Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats at Climate Pledge Arena

My dad isn’t a normal dad, he’s a cool dad – and back in the mid-2010’s, he was really in his ‘hipster americana meets folk music’ era. So naturally, my dad discovered Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats’ self-titled album that was dropped in the late summer of 2015. Pretty much any time after that, you could walk into our family’s home on any given day and hear Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats blended vocal harmonies and hit song “S.O.B.” being played at the highest volume possible, radiating throughout the house off of dad’s old vinyl record player. It’s memories that maybe at the time, I thought were perhaps really annoying at 8am on a Saturday morning, but now something I miss and cherish to this day.

I heard The Night Sweats were coming to Climate Pledge Arena and it was a really cool opportunity to review Rateliff’s Seattle South of Here, tour date. In excitement, I texted my dad what I was doing for one of his favorite bands. His first sentence typed to me was a combo of the sentiment dang, I better do so good and with other things I cannot repeat on the internet without getting censored. Dad also said while referring to Rateliff & The Night Sweats, “Those guys were sent by God to make music heartfelt again!!!!” Four exclamation points, that’s how I knew he was serious.

The evening of the show, I arrived at the arena and met with press staff and the three other seasoned photographers, who directed us through the hallways and corridors of Climate Pledge to drop our extra gear off. We made our way through the general admission floor to the photo pit to photograph tour opener, Texan blues guitarist & country singer, Charley Crockett. Crockett sang songs of love & loss, about the life of a country singer, the neon lights passing you by every night, singing for big crowds who don’t understand, emphasizing the physical and emotional wear and tear of doing it all, over and over again. He danced across the stage in his big pointy brown cowboy shoes and the crowd cheered him on, while swaying with the rhythm of his band.

Charley Crockett got the crowd going and left the stage, the other photographers and I regathered ourselves in the media room and made our way back to the floor for Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats. The lights dimmed and the giant B&W pixelated visuals of the band’s faces and instruments flashed across the screen before the Night Sweats entered the stage. Nathaniel came out and waved to the crowd of cowboy hats and couples as they wooed for the band walking onto the platform.

The Night Sweats, who are comprised of a percussionist, organist, guitarist, trumpeter, bassist, and two saxophonists, warmly greeted Seattle’s crowd and jumped straight into their set. There wasn’t much talking on stage as the Night Sweats were so crisp tight in their melodic and smooth transitions between songs, every hit song of the last five albums blending into another. Rateliff really put his stage techs to work switching between acoustic and electric guitars for about eight songs in, until the stage lights dimmed into one center light. Everyone left the stage except Rateliff and his electric guitar as he played a solo song. The sea of faces sang along and some slow danced with their partners on the empty space on the main floor. The Night Sweats band came back out and played a few more songs, before leaving the stage for the evening without playing their hit song “S.O.B.” and I went ‘awh, they can’t do that, give it a sec.’

Of course, a few moments later, Rateliff and the Night Sweats re-entered the stage for their big encore and the intro of “S.O.B.” starts playing. I Facetimed my parents, so my dad could see where I am right then, in front of one of his favorite bands. I couldn’t hear a thing from my phone when they tried to talk to me, but I watched my parents sitting on the couch in their living room looking back at my view of the band playing a few last popular songs as the stadium crowd started to sing louder than I heard all night. The band exits their platforms for the final time and crowd starts to disperse muttering of the evening’s happenings and how magical and soulful the evening was. I’ll give my dad credit in saying yeah, he’s right (it’s his favorite thing to be, so he’ll get a kick out of that), Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats put a ton of heart into their music and it’s evident in every note, chord, and vocal arrangement I witnessed that night.