You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishikesh, your way.

A quick note that this episode contains explicit language and deals with some heavy subject matter, including alcoholism and death.

The Thunderbolt

Nathaniel Raetliff is a singer and songwriter from Colorado. He's released four solo albums and two with his band, The Night Sweats.

Those two night sweat albums were produced by Richard Swift, who passed away in 2018.

In a statement, his family said that he, quote, suffered from alcohol addiction and it's ultimately what took his life. End quote.

Nathaniel Raetliff's new solo album, and it's still all right, was supposed to be produced by Richard Swift as well, but Richard died before they could work together again.

In this episode, Nathaniel breaks down the title track, which was inspired in part by his own complicated relationship with alcohol and by his friendship with Richard Swift.

I'm Nathaniel Raetliff. I was in a hotel room in Portland, Oregon. I had just flown in and I got on early and so I was just kind of taking advantage of having time with myself.

I don't get that a lot. And so I was playing around with the chords and then, yeah, it was kind of a simple progression, but I was like, wait a second, I should probably record this.

You're playing sort of mimics your emotion or just like you're feeling that day.

I was trying not to get bummed and I thought, you know, working on something would keep me uplifted and keep me focused on trying to work.

I was definitely thinking about Richard Swift, who I was going to make this record with.

Richard Swift is a, sorry, was a musician in his own right and a great songwriter in his own right.

But also a fantastic collaborator and producer. I met Richard years ago backstage at the borderline in London when I was opening up solo for Delta Spirit.

I felt like I was kind of just treading water as a musician at the time. So I was just kind of overall discouraged.

I had just finished playing and he was the only one to backstage. We were just having a drink. He's like, hey man, I'm sound of good. I was like, thanks.

And then I didn't really hear or see much of Richard for a while, you know.

And then when I started the night sweats stuff, it was just demos that I was doing in my attic.

I always loved to just do like kind of crappy garage band recordings. So I sent him like two or three.

And just kind of out of the blue, he gave me a call or you know, he texted me and was like, man, I really dig this.

And then my A&R guy kind of came back to me and was like, would you consider Richard Swift as a producer for this record for the night sweats?

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