Biography
Nathaniel Street-West, a Nashville-based singer, songwriter, and guitarist whose style fuses rock & roll with country influences, entered the world inside a cabin nestled in the Sierra foothills yet spent his childhood moving from place to place across the United States. That nomadic early life likely accounts for both the broad range of American musical touches in his work and his fiercely self-reliant outlook. Throughout those years of constant relocation, his guitar remained a constant companion, and he devoted endless hours to honing his technique. At fifteen he gained admission to the Musicians Institute in Hollywood, then spent his late teens issuing a handful of albums that earned admiration from the small audience that encountered them. Looking ahead rather than back, he launched a more ambitious undertaking in 2005. A devoted admirer of Bob Dylan’s Time Out of Mind, he reached out to the album’s engineer, Mark Howard, with a request for collaboration. After reviewing the fifty-seven songs Street-West forwarded, Howard agreed to produce the project. He brought in associates including Zack Ray, keyboardist for Alanis Morissette, and renowned drummer Jim Keltner; recording wrapped early in 2006. The resulting album, Witness, appeared that April on Puffin Records. Health issues halted his momentum following the release, and although he kept writing and tracking material, another full album did not surface until 2017. Blue Country, also issued by Puffin, contained twelve classic tracks shaped by his hallmark narrative approach and by the legacies of John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Muddy Waters, Lead Belly, and other pivotal figures in blues and jazz.
Albums
