Nate Kelley

Kelly during a Pontius Pilate Sales Pitch show.

**Nate Kelley** (born February 15, 1978) is an American musician and economist best known for being the original drummer for the alternative/progressive rock group Shabütie, the prototype band for Coheed and Cambria. Though he has left a majority of the music industry, he still plays music in his spare time.

## Music Career

In the early 90s, Kelley regularly played music as early as 10/12 years old. In 1995, he joined Claudio Sanchez, Travis Stever, and Jon Carleo to form the band Beautiful Loser. Shortly there after, Stever left and the remaining three became Shabütie. He worked on many songs, both released and unreleased on their 3 EPs, including three songs that went on to be produced on Coheed's first album, The Second Stage Turbine Blade—"Delirium Trigger", "33" & "Junesong Provision". In 2000, Kelley left the band in the middle of a show due to a series of personal factors.

After Coheed, he went on to play with several bands: **Eviction Directive** (2000), **Divest** (2001), **Lazy Suns** (2004-5), **Pontius Pilate Sales Pitch** (2006-9; also guitar and bass), **Johnny Neutrino and The Secret Weapon** (2013), and **Laterals** (2019-20). All these were taken on leisurely and with no serious intentions or strings attached.

## Personal Life

Kelley lived with an abusive step father who died a few weeks prior to his final show. At the behest of his sister, he attended the funeral where he experienced extreme cognitive dissonance seeing people mourn for someone he believed to be a monster and seeing pictures of the man smiling and happy when he'd only known him to be angry. Then, we he got back from the funeral, his girlfriend announced that she was pregnant and he panicked, wondering if he'd be able to support a family on his band career, which at the time showed no signs of being signed or making it big. He was also only 22 and didn't want to be the sort of father figure his step father had been; subsequently freaking out over the news in the way most young adults do. In the middle of a February 2000 show, Kelley walked off stage, completely abandoning the band.

He said that due to the atmosphere of toxic masculinity at that time, he never told his bandmates about his family situation. in 2006, he tried to reach out to the band, in a letter, about his behavior and what was going on, but claimed he hadn't heard back from them.

Kelley has more recently been diagnosed with and treated for bipolar disorder, which he now recognizes was another contributing factor to his behavior in those early days, and has regrets about how things went down, especially on social media as he would occasionally blame the band or his girlfriend for various things as well. He said that the band really brought him a lot of joy, but with everything converging at once, he felt like he broke and just wanted to quit life.

## Trivia

* Nate Kelley's dog was a Doberman named Apollo, which became the inspiration for Newo Ikkin's Apollo.

## References

1. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20090428034236/http://www.trht.net:80/artist/Nate+Kelley
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 https://soundcloud.com/allthingscoheedpodcast/tracks
3. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSpB8eCIa8U&lc=Ugy5uzvce726uP17fDN4AaABAg
4. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSpB8eCIa8U&lc=UgxUhmCA6JVYGAdo0mJ4AaABAg