#NATHANIEL RATELIFF SNL TV#
Rateliff acknowledges, of course, that the famously intimidating TV exec probably doesn’t remember such a hasty exchange, and it’s definitely something Rateliff and Pope can joke around about now. “Joseph said something like along the lines of, ‘Uh, when are you gonna have us on the show?’ And I was like, ‘He’s never gonna have us on the show now!’”
“I remember Joseph, like, joked around with Lorne Michaels when we ran into him,” recalls Rateliff, who is phoning in from his home in Denver, Colorado. In 2018, as the soul-folk performer was taping his and The Night Sweats’ television debut on The Tonight Show, he wandered over to Studio 8H, which shoots in the same building, and ran into none other than SNL creator and producer Lorne Michaels. While part of the reason, which we’ll get into later, has to do with his band’s fluctuating ability to manage itself through partying, drinking, and general on-the-road debauchery, Rateliff shares a lighter memory from a few years ago. Now, six years after breaking out and more than two decades after leaving Missouri, Rateliff is preparing for one of the most significant victories of his career: a musical guest spot on Saturday Night Live, the televised comedy institution airing on NBC for close to half a century.ĭespite his 2020 solo album’s title track earning more than 15 million Spotify plays and a “folk-pop hero” stamp of approval from The New York Times, this isn’t something he ever expected to happen. With his earnest tenor, travelling troubadour persona, and magnetic ability to spin personal tales of woe into contemporary roots ballads reminiscent of the Great American Songbook, Rateliff – with Pope and backing band The Night Sweats by his side – developed a loyal, grassroots following in Denver, yet things really took off in 2015 with the gospel-inspired viral smash “SOB”, which currently holds more than 115 million streams on Spotify. There were no music theory classes or business connections to propel him forward Rateliff’s journey more resembles a bygone era of dustbowl-set outlaw country, where anyone hoping to make it as a musician had to bootstrap their way into local bars after punching out at work.
#NATHANIEL RATELIFF SNL PLUS#
Rateliff’s eventual achievements (sharing bills with Bon Iver, Michael Kiwanuka, Mumford & Sons, and Rosanne Cash, plus gold and platinum record status, late-night spots on Later… with Jools Holland and The Tonight Show ) is hardly a contemporary American success story. All the while, even when Pope was battling cancer in his early twenties, Rateliff and he played music together.
Bouncing back and forth between Hermann, Missouri and Denver, Rateliff found work wherever he could: at a plastic factory, then at a trucking depot, and eventually, as a gardener. It wasn’t long, though, before the pair began to seriously question their faith and defected. A couple of years later, he and his best friend and musical collaborator Joseph Pope III left their homes in rural Missouri to join the Denver faction of Youth with a Mission, an evangelical outreach group. When he was 14 years old, Nathaniel Rateliff stopped going to school and got a job.
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