Naming a band can be laborious. Not so for the Atkinsons.

The local rock group formed in 2003 as a duo featuring singer-songwriter Dickie Wood and mandolinist Jeff Williams, who frequently linked up for open mic performances at the since-shuttered Matt’s Village Pub. Before they knew it, they’d landed an opening gig at Poe’s Pub and were asked how they should be billed. On a whim, they turned to a nearby open-mic compatriot, Gary Atkinson, and asked what his last name was.

“If you don’t mind, that’s what we’re going to call ourselves,” Wood remembers proposing. “He’s a super-nice, smiley guy, and he goes, ‘That sounds f—king great!’”

The Atkinsons will celebrate 20 years of music-making with a special anniversary show on Friday, Aug. 11 at Hardywood Park Craft Brewery. Over two decades, the spontaneously named group has grown to include seven members (to be clear, Gary isn’t one) while performing countless gigs, recording a pair of heartfelt albums and hosting a beloved concert series that gave original music by Richmond artists a platform. It’s an enviable resume. “There’s not a great amount of people that you can say have been a band for 20 years,” says Jamie Wood, who sings backup, plays tambourine and shaker and handles booking for the Atkinsons. “We’re in a small, little family.”

A band and a family

Family comes up frequently in conversation with the Woods. It’s mentioned in relation to Atkinsons lyrics, which are primarily penned by Dickie and pull narrative bits and pieces from his family’s past. It comes up in relation to the prominence of music in Jamie and Dickie’s married life — when they’re pointing out that their daughters, both in their 20s, have always known them as gigging musicians, or that their younger daughter designed the anniversary show poster

The other five members of the Atkinsons are practically family themselves. “We all know each other really well,” Jamie notes. “It’s more than just the music. We know their families and their wives and their dogs.” Weekly rehearsals take place in the Woods’ basement, which is part neighborhood bar, part practice space. “I grew up with a basement bar my dad had made,” Jamie says. “Orange formica, 1970s shit on the wall, and all that. So now it’s full-circle that we have this bar.”

The Woods live near the south side of the Huguenot Memorial Bridge, and their basement is filled with instruments — house drum set and bass rig included — set up and ready to go. It makes getting together easy; leaving is the hard part. “It’s like Christmas,” Dickie jokes while reflecting on how “one more beer” at the end of practice frequently turns into a few as bandmates belly up to the basement bar. “Relatives are trying to say goodbye, and then they leave, you’re standing at the door, you’re walking to the car and nobody leaves. It’s like Christmas every week.”

Jamie joined up just a few months after the group’s inception, having been inspired by seeing Buddy and Julie Miller perform at the Library of Congress. “I cried,” she says. “It was beautiful, and it was a husband-and-wife team. I joined the band a week later.” Though she sang in high school choir and hears vocal harmonies preternaturally, whether they’re there or not, it was still a leap of faith. “I thought I was going to throw up the first time I was onstage,” she confesses. She’s since established an easy rapport with drummer Kris Krull, who joins Jamie in complementing Dickie’s melodic lead, and she’s stood on some of the region’s most prominent stages during Atkinsons shows at the Broadberry, the National, Front Porch Fest and FloydFest.

Finding their footing

Dickie went through his own confidence-building process at Matt’s Village Pub ahead of the Atkinsons’ formation. He’d played in bands since he was 15, but never as a lead singer. Inspired by a bourgeoning early 2000s alt-country movement — Whiskeytown and Old 97’s in particular — he decided to pursue a similar approach and more serious songwriting, with Matt’s as his proving ground. “You have to go get your sea legs on somewhere,” he says, “so I started doing open mic, just so I could sing and play without closing my eyes.”

At Matt’s, he found more than his footing. As his partnership with Jeff Williams galvanized, he found a sense of community — other performers who listened attentively, friendships that have lasted to this day, and even his favorite drink waiting for him by the time he sat down. “I felt like I was in really good company,” Dickie recalls. “These guys were there for you as much as you were there for them.”

As the Atkinsons built their network gigging, showing up for other bands and getting to know venue owners, they looked to pay forward the support they received by founding the monthly Richmond Roots Revival concert series. During its 3.5-year run in the mid-2000s, Jamie diligently booked the bands, pairing two genre-complementary bands with an acoustic opening act with one rule in mind: “You had to concentrate on original music,” she says.

The series was a hit, filling venues like Legend Brewing Company, Poe’s Pub, Cary St. Cafe and Bogart’s with fans open to hearing original compositions by local artists. Though Dickie remembers some pushback from cover bands, the mission was clear: “We’re just trying to support the singer-songwriter who tries to get a group of guys together to play songs that they worked so hard on writing.” It helped that venues benefited as well. “What made that work was the bars making a profit,” he adds. “We have three bands’ worth of fans coming in, so most places are jam-packed.”

Setting the stage

The Atkinsons have developed close relationships with venues all over Richmond, but Hardywood holds special significance. They’ve been playing the original location since it began hosting music. “It was the old building,” Jamie remembers. “It was before they had barrels in the back.”

“We brought in our own PA and everything,” Dickie adds, before joking about having to adjust to the strength of craft beers in those early brewery boom days. Hardywood itself hosted the 2012 signing of Virginia Senate Bill 604, which allowed on-site consumption of alcohol at breweries — a turning point for local musicians, given the explosion of gigging opportunities that followed. The Woods can remember a time when stages were scarce and Richmond’s music scene was competitive. “Richmond has expanded so much from back in those days when there were only a handful of places that had live music,” Jamie says. “Now there are so many.”

Rare rewards await groups that make music for 20 years. Perspective is one. Familiarity is another; it wards off pre-show jitters and forgives you for skipping a practice, as the Atkinsons often will the Tuesday after a weekend gig. While they’ve intentionally shrunk their yearly show count from upwards of 40 to a dozen or so, the band isn’t finished forging new ground. They’re chipping away at recording their third album of original material, and they’ll have new merch — tasting glasses, stickers and t-shirts — for sale at their anniversary show. They’re also planning to invite up a special guest performer that night: their namesake, Gary Atkinson, who has never actually played with the band.

“I’m not sure he’s ever stood in front of a band,” Dickie says.

The Atkinsons will perform at Hardywood Park Craft Brewery on Ownby Ln. on Friday, Aug. 11. Tin Can Fish Band will also perform. The event starts at 6 p.m. Admission is free. For more information, visit theatkinsons.us.