Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats Stun 'Tonight Show' Audience in TV Debut

by Julian Spivey
Once in a blue moon you’ll be watching a late night talk show and come across a band or musician that you’ve never heard of before that absolutely leaves your jaw-dropping toward the floor.

One of these bands was showcased on “The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon” on Wednesday, August 5 and based on their national television debut alone should become household names. The band is called Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats and their debut single from their new self-titled album called “S.O.B.” was absolutely amazing.

The hype factor for Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats was already through the roof well before they took the ‘Tonight Show’ stage toward the end of Wednesday night’s episode as Jimmy Fallon had been hyping them up at the very beginning of his show.

Like most of us, Fallon had never heard of this fantastic group out of Denver until recently himself when he received an email from a close friend telling him he just had to check them out. Fallon was instantly blown away, as the rest of the country would be by the end of his episode on Wednesday night.

Early in his episode Fallon summarized Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats as Van Morrison mixed with a ‘50s doo-wop group and that was a pretty accurate comparison for the folk-rock group that should fit nicely in the Americana genre that encompasses all sorts of roots oriented musical genres.

Rateliff’s booming vocals and the nice doo-wop melodies of “S.O.B.” were really only half of the fascination of the performance. Rateliff is a pretty big dude, but he moves around on the ‘Tonight Show’ stage as if he were James Brown or Bruno Mars. What the combination of music and dance moves amounted to was one of the most thrilling and unbelievable performances you’re ever going to see on television – not bad from a band very few people knew about prior to Wednesday night.