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