![]() “You don’t see that when you’re in it sometimes, but when you have the ability to walk away and look back at it, you’re like, ‘Oh fuck, I can’t believe we were just there for eight days in a place where we would normally have been with Richard, and that’s just never going to happen now.’ That moment of realization can be devastating sometimes.” While there he was focused mainly on the music, but after the work was done, the heaviness of the situation settled in, Rateliff recalls. Sharing the PainĪfter his death, Swift’s National Freedom studio was left untouched in Cottage Grove, Oregon, and it was there that Rateliff recorded the album he’d begun with his now-absent friend. I kind of got ruined on that one,” he quips. “It’s a daily thing for me, and I want to approach it that way, but not the AA ‘one day at a time’ sort of thing either. Rateliff has become more mindful about his own substance use. After three painful dialysis treatments, Swift opted for hospice care instead of further treatment. Sadly, Swift could never conquer his own alcoholism and was diagnosed with hepatitis. I was lucky that I never had a heart attack.” It becomes sort of a Band-Aid, and the next thing you know, you’re like, ‘Man, I’m just tired,’ and then you find some way to supplement your sleep, then Adderall is pretty easy to get your hands on, and it’s so dangerous when you get into that rotation of constantly beating up your body. “There was certainly a season in my life where you just never really sober up. Rateliff has gained perspective from the less moderate times in his life, speaking about those phases almost as if he was a different person. In Rateliff’s 2015 song “S.O.B.,” he shout-sings “Son of a bitch / get me a drink / I can’t get clean / I’m gonna drink my life away.” The jubilant alcoholic of that song is absent from And It’s Still Alright. It can set you up for disaster,” he says. “It’s a hard thing because it’s such a huge part of our industry, and even on the smaller levels, when you’re touring around and living in a van, the venue won’t have any food, but you’re definitely going to get free drinks. “I had gone through a divorce and my own struggle with substance abuse, and Richard and I would try to be accountable to each other in those areas of our lives and talk a lot about it,” Rateliff says, underscoring how the two supported each other. In addition to their shared departures from faith, Rateliff and Swift also struggled with substance abuse. Rateliff was never a professional Christian musician, but he got his start playing in a family gospel band in his small Missouri hometown and later relocated to Denver with future bandmate Joseph Pope to be a missionary before having his own crisis of faith. Swift was raised Quaker and recorded contemporary Christian albums under several names before becoming Richard Swift to record his first secular album. Both were raised in strict Christian families. “We had a lot of mutual friends, we had similar taste in music, and also really made each other laugh,” Rateliff recalls.īut Swift and Rateliff shared more than music. Later, when Rateliff was seeking a producer for the first Night Sweats album, someone suggested Swift, and an instant friendship formed. He was immediately a nice guy,” Rateliff says. I was opening up for Delta Spirit, and one of them ran into Richard and invited him to the show. Swift was a formidable producer and musician, and Rateliff remembers liking him when they first met at a show. Rateliff had always trusted Swift’s advice. ![]() When Nathaniel Rateliff began writing the songs that grew into And It’s Still Alright, his friend Richard Swift encouraged him to make a solo record, thinking it’d be liberating for Rateliff to record a project separate from his band, The Night Sweats.
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