It’s a warm, sticky November afternoon in New Orleans, the type of muggy that makes you wonder if the locals who say it really does cool off here come fall have had one too many French 75s. At the entrance to St. Roch Cemetery, one of the city’s most cherished burial sites, Nathaniel Rateliff walks toward the chapel, trailed by Jules, his effervescent wife of seven years. St. Roch is said to have effected miraculous cures, and if there were one for a hangover, Rateliff would probably take it.

The night before, he and his band, the Night Sweats, took over the venerable club Tipitina’s, whipping the crowd into an ecstatic froth with their brand of primal, wall-shaking soul. Now he’s got a few hours to kill before filming a commercial for Apple Music. Barrel-chested and dressed in head-to-toe denim, shades of blue fading into black, he stops in front of a section of graves where tombs are stacked on top of each other, rather than given their own spot. “Are those the cheap ones?” he asks with a gravelly laugh, scorched by the previous night’s vessel-popping vocals and postshow whiskey. “We’ve had so many deaths in my family, at this point my mom just wants to be burned up when she goes.”

Rateliff, who is thirty-seven, grew up in a deeply religious household in Hermann, Missouri, but has struggled with his faith through the years. Inside the cemetery’s chapel is a side room filled with discarded prostheses and crutches, tokens of gratitude left by the devout. Rateliff looks inside, then shudders. “I don’t always take care of myself like I should,” he says. “But that’s”—he points to a plaster foot—“really weird.”