Known foremost for his booming voice as the frontman of Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats – whose thunderous song “S.O.B.” became a worldwide phenomenon in 2015 – Nathaniel Rateliff can also sing a little ditty. As the age-old American saying goes, Rateliff “contains multitudes.” In fact, as Rateliff puts it, he sees himself as multiple characters when he writes, a skill that affords him the opportunity to record a roaring chorus or a collection of enchantingly pretty songs, as he does on his latest solo release, And It’s Still Alright.
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“I feel like these songs certainly come from a different place and wouldn’t make sense on a Night Sweats record,” Rateliff says. “The Night Sweats are fueled by this certain type of energy, a real physical energy. I want us to work hard on stage. But this new stuff is not coming from that place. It’s about subtlety and taking our time with the songs.”
On the new record, which incorporates some of the musicians from the Night Sweats, Rateliff demonstrates his knack for playing myriad roles. He’s tender on the title track. His voice rolls like breeze over some green country hills, his rhythmic acoustic guitar backed by a soft, humming electric slide. On the album’s third song, “All Or Nothing,” Rateliff recalls a vaudevillian sensibility, his voice bouncy and somehow a bit clownish. But the lyrics of the song reminisce mournfully, offering a sense of the forlorn despite the all-in-good-fun packaging. On the relatable, “You Need Me,” Rateliff wonders, eyebrow raised, why he’s being asked to help by someone who just broke off a relationship with him. It’s the equivalent of a text message response to an ex in which you write, “Why are you still texting me?”
That many of the songs on the thoughtful, 10-track record ring both personal and diverse is no coincidence. Rateliff – whose last solo record, Falling Faster Than You Can Run, was released in 2013 – knows that mining personal stories and experience is both fertile ground and necessary work. In his life, he’s toiled as a day laborer, worked as a church missionary and played thousands of gigs in venues of all kinds. There is a great deal there to unpack for an artist, but he didn’t always feel this way about his craft. To write what he knows best is a new lesson he’s learned over time and a point of creative and personal evolution.
“I’ve become more honest with myself,” the 41-year-old says. “Part of the writing process for me, part of my personal growth and my way of dealing with the circumstances in my life, whether good or bad, is directly related to what I’m writing. The art of that writing process is to write about those situations in order to relinquish and move forward.”
Among the personal difficulties in Rateliff’s life of late have been a divorce after an 11-year marriage and the death of his longtime friend and Night Sweats prolific music-producing partner, Richard Swift, who fell ill due to complications from alcoholism in 2018. Prior to Swift’s death, he and Rateliff had begun discussing the production of And It’s Still Alright, but after Swift’s passing, Rateliff needed a new plan. The idea had been to record Rateliff similarly to how Swift recorded the Northwest-based songwriter Damien Jurado – tracking voice and guitar, then letting Swift overdub instruments and other sounds. Instead of abandoning that notion, Rateliff and his two producers, Patrick Meese and James Barone, used Swift’s studio for the album and recorded as he would have in homage to their late friend.
“Our approach was, ‘What would Richard do on this song?’” Rateliff says. “So, there are many elements of his production style on the record.”
As a result, the album is layered, calmer than any Night Sweats album could be. But it also feels familial and loving. Swift and Rateliff were close friends. Both grew up in strict religious homes, and both learned to love music so much that it became their livelihoods. And since Rateliff, Meese and Barone were, in a way, keeping Swift’s legacy alive on And It’s Still Alright, it stands to reason that the album would include themes of personal perseverance and courage through tragedy. For Rateliff, these have been essential elements to his own life ever since he was young.
“Regardless of what happens in our lives,” Rateliff says, “there’s always something to continue to try and find joy in, regardless of circumstances. Whether it be divorce or people dying in your life or whether you go broke, it’s about how you continue to find joy, to look at yourself and say, ‘I’m still alive, I’m still making it, I still have purpose.’”
Rateliff’s personal musical purpose began when he was just 7 years old and got his first drum kit. His mother and father played music in the church, and Rateliff was quick to do the same. (“They forced me to sing the 4th-part harmonies,” he laughs.) At 13, though, his father died in a car accident; afterward, Rateliff began playing guitar and writing songs. At 18, after his mother left home with a new partner, Rateliff moved to Denver for missionary work. It was there where he began his career as a professional musician.
Despite the fact that Rateliff sometimes self-deprecatingly calls himself a “lazy” songwriter, in reality, he is no such thing. No one who releases 11 records and has toured the world can be thought of as idle. Indeed, the songwriter admits after prodding, he is driven by curiosity as much as he is by an internal work ethic. Rateliff is drawn to creative discoveries and what they may, in turn, portend for the future.
“My motivations push me to see where things can go,” Rateliff says. “To try and challenge myself and take advantage of opportunities and to continue to challenge myself again once I’ve reached that initial goal. Although, I never thought I was a really motivated person. I always considered myself a lazy musician and writer who just managed to get stuff done.”
That Rateliff can get so much done and still consider himself sloth-like is, in a way, a testament to his natural creative dichotomy. For many years, Rateliff was grinding away at a career beneath the Rockies. He was well known in Denver but not as much beyond. He started and ended several projects, fronting bands like Born in the Flood and Nathaniel Rateliff and the Wheel. Then, perhaps his last go at it after a relatively fruitless career, he started Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats in 2013. It was a more energetic band than those prior. In 2015, the band released “S.O.B.” and climbed to the top of the Billboard charts. It was certified platinum and Rateliff was an overnight star, though one who had worked his whole life for it.
“It was a real surprise,” Rateliff says, remembering when the single took off. “It was one of the songs that Richard Swift and Patrick Meese, when making the Night Sweats record together, convinced me to put on the record. I was on the fence about it. [The success] really came as kind of a shock after so many years of hard work and touring and mostly discouragement.”
Rateliff says his life changed when he and the Night Sweats played “S.O.B.” on NBC’s Late Night with Jimmy Fallon on Sept. 29, 2015. His career picked up in a way he had not expected. He became known worldwide. Some of the perks of the success included a partnership with notorious pot smoker Willie Nelson to develop a marijuana strain for the legendary country star’s Colorado-based cannabis company. Additionally, Rateliff enjoyed a tour with the prolific Americana bands Dr. Dog and The Lumineers, the end of which culminated in fireworks and a skinny-dipping jaunt in Florida.
“We were in some scary gator-ingested waters,” Rateliff recalls. “At the end of tour, we’d gotten a bunch of fireworks and we started shooting them off at the venue at the end of the show. Nearby there was this scary lagoon and I convinced some people to get in it with me and we did. We tried to see how far we could swim out. It was pretty spooky there in the middle of the night.”
While these are the memorable highlights, there too are lowlights. With each success for an artist often comes moments of doubt and depression. Rateliff is no exception and, as a result, he leans on past pangs of loneliness and the monotonous passing of time as flagpoles for the new album.
Perhaps the most memorable song on the record, the nostalgic “Time Stands,” has Rateliff contemplating the metaphorical footprints he’s left behind. The song smacks you in the gut with each question. Rateliff ponders whether he made the right choices and what the consequences mean. The quizzical and somber tenor is indicative of the mood throughout much of And It’s Still Alright.
“The songs [on the new album] are about things that have happened over the last few years,” Rateliff says. “But I also try to write from the perspective of a human who continues to go through the process of life, the struggle of life. I don’t know how I think about time, exactly. But I end up writing about it because we all get older.”
Though Rateliff has seen a lot of life along the way, he remains creatively curious. Though he is capable of portraying the many sides and characters in his psyche, he remains focused on the requirements necessary for his work to continue. Though he has lost important people in his life, he perseveres. To love, after all, says the musician, whether it’s to love yourself or another person, is about sacrifice. To love anything means that other parts of life must go by the wayside, especially as time passes.
“When you break it down,” Rateliff says, “love ends up being about sacrifice. If you really love someone, you’re willing to make the sacrifices to continue to keep that love going.”
