaved people in the South. According to legend, the bottles attract, then capture, evil spirits or ghosts.
A sign on the roof painted by Mark Potter reads “Waltzing Matilda,” but the place has nothing to do with Australia’s unofficial national anthem. For that matter, there isn’t even really a Matilda involved.
Back in 1999 in Alpharetta, Potter was planning to open an art gallery in a tiny house that used to be a tenant shack on a horse farm. She had an eye for art but no ear for a name and didn’t know what to call it. “An Atlanta graphic designer named Pat Dibona knocked on my door and showed me her portfolio,” she recalls. “She had a little character, sort of her alter ego, named Matilda.”
By the early aughts, Matilda’s was a successful folk art gallery when Potter decided to build a little stage on the back and create an intimate music venue, even though she had zero experience in the music business. In 2005, Matilda’s the music venue opened.
Credit: Jenni Girtman
Credit: Jenni Girtman
“We just learned through the school of hard knocks,” she says. “I eventually got to the point where I could pay the bands and make some money.
“And it’s still a labor of love,” she adds. “It’s not like I’m making a ton of money on this.”
All was well, if not very profitable, until 2018, when the Alpharetta property that was home to Matilda’s was sold to a developer, who scraped the land clean, as Potter puts it, to build another housing development.
Potter thought about closing up shop or starting over from scratch, but there was a third option: move everything further out. Curtis Mills, a property owner inclined toward historical preservation, owned seven acres outside of Milton, and had come to a Matilda’s show and liked what he saw.
Friends and fans held fundraisers, and the Potters moved the old tenant shack in its entirety to Mills’ land at the corner of Birmingham Highway (which is not really a highway) and Hickory Flat Road, about 35 miles north of downtown Atlanta.
It is now in its third season in what everyone on site calls “pretty much the middle of nowhere.”
“Our second season was COVID,” says Potter. “We lost the first 10 concerts. But because we were a small outdoor venue, we were able to do the required social distancing, so we started back up in July 2020 and did concerts through October. Our normal season is Saturday nights, May through October.”
Darkness envelops Matilda’s as the show goes on. M.J., her hair pulled back in a loose bun, sits smiling and nodding in a chair well off to the side, where she can take in the whole scene that she and Paul have created: the happy, mellow crowd; the tables covered in candles, wine glasses and food; the fairy lights strung overhead; the small stage.
Her plans for the future are not complicated in the least.
“I hope it just goes on and on and on,” she says.
CONCERT PREVIEW
Matilda’s Under the Pines. 8 p.m. every Saturday through October. Venue opens at 7 p.m. $27.50-$35. 850 Hickory Flat Road, Milton. Tables and chairs available on a first-come, first-served basis. Outside chairs and coolers permitted. If a show is canceled due to inclement weather, tickets are not refundable and can be used for a future concert. Concert and hotel packages available. 678-480-6932, www.matildasmusicvenue.com
Upcoming shows
B.J. Wilbanks Special. July 10
The Murphs. July 17
DeJaBlue Grass Band. July 24
John Paul White. July 31
