Author

There isn't much of a music scene in Hermann, unless you like polka. But the landscape I grew up in is a part of me. I spent a lot of time in the woods doing a lot of nothing to break the boredom.

From Nathaniel Rateliff

Growing up in the middle of nowhere, there was a lot of twangy music around, but it didn't really connect with me then.

From Nathaniel Rateliff

I first moved to Denver to work with a group called YWAM, 'Youth With a Mission.' I was a kid - I was 18 - and did some work with homeless people. Really, trying to convert people is sort of an awful position to find yourself in, so I quickly, on my own, grew out of religious ideas.

From Nathaniel Rateliff

When I was a kid, we weren't really supposed to listen to secular music. But one day, I found a 'Led Zeppelin IV' cassette tape in the garage, and it was just amazing-sounding music, not like anything I'd heard before. I remember thinking: 'Well, if God created music, why is his music in church not as good as this?'

From Nathaniel Rateliff

When I was a kid, my dad kind of forced me to sing the third harmony for our little family group, and I just kind of hated it. I just felt so uncomfortable on stage, too shy.

From Nathaniel Rateliff

I'm pretty easily overwhelmed and pretty tough as well. I think I'm tougher than I used to be. There's been a lot of hardship along the way. But that's what life is. And it's how you deal with those things, and how you let them shape you that makes you a better person and defines what sort of person you're going to be.

From Nathaniel Rateliff

There's this element of surprise when you're writing songs, like it's something outside of you that you get to be part of. And it's just exciting. And that's why I keep writing - because I like that feeling.

From Nathaniel Rateliff

Sometimes, if I allow time to be creative, it doesn't show up.

From Nathaniel Rateliff

Sometimes, I don't like making emotions your career; something about it is kind of gross. But, at the same time, I want to move people the same way the songs make me feel.

From Nathaniel Rateliff

I've always been trying to write songs that hit you in the stomach but ones that make people feel like things will be just fine.

From Nathaniel Rateliff

Nathaniel Rateliff

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