Enjoying life back out on the road during 2022, Nathaniel Ratliff & The Night Sweats played a show earlier this month at the Guild Theatre in Menlo Park, California to benefit Rateliff’s racial, social and economic justice foundation, The Marigold Project.

After performing a career-spanning set that included songs from their latest album, The Future, Rateliff welcomed to the stage Grateful Dead founding member, Bob Weir. Together they wowed the audience with versions of Bob Dylan’s ‘Slow Train’, and The Band’s ‘The Shape I’m In’, as well as Grateful Dead favourites, ‘Me And My Uncle’ and ‘The Other One’.

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Rateliff is clearly revelling in playing live shows again. The Future was written and recorded between the pandemic height of June 2020 and February 2021, and he made a point of trying to focus on the positive when it came to the material on the album. 

“I try to help the hopeful side win in the songwriting, but personally, I don’t really know where I’m at right now,” he told grammy.com prior to headlining a GRAMMY In The Schools Salute to Music Education event earlier this year.

“It still looks pretty bleak to me, but I’m trying to be positive and I think… everybody’s had such a hard time. I think it’s not really what people need to hear more about how bleak it is; I think it’s pretty obvious.” 

He is, however, hopeful in general and positive about The Night Sweats’ role in spreading a little sunshine as they tour the world once again. 

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“I think that people need music and that was something we saw when we started playing shows again, just how people responded to live music. And so I’m very hopeful, you know, that will continue to grow because of the need that people have for it. 

“And for the Night Sweats, it’s just kind of a journey for us. We just keep trying to make music that we like, and you know, keep trying to hear each other through all of that.”

Nathaniel Rateliff and The Night Sweats 

With special guests St. Paul and The Broken Bones

Tickets on sale now

https://www.bluesfesttouring.com.au/nathaniel-rateliff-the-night-sweats

Monday, April 10th 2023
Forum, Melbourne, VIC

Thursday, April 13th 2023
Enmore Theatre, Sydney, NSW

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