Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats

It’s a brilliant transformation, and Rateliff is enjoying it, as he tells Jeff Hemmings

Five years ago, Rateliff appeared on Jools Holland, accompanied by just an acoustic guitar and a singer, performing one of his many folk-based numbers that he was developing a small following for. Standing still, but delivering the song in alternatively hushed tones and mighty growls, Rateliff looked and sounded hugely impressive, a tattooed bear of a man who looked at home in any bar or pub. But things weren’t working out the way he hoped them to, despite the fact that he could hold an audience in quiet rapture. He had released ‘In Memory Of Loss’ the year before, which had garnered many great reviews, but by the time of the follow up, ‘Falling Faster Than You Can Run’ in 2013, he had been dropped by his label, and he had to independently release the album, which only gained a limited release here in the UK.

But, roll on to 2016, and suddenly Rateliff is everywhere. This former missionary worker has miraculously transformed himself into a high energy soul and r’n’b singer, backed up with a six-piece band that provides a tremendously powerful Stax meets Motown sound. His fortunes have quickly reversed, on the turn of a dime as it were… “A lot more people like this” says Nathaniel, matter of faculty, over the line from Denver, his home town. “After touring a bunch as a singer songwriter – I love playing acoustic guitar, I was just tired of everyone else playing it – I had finished ‘Falling Faster Than You Can Run’, I didn’t have a label, which was discouraging…

“I had wanted to do a soul, r’n’b thing for a long time, so I tried to write some songs after a friend of mine had suggested it. It kind of happened, it felt like a natural development.” Indeed it did. From the solemn, heart-on-sleeve pensive acoustic of the old Nathaniel Rateliff, to the hollering, whooping and dancing of Nathaniel Rateliff mark II, there aren’t many examples of artists suddenly finding their voice, in a way almost unrecognisable from before, and transforming their fortunes. Maybe someone like Marc Bolan perhaps, who quickly transformed Tyrannosaurus Rex from the hippy folk sound of the late 60s into a massive glam rock juggernaut of T-Rex? Or, God bless them, Status Quo, who ditched the psychedelia for their no-nonsense brand of rock’n’roll boogie in almost one fell swoop? Even Bowie, perhaps, losing the quirky, and pretty dire, music hall eccentricity of his 1967 debut album, and embracing something altogether different soon after…

“What I wanted to do was have the energy of Otis Redding, which is hard, because I’m not in very good shape, mixed with a southern twangy sound. You need energy and the right amount of drinks, which is just a couple. Everybody in the band has a different poison, but mine is bourbon and water.”

It’s not that Rateliff has completely ditched his previous line of work; there are still plenty of examples of the more downbeat rootsy sound on the 2015 Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats album, but it’s been mixed up with a number of high voltage Stax-like stompers that are now the staple of his live show. Yeah, for sure, people like folksy acoustic. But when its done the Nathaniel Rateliff way, people simply cannot get enough of the stompers. As fate would have it, Stax the label was re-activated in 2004 via its parent company, Concord Records, whom Rateliff subsequently signed to: “I was with a label who I didn’t know were working with Stax, but I found out they owned the Stax imprint, and I was like, ‘I think you could put this record out through Stax, it would be pretty apt, a southern soul sound.’” They did, and now Rateliff has joined a long list of legends, including Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Booker T & the M.G’s and Isaac Hayes, who have been on the label. “The first gig we did with the Night Sweats was a little over two years ago, at a venue here in Denver. Somebody asked me to do a show, and I agreed, so I scrambled to get together a band, and it worked out. I think we had only 30 minutes of material, but it was really exciting to play that music for the first time. Everyone was hollering, and I started doing dance moves, and people loved it. It was pretty hilarious.

“Back then I’d just be standing still at shows, but now I’m dancing and moving around. There’s a lot of hip movement. I danced at the first Night Sweats show and immediately people went crazy. I thought ‘I’ve loved to dance for years, I should have done this a long time ago!’”

Thanks to their rowdy gigs, Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats are the live act on everyone’s lips. Even Britney Spears is in on the act. Recently she used one of Rateliff’s songs to dance to on Instagram, tagging him in… Rateliff responded by donning a bra and a blond wig and doing his own moves… And last October they played Patterns. This March they are playing Concorde 2 (sold out months ago). This Autumn they play the Brixton Academy, with its near 5,000 capacity. Oh, how the mighty have risen!

Concorde 2, Mon 7 March. SOLD OUT