A few different friends sent me recordings of Nathan Bess over the past year, and once we finally linked up, it made perfect sense why folks were passing his name around. Nathan’s born and raised in the Charleston, West Virginia area, and since I’m based right here in Charleston too, we met up in Nitro, WV and filmed a set. This video is Nathan performing his song “Insane,” just raw and honest—exactly the kind of Appalachian songwriting that stops you in your tracks. Lyrically, he’s sitting in that space a lot of us know too well: time racing, hearts breaking, love fading, and everybody looking up at the sky to curse the rain and complain about the clouds. The hook lands hard—“I can’t help but feel like we’ve all gone insane”—and it’s delivered with that plainspoken, lived-in feel that makes the story believable. Nathan works full time as a firefighter in South Charleston and started releasing music in 2024 with two EPs (“part 1” and “part 2”), and you can hear that working-person reality in the way he writes and sings. If you’ve ever been drawn to the world people compare to Tyler Childers or Chris Stapleton, you’ll understand the lane Nathan’s in.