Nat was lost, but now he’s found ... his voice

Arts Editor

Tuesday 24 May 2011

When Nathaniel Rateliff appears this evening on Later Live – With Jools Holland on BBC 2, discerning music lovers may recognise a familiar face.

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Keith Bruce

Rateliff has already appeared in Glasgow as impressive support to the excellent Delta Spirit and, during Celtic Connections, at the City Halls with Rosanne Cash. Mumford and Sons have also recruited him as a “special guest” on tour.

A thick-set Missourian who has been known to sport an impressive handlebar moustache, Rateliff is visually memorable, but it is his voice that sticks in the mind more. A rich, expressive baritone, the singer uses it in the service of songs that often defy conventional structures and always come with memorable lyrical imagery. If Bon Iver can now tour our major concert halls, can Nate Rateliff be very far behind?Now in his early thirties, Rateliff’s rural childhood centred around the radical evangelist Pentecostal church his parents attended. Dad played wind instruments and his mother wrote gospel songs. Young Nate played drums before picking up the guitar, a found copy of Led Zeppelin 4 and the might of John Bonham giving a few teenage pointers in that direction.“Then my dad died when I was 13, in a road accident on the way to church, in fact,” says Rateliff. “That busted my head a lot. It took me years to even mourn his death. I stopped going to school.”It was a quiet rebellion though. “I was mild, but I just went off and looked after myself. I worked in a gas station when I was 11, and did grass-cutting. When I was 16/17 I was a janitor and ground keeper at the high school my friends were at.”Then came a stint in a plastics factory. “I worked from eight to eight overnight, saving money to go to Colorado to join Youth with A Mission, an evangelical project to Mexico. I’m very agnostic now, but that made me look at my life.”This background also explains the (King James version) biblical references detectable in his lyrics and some of the songs he still performs date back to thoughts from his teenage years. But there were some detours before they became his primary focus.“I was working loading and unloading trailers – it was good money – at the same time as playing in a big rock band. Offers came in from labels.”Rounder Records were at the same time showing interest in his own personal, very different, demos, and Rateliff’s crossroads was complicated by a period of ill-health. A thyroid condition manifested itself in narcolepsy and he became a gardener as he struggled to keep his weight under control, learning piano at the same time.He emerged from that period with a set of quieter, more introspective material, and having lost his high falsetto voice. “The baritone range was just easy for me.”Friends introduced him to the lady who became his wife (“She’s opened my eyes to a lot of things, she was very bohemian before I met her”), and he began working with a new circle of musicians. People like Bon Iver, Low Anthem and Laura Marling.Rateliff’s debut album, In Memory of Loss, was the result of honing his home demos in Chicago with producer Brian Deck. Extra instruments have been added sparingly and whole disc sounds from another simpler age.“But I don’t want to get pinned down too much by this record,” says Rateliff. I’ve been really into Harry Nilsson lately and more crooning stuff like Nat King Cole and Sam Cooke. I’m itching to do another record. These songs still mean a lot to me, but I need to figure out what’s next.”Nathaniel Rateliff appears on Later Live – With Jools Holland, tonight, on BBC 2. In Memory of Loss is out now on Rounder Records, through Decca in the UK.

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Nat was lost, but now he’s found ... his voice

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