#NATHANIEL RATELIFF TOUR FULL#
#NATHANIEL RATELIFF TOUR SERIES#

I was so attached to the songs and the reasons I had written them. How has not being able to properly tour during the pandemic affected your relationship to the songs on And It’s Still Alright ?Īt first, I had to abandon everything when our tour got canceled. So we’re kind of all over the place in trying to help people out. You see a change in kids’ lives when they have access to instruments. We also work to get kids instruments in schools as federal funding continues to be cut and the government doesn’t support the arts, which I feel is important. With the lack of conservation in the past few years of water, we have all these tremendous fires right now and we’ll probably only continue to see that grow in our climate. water conservation is a big thing for us. It’s everything from supporting farmers and farm-oriented organizations that we like in our community and outside of the community, trying to work with the unhoused whether it’s finding shelter or working on changing legislation. It’s a pretty broad scope of things to try to tackle. Can you talk a little bit about your work with that organization? Part of the proceeds from these concerts went toward The Marigold Project. It helped me relinquish some of the emotions that helped me write those songs. Being on stage-that shared human experience of what’s happening between the audience and the performer-is important to me. But considering that heaviness, there was also a joy of being able to share music with each other. The reality and the scope of where our world is right now lent some heaviness to those shows. In this particular setting, it’s a little strange and slightly heartbreaking to only have 175 people there instead of the 10,000 that we would normally play to. What was it like being able to get on an actual stage and perform your new record in front of an audience? Nathaniel Rateliff released And It’s Still Alright in February 2020. Add to it a fraught political climate filled with environmental catastrophe, racial injustice, and mounting anxiety about the next four years, all issues that preoccupy the socially conscious Rateliff, who’s channeled those frustrations into activism and community service via his organization, The Marigold Project.īut much like And It’s Still Alright finds hope in loss and beauty in pain across 10 tracks, Rateliff is still searching for the silver linings in 2020-and looking toward 2021 with cautious optimism. Late-night talk show appearances? If they were going to happen at all, they’d need to happen over Zoom. A massive tour supporting the new record? That would have to be canceled.

#NATHANIEL RATELIFF TOUR FULL#

Still, it’s difficult to stop ourselves from circling back to the Very Difficult Year, one that started off full of possibility for the 42-year-old singer-songwriter and quickly dissolved into something completely different.

The record showcased a more ruminative side to the bombastic, swaggering bandleader of the rock ‘n’ soul outfit, The Night Sweats, and explored two personal tragedies- the recent death of Rateliff’s close friend, Richard Swift, and the aftermath of a difficult divorce-with tenderness and grace.

We talk about writing songs and finding balance.Īnd we talk about Rateliff’s solo album, And It’s Still Alright, released on Valentine’s Day this year to acclaim.

#NATHANIEL RATELIFF TOUR SERIES#

We talk about his recent return to live music with a series of concerts in front of limited, socially distanced audiences at the famed Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado. Nathaniel Rateliff wants to talk about anything other than what he dubs “the semi-pre-apocalyptic world we’re living in right now.” And over the course of a recent phone call, we really try our damndest.

Nathaniel rateliff tour