Nathaniel Rateliff

00:00:08 Speaker 1: Pushkin. Nathaniel Ratelift was set up at NYC's Town Hall this past Thursday, ready to play another stop on a solo tour. When that show, like many right Now, was canceled. Instead of packing it in and heading back to the hotel, Nathaniel played to an empty theater, streaming the show on Facebook. Making do was a central thesis of his new release, And It's still all right. Nathaniel has good reason to be optimistic too, despite some setbacks. He's been on a role the last few years with his band The Night Sweats. He's been a standout at nearly every festival, created his own line of cannabis with Willie Nelson called The Nights Dash, and this summer, if all's normal again, he's supposed to be torn with Bob Dylan. His new album is a real departure from what he's become known for, though, his first release without his band The Night Sweats in seven years, and it sounds much closer to the music he started making more than twenty years ago, more introspective and folky, and this chat with Bruce Hedlum. Nathaniel traces his musical lineage from his parents, who only allowed Christian music at home to his work with Night Sweats producer and brilliant musician Richard Swift. Swift died from complications of alcoholism in twenty eighteen, and a lot of Nathaniel's new songs are dedicated to him. These songs are his way of making sense of his friend's death, of letting himself and his audience know that despite the sadness, it's still all right. This is broken record liner notes for the Digital Age. I'm justin Richmond. There's Bruce and Nathaniel Raateliff from GSI Studios in New York. He starts by playing the album's title track, I was lovely, Thank you. I think every guitarist you just have to watch your right hand. You've got such a Where did you learn to fingerpick? I mean I've done. It's a weird almost like clawhammer style, UM, which I think I just kind of when I was younger, I used to do a lot of like sort of Almond Brothers kind of. Yeah, I'd switch in between UM using a pick and then like doing double stops. So I'd just like fold my pick in between my pointer and my middle finger. And then at some point that started to turn into that thing. And then yeah, so but you've got i mean your bass notes, it's like a like a train, but you've got the strum and you're you're picking after the strum. It's really it's doing a lot of work there. Thanks. You know. The other thing is I can't really Travis pick, which is essentially the same. Yeah, you can't. I can like fake it, but not in the same Yeah. I watched other people doing I'm like, damn it, why haven't I figured that out yet? But h well, I was fabulous. There's just so much going on in that song. So tell me about the song you just played for us. Um, Well, that's the title track the record was going to have you know that, that's the third title. Originally I was going to name it Russian, but I thought that that was a little too heavy and being the title track, um, the listeners would be drawn to listen to that first. And then I was going to name it all or Nothing because I was so excited about accomplishing writing that song because it was a little the structure of it, it was a lot more It's a little more in depth than I'm used to like digging into um. But then I was talking with a friend and like, you know, I I'm surprised you didn't name this record. And it's still all right because it kind of sums up up the whole record, you know it kind of you're talking about loss and in heartache and but then trying to find joy, you know, like and so that's yeah, you know, I talk a lot about It's like a conversation with myself and then also with other people throughout the song, depending on which line it is, you know, so people listening, a lot of them are going to know you from New York with Night Sweats, right, big brassy, soulful songs like SOB and You Worry Me. But this is really kind of returning to what you started doing before the Night Sweats. Yeah, I had probably ten maybe seven years, seven years for sure of like you know, just slumming it, you know, living living out of the van and trying to have a band with me. And I still you know, a lot of the guys in the Night Sweats and this new project are from people who play with me from back in those days as well. And you started now your family they were gospel singers, your mother and father. Yeah, my mom played in church and my dad too, So It was kind of like a family band, did you did you siblings that played in it as well. My sister Heather was two years older than me. She played piano and sang and then you know, sometimes it would just be like my mom and dad and then they would make me and my sisters sing, so we'd have this like four part harmony. But it was certainly that era of like, um, my mom and dad kind of came out of that like Jesus movement of the seventies and sixties, so more along the lines of like singer songwriter, folky kind of stuff. My mom played twelve string because I think some people are like, when you think of gospel, you think of like the Staple Singers, or even like the oak Ridge Boys or something. Yeah, yeah, Or I just feel like some people think that it's like the scene from you know, the Blues Brothers where James Brown as a pastor, you know, and it's like, especially when they think of the Night Sweats. I was like, I was, like, I listened to all that on my own. My mom did something totally different. But it was a good upbringing musically, you know, at least had a great home for and lots of encouragement to to to play and to listen to music, you know, like my dad Mom were always excited to like introduce something new to me, so really secular music as well. Not at first, but after my dad passed away, my mom sort of lightened up on the secular music. And then my dad, you know, unbeknownst to me, I had this like collection of secular music in the closet of all his old records, and so I was able to like kind of go through that, and after he passed away, it also felt made me feel like I had some sort of connection to him through those records. So so before he passed you found the records or did you find them afterwards? After he started to lighten up a little bit too, before he passed away, you know, because they they had some pretty they were very young when they joined the church and had a lot of traumatic stuff happened in their lives that led them into that, and so as they started to get into their thirties, they started lightening up a little bit. You know, do you remember the first record you found? Um? Yeah, I remember finding like Muddy Waters Folk Singer and Muddy Water Sings Big Bill Brunzi, and then like some of the other stuff. It was like there's some moody blues in there, you know, some unexpected stuff, because that was that era of music they listened to. But also my dad just started to be a little more comfortable about listening to the radio. And I remember like Bob Dylan coming on and just like having my mind blown or hearing Imagine for the first time and wondering why, Like, you know, I asked my parents. I was like, well, if you know, if God created music, how come our songs and church aren't better than this song with John Lennon wrote, you know, like, Okay, that is blasphemous now. Yeah, well, and you know, there was that whole idea. There was a humanist song. Humanistic song. I was like, but we're humans. That doesn't make any sense. Yeah, the new Heaven line, it's gotta be that's gotta be a little trouble in that. Yeah, right, yeah, you know you have to do that. I'm sorry. What was your father's name. Everybody called him Bud, but his real name was Cecil Clement. Oh that's a great name. I hated it, but I think it was great. Okay, Yeah, you've got to put the Cecil Clement right list list on Spotify, all the records you found? Oh yeah, I mean he was a huge Van Morrison Van two so okay, which is like the early Van you know, like I think you know, that really changed me a lot because I my mom listened to it a lot as well, so you know, there's a lot of Moon Dance, and then on my own I found like astral Weeks and the Bang Sessions and you know, okay, there's a lot of great stuff there. So after he died, did she change what she listened to? Yeah, she kind of like she joined like a CD like I don't know which which one of those companies it was, but like got a bunch of stuff like Almon Brothers and the Band I stole her like the Best of the Band CD, which was like my introduction. You know, I always thoughts it, you know, like when you go to a record store and people are like, oh, the best of but like the best of Bob Dylan and the Band. Like that was like kind of my introduction to that stuff, and like it sparked my curiosity and then I like became a record collector and like I started, you know, thumbing through everything I could get my hands on and you know, and was lucky enough to like find people who had like original bootlegs of the basement tapes and that stuff really like just kind of changed my life. And those are records that are huge parts of my life. Now, yeah, do you remember do you remember a gospel songs you sang? Oh? Yeah, I mean it's like a it's like a bad radio station in my head really, so okay, well, what are they just just a title or two? So has the Deer is one of the I think is one of the names. M Lord. I left her name on high I mean all sorts of stuffy and my mom Actually she wrote her own songs too, so yeah, yeah, and like her own religious songs and still does. And I guess that's one of those things I'd always loved to do for someday. She's always wanted to make a record. So do you ever have you ever played one of her songs on stage? I haven't. No, it's for me. It's like, you know, I feel so far removed from the religious side of things that I don't want to encourage anyone to move that way. With the power of your voice, you will, yeah, exactly converted millions of people. That's the conversion is the problem I had. I think that's why I kind of moved away from it because I was doing some work with the Hopie Native Americans and I was there on an Easter Sunday, and I remember just feeling just embarrassed to be a Christian and to be like trying to force or you know, just trying to like minister to people whose beliefs have been around so much longer historically than even Christianity had been around. And I was really made me question what we were doing and was this in Colorado? Um? You know, that was in um To Hope Reservation, which is in the center of the Navajo Reservation, which is we came in through Flagstaff and I believe it's in Nevada. So were you doing mission work? Yeah? I was um which I you know, ended up not you know, I was only I was really I was only eighteen or seventeen or eighteen, So it's hard to be accountable for your decisions at that age, you know, Like I was certainly still a kid learning. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One of my uncle's was a ministra or no yeah, on a reservation as we called them in Canada, and it was always very it's a strange Yeah, when you say conversion, that's the thing. That's a dangerous word. I feel like, you know, Um, I really like some of the other things we did. We worked a lot with just like feeding homeless people and um and talking to them like they're really people. Um. And I loved being a part of the Hopie community when I was there and learning about their culture. But I was more interested in learning about their culture than trying to point out what was what, you know, try to find something wrong with it, you know, I I love your culture and now drop it. Yeah, exactly. And I think that was you know, like, um, that was you know, the core of Western expansion. You know, well not even I love your culture, but just like we're eliminated. So yeah, and we'd like your land. Yeah, we love your land exactly. We like that too. There's a lot of religious language, or at least religious imagery, and some of your songs in expecting to lose but standing in the water when you write those, are you are you conscious that that's that it comes from that tradition or is it just is it just a language? You know? Um, it's a language I know, and it's something I always loved about Leonard cohen songs like he was a Buddhist but was you know, loved the religion he was born into. And but if you listen to his songs, it was like there could be so sensual, but have these like references to biblical verse. And since it's you know, such a common I guess that language is so common or so well known, at least at one point. I feel like it's something people can relate to in a way, like, you know, even like to stand in the water, m the reference of being baptized or something like that, we can like if you remove the religious aspect of it, you can still have this cleansing idea you know, that comes along with it. But I feel like it's a nice reference, it's a nice way to it's nice vernacular. I guess, I don't know. We'll be right back with more from Nathaniel Ratelift after the break. We're back with Bruce and Nathaniel Rateliff. So tell me about Richard Swift, who was who was a collaborator of yours and a producer on Night Sweats. Yeah, I had met him years ago in London, was opening for Delta Spirit and Matt Basquez was a good buddy and he loved Richard swift stuff, and that's when I was first introduced to him. But then it kind of took a while for us to circle back to each other, and I had the send them just randomly sent them demos through the advice of a friend of this stuff I was doing in my attic just by myself, which eventually became The Night Sweats. He really liked it and wanted to make a record, and then I ended up having a record deal and my and our guy suggested I work with him, and I was like, well, we've already decided we wanted to work together. So so I went out to Cottage Grove, Oregon, which just south Eugene where Richard had a studio, by myself at first, and just had a huge batch of songs and we just kind of started working, you know, like mostly with one mic in the room. But it was like an instant I don't know, we just had like a kindred spirit, you know. And I know if you talk to anybody that knew Richard, he would they would probably all say that they felt like he made them feel very special. You know, how did you build those songs and I don't want to talk about Night Sweats songs, but were you always hearing those arrangements in your head when you were writing? I mean I tend to have that with a lot of songs that I write, is hearing these other voicing, other instruments, and that's kind of part of the fun process, you know, once you get past the chords and the words and melodies, as filling in all those gaps and like figuring out what those other sounds are, you know, because sometimes you'll be like, oh, and horns would be great here, and then you try it and you're like, that's not That's not the sounds that I'm hearing in my head. So you keep searching. So I did that, you know. I kind of had a lot of that with Richard and even like with the demos Um because some of that material ended up being you know, like songs like You Need Me was one that I had written, um maybe around that first Night Sweats record somewhere in there, but just never had a home. It reminds me, I mean, maybe it's a lack of imagination on my part, but musicians who can think of just you know, without another group of musicians in the room who can who can think of those kind of arrangements for some songs and reminds me a little. Graham Parker was like that. When he started in England. He was this pub rocker and then he went in and they did a whole He was like this rhythm and blues guy. And I always thought, Wow, how does somebody do that and then turn around and write like you acoustic songs and what It was a nice thing about working with Richard two because I would I would always have these you know, like like I said, from the start of the song, there's always these other voicings you hear, these other sounds or inspirentation that you want. But that was really the thing that Richard was so good at, is like even if I had those ideas, sometimes he would be like, no, We're not going to do that, which can be kind of you know, you can get your feelings hurt, but you kind of have to like let go of that and know that, like just try to stay out of the way of the song, you know, and trust that somebody like Richard was trying to make the song the best it can be. But he would always have that just these like incredible ideas to make a mediocre song be a great song, you know. Um, and sometimes that was eliminating some of those voices and instrumentation that I thought made the song what it was. So you know, wow, did he do the first night? Sweats did? The first and second one second one, and then and then even the EP we did, he ended up like he mixed and um, I think he added a couple of things to it as well. So yeah, and then sadly he's and he passed away, Yeah, at forty one, so pretty pretty did you see it before he I saw him. As soon as I heard he was in the hospital, I flew out there. I just kind of stopped everything, yeah, and wanted to be there that I just wanted to know what was happening, you know, I just knew he was really sick. And then um yeah, and then and then he pretty quickly when I was there for a day and then left, and then he quickly went into hospice, and I went back again, you know, to just like I don't know, I wanted to shake him and like you, I wanted him to be coherent, and I wanted to talk to him and like you know, trying to make him fight for for something, I guess, you know, but he wasn't really I wasn't really coherent by the time I got there. So are there particular songs written in this album about him? Yeah? You know, and it's still all right there. There's moments that it's you know, there's moments where I'm talking about him. Rush On in particular, is only just is just for specifically Richard and kind of talking to him and sort of about him and that like, and I guess, you know, a lot of the album kind of deals with the same thing that Richard and I shared or or um. I guess it's the thing that we all share. Is this like un unspeakable or undescribable brokenness that I don't think we allow ourselves to be, to be vulnerable enough to talk about to everyone. And I just I just kind of question whether, you know, if we allow ourselves to be able to to vocalize those things and to realize that we all share that sort of similar aching, that maybe wouldn't be as heavy. So I guess, like songs like rush On, I'm really talking about recognizing that in him, but I recognize it in myself as well. Okay, do you want to play another song. Sure, I'll do a little upbeat one, but yeah, okay, the songs all or nothing. Yeah, so this one in particular, it's not very heavy. But I remember I played it for Richard and it would take me a long time to kind of figure out the chord progression. But he was like, man, you can't be too Nielsen. So when we did the record, we really try to make the arrangement and production on it a little more like a little touch of Schmilsen in the night. You guys love Harry Nielsen. We both did. Yeah, So okay, we go, We'll be right back after a quick break. We're back with more from Nathaniel rate list. When did you know you had this voice? You do a lot of things in that song, and I for your career, I mean, you can sing in a lot of different ways. Um, it took me a while to be comfortable with it, and even like since my started a solo career until now, I feel like I've learned so much and part of that process is learning how to be comfortable in your voice. How did you do that? I mimicked things for a long time just out of curiosity to see if my voice could do it or like try to understand it and like and I guess this is the kind of thing that I think people take lessons for. I just I don't know if I just didn't have anything else to do or what. But I mean I was working the whole time, so yeah, we should mention that as well as being a working musician, you always had a job. Oh yeah, all sorts of crappy ones too. So but you know, like when you're a janitor, Yeah, you're a janitor. I was a janitor when I was sixteen for a high school and when I didn't go to high school, so you didn't go to high school, no, My last year of school was seventh grade, so so then I ended up being like a janitor and groundskeeper. And it was kind of embarrassing, you know. It was at the school you would have gone to. Was at the local school. Yeah, wow, I lived in that town, so I should have been going to school there. But then I was like during school year cleaning either cutting grass there or or cleaning the rooms at you know, like sort of a swing shift. But I would always sing. I just kind of I started to love singing because I love music, and when I was younger, I was really embarrassed of it. But you know, as I kind of grew out of the church singing and to you know, everything from trying to sing like the Everly Brothers and listen to their harmonies, to like how Matt King Cole and um Sam Cook how they how they enunciated their words and how they shaped their words, and even into like the early you know, James Brown, the fabulous Flames, like the his voice then where he was more of a crooner versus like the Funk days. I just love the characteristics and all of that, and you know, and so it was like how, you know, like just try to sing like that, you know, like I guess you know you'd good teachers. Yeah, yeah, I guess some of those guys are great teachers. But you also do something that a lot of people don't do so much anymore, which is you used almost different voices. I mean, James Brown did do that, but a lot of singers now I think feel that I must use my authentic voice, and that's the voice they use for everything. You're you'll belt, you'll whisper, You'll do a lot of different things with your voice. I mean those are all my voice too. I mean, well, yeah, I think. I think at a time, I struggled with the identity of what my voice was, you know, and would like on some of the earlier records, I felt like I would stay in you know, and like like in Memory of Loss, I feel like my voice is kind of restrained because I'm not taking on different characteristics that I thought the song needed, you know, or like songs like all or Nothings, Like the song I just did is totally different than the other one, but I didn't feel like I was singing in a character when I wrote it. It seemed like that voice was appropriate for that song, and so I try to listen to that, like like shape my voice to what the song requires. Did you have the songs going in or a lot of them worked out in the studio? I had most of them already demoed, and except for All or Nothing, sorry, All or Nothing was mostly done but and it's still all right. I wrote one morning, like I had a loose sketch a bit, and that's kind of like multiple processes of how I wrote that one, but then just finished it one morning before going to the studio and then recorded that day. So which is a great feeling to like write something and then have it recorded in a matter of hours and like this is like a real release, you know. So I guess for someone who wrote songs while being a gardener and looking at it truck depot and all of that. Yeah, writing on the road, you know, musicians complain about it. For you, that's like, wow, it's still it's still hard for me because there's no personal space on the road, you know. And there's also when you you know, you have seven other goofballs you're hanging out with, there's this energy that consumes a lot of your time, which is you just like you know, we're all really close friends and we all want to hang out, and especially even like our crew, like you know, some of the guys we've been touring with since we were in a van together and now you know, we have these big productions and their days are really long. So at some point, you know, when you have a day off, you're like, well, what are we gonna do together? It's not usually I'm gonna sit in this room and right all day. It's usually like I pour my heart out. I don't know, can we have like like go to a water park or do something crazy today? You know, And like all have fun together and so it um, but really i'd like to see you in the crew at the water park. That could be project. Yeah it is a pretty good time. Yeah, you're supposed to have kids for that with you, just just like a bunch of like slightly intoxic intoxicated adults. Yeah yeah, car park. Yeah all right. Uh so you went in. This album has uh it's got a really beautiful sound, thank you. It's a lot um. I don't know how deliberate it was. It's a it's at times a very fifty sound. It sounds like a lot of reverb, but my right, yeah, I mean, you know, we kind of try to follow the lines that um. You know, as we worked with Richard, he would always um, like first record, Like we would make records for next to nothing with him, so I'd still have a record budget, and then he would just be like, man, use that and invest it back into like your home recording space and like here's the gear you need, which it basically set me up with everything that he had. You know, I think out of just laziness, not out of helpfulness, because we were planning on working together a lot, and so he would want to like come over and have the same setup. You know. He's like, well, if I'm not gonna work in my spot, at least your place has all the same stuff. Yeah. Um, so we ended up with a lot of that kind of sounding stuff. I have like a a kgb X twenty reverb, which is sort of like the like we ran the strings through that and they use that for Frank Sinatra's voice on certain things, and it's just really rich and to be X fifteen or ten and a twenty five and so those are all analog reverb units that aren't plate reverbs. But I love that sound. It's it's hard. So how do they work if it's not a plate? Is it? This actually has a giant coil in it, like to b X twenty has a coil that's like four foot Wow. Yeah, they're they're a real pain if they break. There's really no one to fix them anymore that I know of, so um but yeah, um so essentially it sends a signal through this giant spring and then back out the other side. Wow. But yeah, it's hard to go. I think with the twenty you actually have to use like an effects loop and like be able to control it because there's no way to reduce it. It's just like all verb or none. So yeah, by the way, we're in a studio here, and I can see all the guys in the booth are all all on eBay now seeing if there's old good Luck fun on the BX fifteen or two the other. Yeah, there's a lot of fakes out there. To be careful. Yeah, the other side of the album. They're not going to hear it here. But I hope everybody gets this album and listens. Is there's a lot of a lot of voice and a lot of like choral right voicings in it, which I'm assuming you brought in people to do that. That's not well, like tonight number two is just me and Patrick, Is that right doing all? I know? Everybody's like, oh, you got a choir here? I was like, there's two of us. Yeah. I just actually just keep larrying at doing different harmonies on top of each other, first at first doing it one on one and then just like standing in the studio with four twenty ones like singing into them while we're listening to the playback together. So wow, well it sounds great, thank you, And you've got a lot of strings and I think you're touring with strings, all right, Yeah, we have a quartet with us. We Yeah, we did like one night where we did three songs and we brought in like a I think it was nine or ten strings players, and it's like it was kind of like the I just finished the studio at my house and I was like, well, this is definitely the test of what we can do in here. We ended up pulling it off and getting the songs done. So yeah. So yeah, it was a musicians unions, so you're paying a lot of money from yea um, but there's a lot of like melotron strings. I feel like that was one of Richard's secret weapons to the modern melotrons are pretty nice. I don't know. It worked for the Beatles and the Beach Boys, so I don't know I would work now, you know. Yeah, but it's got a nice It gives the album this very nice late sixties folk right on records. Remember it was it was usually the not very good folk artists who suddenly had like symphony orchestras behind them, right, I mean even but this is really beautiful five Leaves Left record. Nick Drake has like tons of orchestration on it too. Yeah, but like you know, even like Leonard Cohen songs of Leonard Cohen, Like there's some orchestration on air, but then there's these just arrangements of like really weird sounding instruments that like float in for a minute and then they're gone. I've always loved that stuff though. Yeah, he uses a jazz harp on I can't remember which song, but it's all of a sudden you're like, is this a joke song? Because you hear and then it just kind of fades out. Yeah, could we coax you into one more song? I'm gonna do Kissing our friends. It's beautiful. Guitar did very well. You were good too, but the guitar didn't nice. They're a little bit Thanks so much for coming in. I hope we play this, and I hope people at your church are like, how did we lose that guy? We gotta get him back. It's not happening. Yeah, well they can dream. Thanks Nathaniel Ratelift for stopping by to talk to Bruce and for playing songs from this new record. You can hear his new album and it's still alright wherever you get your music and check out our favorite Nathaniel ratelift songs at broken record podcast dot com, plus Nathaniel's put a few of his own favorite songs on the list as well. Broken Record is produced with help from Jason gambrel Me LaBelle Lea Rose, Matt Laboza, and Martin Gonzalez for Pushkin Industries. A theme musics by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond. Thanks for listening.