“I was going through divorce and he kind of was as well. “Richard and I struggled with a lot of the same things,” he says. At the same time, while on tour promoting the second album, Rateliff was also keeping tabs on Swift, who was dealing with his own drinking and health issues. Norah Jones, Peter Gabriel, James Taylor Tapped for Leonard Cohen Tribute AlbumĪlong with his overdue breakthrough came troubles: His drinking sometimes got out of control (to the point where he forced himself to stop during the completion of Tearing at the Seams), and he and his wife Jules separated and eventually divorced. But I heard it and said, ‘This is really good,’ and a lot of people obviously thought that as well.” “He told me he wanted to do this soul band on the side, just for fun,” says James Barone, who’s drummed for Beach House and Tennis and co-produced And It’s Still Alright with Rateliff and Night Sweats drummer Patrick Meese. The material that followed aimed self-consciously for a Southern-soul sound, and before long he had put together the horn-driven Night Sweats. But his new label, Rounder, passed on releasing the follow-up to Memory, and Rateliff was stalled once again.Īt the encouragement of a friend who suggested he cut a single, Rateliff pulled out his guitar one night in 2013 and wrote a song called “Trying So Hard Not to Know.” With it he arrived at a new musical avenue - what he called a merger of the Band and Sam and Dave. Born in the Flood was on the verge of a contract with the metal-oriented Roadrunner label when Rateliff opted instead to make a solo, ballad-heavy record, In Memory of Loss (leading to the breakup of Born in the Flood). Neither band gained much national traction. Missouri-born, he moved to Denver in 1998 and was eventually paying his dues with not one but two bands: the alt-rock–ish Born in the Flood and the more acoustic-based the Wheel. It wasn’t even a decade ago when Rateliff was playing unplugged singer-songwriter gigs with far fewer people in the crowd than at the sold-out Beacon Theatre. It’s nice to be able to just write songs because you’d like the idea of writing songs and being able to work through your own shit.” He always just did what he wanted to do in a world where everything needs to be some sort of commodity for the industry. “That’s what I really love about Harry Nilsson. “I was always drawn to do a record that maybe no one’s going to love, but you do it because it’s important to you,” says Rateliff, who these days looks like a slightly more groomed version of his bearded-woodsman self. What’s nowhere to be heard here is the boisterous energy of the Night Sweats. His husky voice and acoustic guitar picking are the focus of each song, with only occasional and muted accompaniment - and a few whimsical, light-hearted moments that self-consciously recall the music of Harry Nilsson and country singer-songwriter Roger Miller.
With varying degrees of sorrow, anger, and bitterness, the songs address the recent end of his marriage and the death of his friend, producer and musician Richard Swift, as well as Rateliff’s own struggles with sobriety. Next month he’ll release And It’s Still Alright, a subdued, sparely produced set of ambling-through-the-graveyard ballads that shifts back to his pre–Night Sweats days as a baritone-voiced bar-room troubadour. But tonight, he’ll start the process of throwing another wrench into his career, only two albums into his reinvention.
Rateliff’s breakthrough was hard won his two pre–Night Sweats bands came and went with little national attention. But the band’s 2015 debut appealed to an audience looking for alternatives to pop, hip-hop, and EDM, and sold more than half a million copies their 2018 follow-up, Tearing at the Seams, did nearly as well. The market for a Midwestern soul band fronted by a beefy, behatted guy who looked like Garth Hudson’s son barely seemed to exist at the beginning of the 2010s. One of the most unlikely success stories of the decade that just ended was that of Rateliff and his band, the Night Sweats. “He was like, ‘Can’t wait to see all you guys,’” Rateliff says in his hotel room a few hours before the show. But it was a member of Yola’s band who made Rateliff realize what he had gotten himself into.
He’s not rattled by the Christmas-themed benefit or the starry bill, which includes Mavis Staples, Mumford and Sons, and Yola. It rarely happens, but a few hours before he’s set to walk onstage at New York’s Beacon Theatre in early December, Nathaniel Rateliff is getting a little nervous.
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