Nathaniel Rateliff — Keller Auditorium, Portland

Between releasing the hit albums Tearing at the Seams and The Future with his band, the Night Sweats, Nathaniel Rateliff also released a solo record in 2019 and had planned a small tour to support the album in early 2020. Well, that tour didn’t up happening because of a global pandemic, but Rateliff finally had a chance to revisit those songs and came to Portland, Oregon’s Keller Auditorium Friday night on his And It’s Still Alright tour. 

The evening was billed as “An Intimate Evening with Nathaniel Rateliff” as if it were a solo show, but Rateliff did have a full band and a string quartet along to help with the atmosphere. As he has done throughout the tour, Rateliff started the night eased into the evening with a quiet rendition of Tonight #2 before things picked up during All or Nothing. The show mostly featured Rateliff’s solo work, but also did dip into one of the Night Sweats’ tracks, Still Out There Running, before opener Kevin Morby returned to the stage in the middle of the set to help with a cover of Leonard Cohen’s There Is a War. 

It was a delightful night with Rateliff even mentioning that Oregon felt like a second home since he had previously spent time recording in Cottage Grove, a small town outside of Eugene, OR. And in the end, Rateliff nearly played through the entire And It’s Still Alright album with only the album’s closer Rush On being omitted from the setlist.