![]() ![]() It must be a thrill to see that logo on your releases? “Yeah, that Southern soul sound is really what I was aiming for, and I love the Stax story, how they helped the poor community around them in Memphis, that kinda stuff is really needed right now.” If you’re aiming to sound like Sam & Dave then you might as well do it on the Stax label, how did that come about? “I was hesitant to work with a label at all after previous experience” says Rateliff, “but Concord approached me and these people were excited about what I was doing and that’s what’s important, so once we delivered the record, I found out they worked with Stax, so I said wait a minute!” It was really encouraging to hear that admiration for the other stuff.” “Actually, last summer we did a festival where we played all that old material, with the full band and the horns and we had a blast, I thought everyone would be hollering at me to play ‘SOB’ but it turned out people actually wanted to hear those songs. There are songs on Falling Faster like ‘Laborman’ that, if you put a horn section on them, wouldn’t be a million miles away from where he ended up anyway. You couldn’t ask for a better description of the man’s music, although it’s a feeling that has kind of been there all along. Instead, I tried to come up with stuff that sounded like The Band and Sam & Dave playing together.” ![]() Soul and R&B was something I always wanted to do, I’d just finished Falling Faster and it looked like it wasn’t even going to come out, so I didn’t want to do anything with an acoustic guitar. Before that though, there were solo records like In Memory of Loss and Falling Faster Than You Can Run - what prompted the change in tack from the earlier, folkier style? “It was kind of out of discouragement”, he remembers, “I’d been a singer-songwriter playing that Americana style for ten years and I was just about ready to stop and go back to being a gardener. The redoubtable Mr Rateliff is currently on the road promoting Tearing At The Seams, his second studio album with his big band collective, The Night Sweats which fans of The Last Waltz or early Springsteen will find easy to love. It’s appreciated, but he’s a busy man, trying to eat dinner as we talk, so it’s best not to waste any time. He’s apparently been given the low down on our beautiful mother tongue from his sound man, who hails from Tipperary. Nathaniel Rateliff gives it his best “Conas atá tú?” when he comes on the phone from England – “hanging with the Tans!” as he puts it himself. ![]()
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