Jesse DeNatale

Jesse DeNatale is a singer-songwriter from Northern California. 

He was born in San Francisco and grew up in Marin County.  He has released four critically acclaimed albums: Shangri-La West (2000) Soul Parade (2006) The Wilderness (2021), and The Hands Time (2023).

“There are a handful of American musicians who can be counted on to hit the bullseye every time they step before a microphone. Here is a musician who is as great as anyone making music now, and among his most devoted followers he is the first in line for handing out the finest. This is someone who doesn’t ever take for granted the power of a great song, but also isn’t afraid to take chances and swing for the areas of life that are almost uncaptureable. But capture them Jesse DeNatale does, over and over, which makes The Hands of Time able to never grow old. It’s almost like it’s a new album every time it’s listened to.”

In 2000 Jesse recorded Shangri-La West,  which was released on the Jackpine Social Club label. It gathered a wide array of great reviews. Tom Waits hailed DeNatale, “A unique and original American voice.”  Rolling Stone Magazine’s Ben Fong -Torres wrote, “Jesse DeNatale’s songs are not only well worth hearing, they’re well worth hearing again and again.” The record was voted one of that years favorites by No Depression magazine, and his song Riding Gloves was used in the closing credits of the Hollywood movie Black Irish. 

In 2020 DeNatale released The Wilderness on Cleveland’s Blue Arrow Records.

(Jonathan Richman).  The consensus was that because of the pandemic there would be no touring but it was exciting to have a new release of DeNatale’s music. One of the songs, “The Ballad of Oscar Grant”  describes the murder of a young black man on New Years Eve in Oakland CA.  Another song entitled “Paradise” was written to memorialize the California town of the same name that was almost completely destroyed by the Camp Fire of 2018. The song “Postcard from America” is a call to action, a longing to right the ship. “The Wilderness reminds us of how to layout, interpret and hand out a writing that is not wrapped around one’s melancholy. Moving, but without touching the strings of emotion. Only by reminding ourselves, with extreme humility and with stupendous clarity, what a record is, what songs are, what is worth telling. What we are.”  – Roots Highway (Italian Magazine)