Q&A: Nathaniel Rateliff
& the Night Sweats

I’ve been a follower of Mr. Nathaniel Rateliff’s exquisitely beautiful folk singer-songwriter music for quite a while now. It’s hard not to be. That being said, I think that I had the same reaction as most when I was shown a Night Sweats YouTube early this past summer. That reaction being: “Holy shit. Where can I buy the record?” and “I must immediately see them live.”

Nathaniel Rateliff’s passion for his folk material hasn’t waned and he still keeps the same processes for creating his music, but he’s enjoying his time playing shows with an R&B soul band. It’s something that he’s wanted to do for a long time and it finally came together after a week of songwriting and agreeing to a show before he even had a band line-up together. The results of this impromptu move are awe inspiring, jaw dropping, horn blowing, dancing good-ness. What more could someone ask for? 

How did the band come together? Were they musicians you knew before?
“Right now there are seven guys on this tour. It kind of just started… I’ve always wanted to start something sort of more R&B and soul like Sam Cooke, Sam and Dave, Otis Redding. I’ve wanted to write that kind of music for a long time and I never really figured out how to do it without it being really cheesy, but I kind of just went for it and wrote some cheesy songs!

“Early in the spring when I finished my Nathaniel Rateliff record, which is sort of the more folk based project… I finished that and I didn’t really have much to do and I had a couple friends who wanted me to come to their studio and record some songs for free. So I was like, ‘Well, I’ve always wanted to do this R&B thing…’ and they thought that would be awesome. So I went home and wrote two songs and then over the next week I ended up writing about six songs I guess all in that genre. Then I bumped into some friends who wanted me to play a show with them and I said ‘Yeah, I’ll totally do it with this R&B band,’ but I didn’t even have enough songs then.

“So I just kept writing songs and I had agreed to do the show. I put together a band of guys that I didn’t really know or had played with before. I had just seen them play. Mostly I just knew that they were really nice every time I had met them. I just thought, ‘Well they’re really nice, and they play well. I’m going to see if they want to join this band that I have a show booked for!’ And it just kind of worked out really well, actually. It’s pretty interesting putting together a group of guys and then the next thing you know you have a relationship with them.”

Where did the name come from?
“I was trying to think of a name at first and it was going to be Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Shades, but then I realized there’s a Denver band called the Night Shades which Brett the bass player and Mark [keys] were playing in at one point. So I was at this bar and talking to a friend about starting this new R&B thing and I told him ‘Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Shades.’ He was like ‘Isn’t that already a band name?’ And I just was like ‘Son of a bitch!’ So I changed to it to the Night Sweats which is more appropriate because it’s a reference to alcohol withdrawals and some of the songs are about that so it totally worked out.”

So you kind of already mentioned this, but what prompted the move towards a soul sound?
“Yeah, you know, I’ve wanted to do it for a really long time. I’m still pursuing the folk material as well. I haven’t lost a passion for that stuff. Or just songwriting. I try not to think about it as a new direction or me changing directions in what I do, but just still exploring the whole songwriting experience and performing experience. Trying to grow in both of those directions… as a player, a writer and singer.”

Do you approach writing material for this project differently than for your solo work?
“It’s still the same. I either start with melodies or I come with a progression or one line that I kind of base the whole song off of. So it’s coming from the same place of letting the song write itself and kind of stay out of the way while it’s happening.”

Do you see the two projects interacting in that way? Are there any other ways?
“We have  a release in Denver in November, and as far as the coming together… we’re going to play a folk set first and take a break then play a Night Sweats set that’s kind of dance party. It will be interesting to see how it goes over. And how different fans respond to that… like, ‘This stuff sucks!’… you know, nobody has to like everything you do. It’s just nice that they like anything that you do.”

So what are the plans for the full-length and touring with the Night Sweats?
“I think in the spring and the summer hopefully we’ll put out some more 45s. Like I said, I’ve kind of written a bunch of material for the Night Sweats project and hopefully we’ll record a full-length in the spring. We’re going to continue to do some Night Sweats stuff this year. I really like the folk record so I’m not just going to blow it off. So I’m still going to work that and still try to do something interesting with the Night Sweats in between.”

What’s the response been like to the Night Sweats so far?
“People seem to enjoy it! I’m just trying to get people to dance and have a good time. Even if there’s nobody there the bartenders and the sound guy get in to it! They’re usually a pretty good judge of things… they hear a lot.”