Sense of Place: Nathaniel Rateliff is cultivating a new crop of Denver talent

XPN | By Raina Douris,

Published October 11, 2024 at 6:30 AM EDT

There are few bands more enmeshed in the Denver music scene than Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats.

Rateliff started out playing in the city in the early 2000s, and now, he’s helping nurture the next generation of musicians there with a venue he co-owns called The Skylark Lounge. That’s where we met up with Nathaniel to record today’s session, as we kick off our brand new Sense of Place: Colorado series.

Coming up, Rateliff performs live and he talks about writing his latest album, South of Here, in a bat-infested room; about dealing with anxiety; about the impact of his breakout hit “S.O.B.”; and about his journey to Colorado with his longtime friend and Night Sweats bassist Joseph Pope.

Credits:

Audio Recording: Robert Davis, Ashell Fox
Recorded by Colorado Sound Studios
Song Mixes: Patrick Meese
Video Producer: Doug Usher
Cinematographer: Steve Roberts
Camera Operator: Ben Hess
Video produced by The VIA Company
Video post production: George Murphy
Video editor: Bob Sweeney

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod. The web story was created by Miguel Perez. Our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.

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Raina Douris

Raina Douris, an award-winning radio personality from Toronto, Ontario, comes to World Cafe from the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), where she was host and writer for the daily live, national morning program Mornings on CBC Music. She was also involved with Canada's highest music honors: hosting the Polaris Music Prize Gala from 2017 to 2019, as well as serving on the jury for both that award and the Juno Awards. Douris has also served as guest host and interviewer for various CBC Music and CBC Radio programs, and red carpet host and interviewer for the Juno Awards and Canadian Country Music Association Awards, as well as a panelist for such renowned CBC programs as Metro Morning, q and CBC News.

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Kimberly Junod

World Cafe senior producer Kimberly Junod has been a part of the World Cafe team since 2001, when she started as the show's first line producer. In 2011 Kimberly launched (and continues to helm) World Cafe's Sense of Place series that includes social media, broadcast and video elements to take listeners across the U.S. and abroad with an intimate look at local music scenes. She was thrilled to be part of the team that received the 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award for excellence in music programming. In the time she has spent at World Cafe, Kimberly has produced and edited thousands of interviews and recorded several hundred bands for the program, as well as supervised the show's production staff. She has also taught sound to young women (at Girl's Rock Philly) and adults (as an "Ask an Engineer" at WYNC's Werk It! Women's Podcast Festival).

See stories by Kimberly Junod