Award winning performing songwriter, Nathan Bell, the subject of a 2020 Documentary short film “I Don’t Do This For Love (American Songwriter Nathan Bell on tour in Scotland, Wales and England)” was a best-of selection for Americana UK in 2016, 2017, and 2018 including Best Male Artist of 2017.

 

He is a mesmerizing live performer who borrows from traditional musical forms and the literary traditions of writers like Jack London, John Berryman, and Studs Terkel to produce moving pictures of the American experience.

 

“It’s all powerful stuff and Bell is spellbinding on stage, a true sage for these troubled times.”

 

Paul Kerr- Americana UK/Blabber n’ Smoke

 

“This is the kind of artist that Nathan Bell is: The year Donald Trump was impeached as president of the United States, Nathan was writing songs that would make up Red, White and American Blues (it couldn’t happen here), the subtitle a direct reference to Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel imagining the possibility that the people of the United States of America could be mindlessly led to fascism. [2] Like Lewis’s novel, this album could be the most important piece of literature of our particular moment in time. You may call that last sentence hyperbole, but I just call it honest. Red, White and American Blues is not a protest album, although it has protest songs. It’s not a Black Lives Matter album, but in these songs, Black lives matter. It’s an American album. It’s a set of songs about a broken country and its broken people.”

 

Mark Kemp- Author of “Dixie Lullaby: A Story of Music, Race and New Beginnings in a New South”

A Nathan Bell show is a hell of a show. Sometimes people laugh. Sometimes they cry. Sometimes people just stare stone faced in disbelief. A goat once screamed at every note from the harmonica. Birds gather. In the far reaches of The Netherlands, people sang along. Near Frankfurt, Germany, the Blues caused a man to speak in tongues.

Fascists are taken to task. The working person reigns supreme. Invisible Gods are banished. The word "Soul" is used exactly once. Rainbow flags and BLM banners wave throughout the lyrics. You can hear machinery and the slow drip of sweat to the factory floor. People loosen their ties, roll up their sleeves and take care of the ones they love. The dead speak. The dead ask impossible questions. There will be honor in hard work and the poetry of living.

Pronouns will be optional. Gender unnecessary. Class distinctions are banned. Equity, equality, and parity are assumed.

One, maybe two, love songs will be presented.

Not one single song will make excuses, ask for pity, or condemn an honest and forthright human. No song will mock or punch down.

It is likely that the guitar will be played interestingly. Harmonicas will be activated with intent.

Nobody in a helmet will push the button on an I Phone. At the end of the evening there will be sweat on the stage.

It's a hell of a show.

 

 

Sometimes a solo artist can knock your socks off and Nathan Bell is one of these. With a voice and songs sitting alongside the likes of Townes, Guy Clark, John Prine etc.. Really!! - this guy's songs and voice hit you with a clarity not often encountered. Sharp edged songs, a voice of gravel and grit and whiskey and some rather accomplished guitar playing makes this guy pretty special."

A Box of Birds, New Zealand.