Good Saint Nathaneal // Photo by Tessa Allen
Kansas City singer-songwriter Nate Allen has many musical faces. There’s his joyous celebration of crowd participation Destroy Nate Allen with his wife Tessa, the rock ‘n’ roll of the Pac-Away Dots, and the emotionally-hefty reflections of Good Saint Nathanael. It’s the latter project under which Allen has released his latest album, I Write the Songs I Need—a collection of songs that go all the way back to 2014.
Described by Allen as “folk songs that started a decade ago, resurfaced in dark hours, and then took surprising turns morphing into a collection of songs I’m really proud of,” it’s a two-microphone, guitar-and-vocals album, recorded to two-track in just a week.
Like the last Good Saint Nathaneal album, Hide No Truth, the new album has a lot of introspection, but balances the deeply personal aspect with a wider universality, while never losing sight of a well-crafted song. To celebrate the release of I Write the Songs I Need, Allen will perform at The Rino on Friday, August 23, with special guests Bodye + Eloise.
We reached out to Nate Allen to discuss the latest Good Saint Nathanael album and how it came to be.
The Pitch: On Hide No Truth, you were dealing with very specific personal trauma. On I Write The Songs I Need, it seems as though the lyrics are of a more universal nature. They’re still working things out, but it’s of the “life, amirite?” variety. If that’s the case, how does “I Never Hesitated Trouble,” a song about putting yourself out there, fit in?
Nate Allen: This record is definitely more universal, but extremely specific at times, mainly because it is a snapshot of a growth process. Anytime we choose to pursue health, we are stepping into vulnerable territory. There are moments on the album that feel like journal entries from the months surrounding the record, but there was also a lot of time traveling in my mind.
“I Never Hesitated Trouble,” a track where past and present collide. This may be one of the most polarizing sets of lyrics on the record, but such is life—Sometimes, we step out boldly and regret it later, and sometimes, we really wish our pain would go away. I think this song has something to say about the nature of trauma being something that just doesn’t go away on its own. The bridge is the new part of the song and points to this fact: “Why can’t you just let it go? Why can’t I just let it go? Why can’t we just let it go?”
“I Think You’ve Got Potential” is just as much a song to one’s self as it is about someone else. What does boosting your own self do for helping others?
It is almost universally true that the more I boost myself, moving towards good energy, honesty, and health, the more others are free to do the same. Encouraging myself somehow encourages others.
https://goodsaintnathanael.bandcamp.com/album/i-write-the-songs-i-need
“I Just Can’t Play Nice” has you doing your own one-man gang vocals. Where’d that come from?
This is a fun story. I’ve never been able to yell. No matter how much I love hardcore or punk, I couldn’t get the volume from my throat. I’d been working to recover my emotional voice, not the one I sing with, but the one that can speak the truth when needed. Through working with Alex at Centered Spirit in Kansas City, I literally gained the ability to scream for the first time in my recollection. This is the only additional vocal part of the whole album, and I really like it.
A lot of the song titles, as well as the album title, contain “I” statements. Is this something you gained from a therapy environment, or just coincidence?
Both. And I wasn’t really setting out to make an album when I wrote these songs. I was writing through life as I do. Concurrently I was doing a lot of growing and becoming more comfortable with how I relate to myself and the world. The therapeutic process that I was and am in often aided these growth moments. The I nature of the album mostly comes from the fact that I made this record first for myself. This is the record I need at the moment. If my process helps other people, then it’s a double blessing.
Why did these songs marinate for a decade?
I never planned to release these songs. They were sitting in my archive, gathering dust. When I stumbled across them, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked them and how familiar they felt. I almost released the original demos, but as I spent more time with the songs, they all changed significantly.
In a way, I was co-writing with myself or collaging together my present experiences and funneling them into this forgotten collection of past songs I had permission to alter. Since, topically, they were so different from what I was wrestling now, with in a way, I could work on them without staring into the abyss of some of my current revelations.
Good Saint Nathanael plays The Rino on Friday, August 23, with Bodye + Eloise. Details on that show here.