Nathan Gregor "Nate" Mendel (born December 2, 1968) is an American musician for the bands Foo Fighters, The Jealous Sound, Sunny Day Real Estate, and The Fire Theft. In 2015, he announced he is the singer, songwriter, and guitarist for his new project, Lieutenant.\n', '

Mendel was born on December 2, 1968, in Richland, a mid-sized city in southeast Washington. His first instrument was the violin. As at the age of 13, Mendel started to get interested in rock music and joining a band, a friend who played guitar suggested him to play bass guitar. Mendel stated that "as I picked up that bass guitar I went on a 20-year detour into punk", helped by his town usually having concerts of DIY punk bands such as Scream. This led to a "pretty limited musical education", as despite taking some lessons with a bassist from a local band, Mendel mostly taught himself to play, and "it was all hardcore punk rock, like Minor Threat, Black Flag and Bad Brains. Instead of studying the bass playing of someone like John Entwistle, which would have given me a foundation of how to play. I just wanted to play a lot of notes really fast."\n', '

Mendel began his musical career in the hardcore band Diddly Squat, which only recorded a 7" single but did a national tour during the 1988 summer vacation. After Diddly Squat ended, Mendel moved to Seattle, where he spent four months on the straight edge band Brotherhood. Afterwards he joined the band Christ on a Crutch, which included bandmate Glen Essary and lasted until 1993. In 1992, Mendel and his University of Washington housemate Dan Hoerner decided to form a band, and invited drummer William Goldsmith to form the group that would end up being named Sunny Day Real Estate. Mendel added that SDRE was an attempt to "play more intricate, interesting music". While Mendel toured Europe with Christ on a Crutch, Jeremy Enigk jammed with the remaining members and eventually became a full-time member of SDRE.\n', '

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