Nate Fredrick - Nate Fredrick and The Wholesome Boys EP (2023)

Nate Fredrick most certainly has a matchless story. “A friend and I were running from the police one night," Fredrick says, "...and I accidentally fell off a cliff. During the two-year recovery process, I started actually making music instead of just playing music. The first show I ever had, I played with my jaw wired shut.”

After moving to Nashville in 2015 and writing more than 100 songs, Fredrick released his debut album Different Shade of Blue in February 2021. Amidst this season of growth, and the independent success of Different Shade of Blue, Fredrick’s mental health was plummeting and he was struggling with substance abuse.

“Someone will only follow you if you know where you’re going,” he says. “I knew that the only way I was going to be able to keep playing music was to get sober, so I went to rehab two times last year. I knew that was the only way I could lead a band or even be a part of a band.”

This new chapter with The Wholesome Boys finds him in an uncharted-but-welcome territory: it’s the first real band he’s been in. The foursome—Fredrick on lead vocals, acoustic and electric guitars; Dylan Miller on drums and percussion; Frank Patrick James on vocals and electric guitar; and Andrew Foreman on bass—met while working together at Neighbor’s, a Nashville sports bar with a burgeoning music scene under the surface. They began playing together in the summer of 2022 and discovered something special with a dedication to something bigger—collaboration to its core.

“It’s important to us that we’re a fully-fledged band, and it’s not just that I have a backing band. We all believe in the power of a collaborative effort,” Fredrick says, "It's not about any one of us individually; it's about the whole. That’s why we went with the name, ‘wholesome boys.’ It’s the sum of the whole—the whole song and performance we're trying to give the people listening.”

In this new project, Nate Fredrick and The Wholesome Boys frame an expanding sound. “We are a band that records our own records, and plays live together. We write on the road and grow together. That’s what we are looking for.”

The result is a cohesive look at what it means to make music that’s inarguably full of life and creative force.