Stereo 550 ft. Nathaniel Rateliff
Tags: Gtb, Stereo 550

Watt: It’s a pretty surreal time, all of us dealing with COVID-19. It’s changing everything we’re doing — we employ thousands of people around the world and, apart from China where people have been able to go back to work, everyone’s working remotely. I’m talking to you today from London. Where about are you in the world?

Rateliff: I’m at my house in Colorado. I’m actually in the studio. This is my first house I’ve ever bought. It’s under renovation. Of course they ripped everything out of the top two floors right before this happened, so it’s like I’ve been living in the garage, literally. This is the studio, which is the nicest part of the house, really.

Watt: How does this pandemic affect live performance?

Rateliff: Well, it makes it pretty hard. I’ve done a couple of things remotely, but it’s not the same as the show. The tour we were just on is the most production we’ve ever done, and I was excited to bring the show to people. I haven’t figured out a way to do that for everybody here online. There’s also 10 of us in the band, and we’ve been practicing social distancing since we got back. We ended our tour, we had to cancel it in New York City.

Watt: Music has always had a form of social distancing. I’m a big fan of Daniel Lanois, a producer who talks about the difference between producing for live concerts versus producing for an album. He says that live concerts have a physiology effect, where the sound wave is so big it literally travels through people and it changes the way they perceive the music. Whereas in a studio, you have to resort to different techniques. Remote relationships still have audiences — I saw your S.O.B. video, it’s got 60 million views — so that’s a huge amount of engagement, but it’s not necessarily direct. I suppose the challenge is how do you maintain that sort of physical, direct audience connection?

Rateliff: I don’t know. Especially with The Night Sweats, who were known as a live band. I love putting on a show for people. The interaction in that way is different than creating a record, like what you were saying. And I feel those live interactions are important because they do seem to change people. Like myself as a concert goer, I’ve seen shows that I felt have changed me as a person or moved me in a way that no other experience could. So it’s hard to not be able to bring that to people, and I don’t know if a video would be the same experience.

Watt: As part of the advertising industry, we’re having to come up with new ideas and innovations. It’s hardly the same experience as music, but a big part of selling a car is inviting someone to the dealership so you can feel the weight of the door, so you can smell the leather, all of those things. For us, the show must go on. We’re thinking of all these digital interface mechanisms to give you that experience, but nothing really replaces the real thing.

Is it true that you performed a concert in New York even though it was to an empty theatre?

Rateliff: Yeah, we did a few songs. When we got there at sound check, we kind of knew that we were going to have to cancel. It felt like the right thing to do. It was a pretty weird time to be in New York and to see Times Square totally empty. We decided maybe the best thing to do was to record a couple songs to an empty theatre because we weren’t really ready for the tour to end.

There were a lot of tears thinking that we weren’t going to be able to do the show, or any of the other shows, or even travel to Europe. We were supposed to play at the Royal Albert Hall in London. It’s a pretty big deal. I’m not a Londoner, but the Beatles played there for the queen. Performing there means a lot to us, so we were bummed about the experiences we were going to miss out on together as a group of friends and performers. So we decided to say goodbye to the tour. Playing a couple songs felt like the right thing to do.

Watt: Well, I hope you get to play the tour as soon as possible.

Rateliff: Yeah, me too.

Watt: Okay, let’s move away from COVID-19. I’d really like to talk about some things on creativity, production, performance. We, as a creative industry, are not on the music side of things, but we do regard ourselves as an industry that comes up with ideas. Originality is really important for us. And also the craft; craft is really important whether we’re making a film or an interactive experience. I’m always fascinated with the creative process. For you, where does it start? In your personal capacity as a solo artist, when you’ve made something great, where does it typically begin?

Rateliff: Usually it starts with a melody in my head, but sometimes it can also happen when I’m on the piano or playing another instrument. Sometimes I’ll have a small idea and then to catalogue it, I’ll give it a title, which ends up shaping the entire song. The title seems to come out of nowhere, but sometimes I build everything around that. I don’t really know where that kind of thing comes from because it also seems to me like writing and creating are something I get to be a part of it. It feels like it’s something that’s outside of myself, and I try to allow myself to be vulnerable to it when it decides to show up.

Watt: Obviously GTB is the ad agency network for Ford. We noticed in one of your publicity photos, you’re standing in front of a Falcon. Is there a story to that?

Rateliff: That’s my ’61 Falcon. I actually bought it while I was on tour. I’ve always loved classic cars. My friend’s sister was selling it, and I had a friend go pick it up from her. It was one of those things that was cheap, and the next thing you know, I just keep slowly dumping more money into it. Now I’m in this spot where I could sell it, but I’ve just put too much into it. It still has the straight six that came with it. It’s a two-speed transition, automatic. We used to love drag racing in those.

Watt: Well, thank you for your time.

Rateliff: My pleasure.