Truckers Atlas is dead, long live Truckers Atlas

Nottingham Co-Op will host a massive farewell show for DIY venue Truckers Atlas as its proxy.

Truckers Atlas—a notable DIY house venue—unexpectedly shut its doors in June. When its closure was publicly announced via an Instagram post, the venue still had several shows on the docket. A handful of those shows were successfully relocated, while others never saw the light of day. Enter: Trucker’s Atlas Is Fucking Dead.

Closer to festival than show, this eight-act extravaganza will take place on Saturday, December 16. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m., providing a half-hour segment for attendees to gather before the show’s 7 p.m. start time. Admission will be on a sliding scale of $10-15, though the flyer notes that no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

In the Instagram post announcing the show, Friendly Spectres‘ Cam Schellor-Suitor—an integral part of Truckers Atlas’ operations and the drummer for Dear Mr. Watterson—writes:

The last show at Truckers wasn’t planned to be the last and we had more planned for this year. Shit happens, that’s diy baby, etc. But I took a bunch of the bands from bills I was planning for fall and crammed them into an unreasonably large bill that Nottingham let me book there for some reason.

Two noise sets and six rock and roll sets. Bring water and wear yr comfiest shoes, it’s gonna be a long dumb night. Send a message if you have any questions about the show. All the love to all of you.

Eight acts is a mean feat, but the lineup and the motive warrants consideration from prospective attendees. Dear Mr. Watterson, Lunar Moth, The Nile Club, Shoobie, The Stinkeyes, and We Should Have Been DJs are all scheduled to play. Truckers Atlas Is Fucking Dead will also feature noise sets from Boogie Frank and Cambodian Sim Card, punctuating a lineup heavy on scrappy, energetic punk bands.

As a concept, it’s an endearing window into an empathetic, no-band-left-behind ethos that’s critical to the nature of fostering a healthy DIY music community. That the show is taking place at Nottingham—a DIY venue with an incredibly rich history—is appropriate and speaks to the kinship that can be fostered in DIY cultures.

While information on the noise acts is, unsurprisingly (as is often the case with underground noise acts) difficult to find anywhere online, the bands on the bill should be familiar to anyone who keeps a finger on the pulse of Madison and Milwaukee’s punk communities. Dear Mr. Watterson and Lunar Moth are personally responsible for some of my favorite songs to come out of Madison over the past two years, while We Should Have Been DJs are a long-running Madison staple with a consistently impressive track record. All three are high on frenetic energy and heavy on scintillating guitar figures. 

Shoobie—who are Oshkosh-based but regularly play in both Madison and Milwaukee—released one of the year’s more memorable live albums in June that provided a strong document of their abilities as performers. Milwaukee-based band The Nile Club kicked off 2023 with their January full-length, Wake Up With A Sense Of Pride. Like Shoobie’s live record, Wake Up is a release defined by psych-tinged aesthetics, lovingly blown-out mid-fi production, and overall punchiness. Where the two differ is The Nile Club’s penchant for genuinely wild stylistic swings. Whether it’s exploring tranquility or brutality, Wake Up is invariably riveting. The Stinkeyes, a Fox Valley area band, lean into a classic, unapologetically brash strain of punk rock and round out the bands performing.

All six bands are worth seeing in their own right, and the mystique surrounding the noise acts is another element of enticement when it comes to reasons to attend. But at the forefront of those reasons is to celebrate Madison’s punk DIY community and culture. Truckers Atlas didn’t last as long as it should have, and Nottingham has likely endured much longer than most people would have expected after it launched 52 years ago. There’s a lot of history wrapped up in Truckers Atlas Is Fucking Dead, and all of it’s worthy of celebration.