“Once I knew I was going to do, I was like, ‘I want to go back to Richard’s.’” He, Patrick Meese, who plays drums in the Night Sweats, and James Barone of Tennis headed north. In his grief, Rateliff found he still wanted to return to Swift’s Oregon studio to record.
He died that July, before he and Rateliff had a chance to start recording. We’d figure out the instruments as we went.”īut Swift had struggled with health problems over the years and by early 2018 and he was dealing with hepatitis as well as liver and kidney failure.
“I was really approaching making a record the way he made the four Damien Jurado records,” Rateliff explains, “which is like, I would bring him songs and just let him go nuts on them. Prior to his work with the Sweats, Swift had also partnered with acts like the Shins as well as the Black Keys and, for a while, he and Rateliff had been discussing making something like And It’s Still Alight. “It took me a long time to be honest with myself and know that is part of my process of dealing with things.”Ī fan of Harry Nilsson, he envisioned the album in that same singer-songwriter vein and plotted the approach with his and the Night Sweats’ longtime producer and dear friend Richard Swift. To move forward, however, he realized he had to come back to the fissure. “But I was like, ‘Well, I can't actually say that. “I remember writing the songs in the desert and it was almost like you're writing with this prophetic sense, letting your subconscious go places,” he recalls. The couple split during the Night Sweats’ second LP, Tearing at the Seams, but the break was too new, too personal for that collection. After a separation, in 2018, he and his wife filed for divorce. Rateliff first felt called to make a solo album in order to process some of the huge overhauls his personal life had endured in recent years. Please take care of yourself and all those around you.” “We are looking forward to bringing this new show back out as soon as possible. “We regret to announce that we have decided to postpone the rest of our current tour starting tonight and through Atlanta,” the statement from him and his team read. Then, last week, as the COVID-19 pandemic continued to spread, Rateliff put his solo tour on hold. It began with a recording process that managed to surprise and devastate at every turn. That’s all good news, but a buzzy debut is hardly the only thing that failed to go according to plan when it comes to the project. He appeared on the biggest late night shows-we’re speaking at his Midtown Manhattan hotel, just hours before he goes to tape a performance on Stephen Colbert's Late Show. But, when it dropped last month, And It's Still Alright debuted to positive, high-profile reviews. “The world’s gone crazy, but we’ve still got Willie, and all of the good things he’s done for us here,” Rateliff sang, before everyone returned for a raucous encore of Lefty Frizzell’s “If You’ve Got the Money (I’ve Got the Time).Nathaniel Rateliff thought he could slip his new solo album "under the rug." This would just be an album for himself, he tells me. Rateliff returned at the end for a benediction of sorts with “Happy Birthday Willie,” a song he wrote for Nelson’s 87th birthday in 2020 just as the pandemic was taking hold. Much to their credit, the quality of the sound was impeccable throughout they never got in the way of the singers and always added tasteful accompaniment. If he ever decides to bring one back into his band, it’s hard to imagine a better choice than Gimble - whose grandfather, the legendary fiddler Johnny Gimble - had a long history of performing with Willie.įurther fleshing out the arrangements were pedal steel guitarist Geoff Queen, keyboardist Trevor Nealon, electric guitarist Scott Davis, bassist John Michael Schoepf, and drummers Keith Langford and Conrad Choucroun. Since her death, Willie has been performing without a pianist. Backing vocalists Jamie Lin Wilson and Kelley Mickwee stepped out front for “Sad Songs and Waltzes,” and Wilson dueted with Robison on “Last Thing I Needed,” one of many deeper cuts from Willie’s catalog that helped make the show much more than just a greatest-hits affair.īest of all was pianist Emily Gimble’s instrumental feature on “Down Yonder,” which had been a spotlight song for Sister Bobbie in Willie’s concerts for decades. Several members of the house band also got moments to shine. Related: Willie Nelson keeps on rolling at 89 with new album 'A Beautiful Time'
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