Ivan Neville

Ivan Neville has a really good new album, "Touch My Soul." We talk about everything from his early years in New Orleans to working with the Neville Brothers, Bonnie Raitt and Keith Richards...as well as his drug addiction and so much more. Ivan is a great guy, you'll understand why he's buddies with all the players!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to Bob left Said podcast. My
guest today is the one and only Ivan Never, who
has a new solo album, Touch My Soul. Ivan, you
haven't put out a solo album for almost twenty years.
Why now? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Why not?

Speaker 3 (00:27):
You know, VENI late than Never, I guess I was
kind of just playing around, playing with my band Dumpster Funk,
doing a little bit of this, a little bit of that,
and it occurred to me, oh, let's write a song, Ivnant,
and I kind of just came up with a tune,
and next thing you know, I got a whole record
going on.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
So yeah, okay, So how do you know it's a
solo record and not a Dumpster Funk record.

Speaker 3 (00:53):
Ah, I think you can tell. It's not as funky.
It's got a little grease. It's is soulful, but a
few more ballads and few more mid tempo, kind of
soft kind of.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
Sounding things, and.

Speaker 3 (01:10):
Topic wise, it's a little more personal from my point
of view than with Dumpster So yeah, there's a few
few elements that will let you know it's not a
dumpster record.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
Well, I certainly listened to the record and the record
is great. You know, I'm not saying that than you,
because you know people of aren't vintage and make new
music and usually roll in your eyes. But I guess
what I'm saying. In the writing process, how did you
know you had a solo album and not a Dumpster
Funk record?

Speaker 2 (01:38):
You know, it's funny, it's it's it's uh.

Speaker 3 (01:41):
The thing about it is, those guys are playing on
a lot of this record. The members of Dumpster Funk
are playing with me, Tony Hall, Devin Truss, Claire uh
ian Neville, Nick Daniels, the whole lot of them in
some some form of fashion. They're all involved in this thing.
But the writing process was just me by myself in

(02:04):
my son room, which is right down a few steps
away from where I'm sitting, and there's a piano in there,
at the digital piano, and I go sit in there
and I start making up little pieces and that's kind
of where I developed the ideas for the songs, and
I recorded them on my phone on voice memo, little piece,
little piece here, little piece there, and then I would

(02:24):
go into the recording studio and start building songs based
on those ideas. And it was just me by myself,
starting the process and building the foundation for what people
became this record, So that's the difference. And Dumpster Funk
is a group thing, and it's more of a close

(02:45):
to a democracy. It's like guys meeting and converging in
a room and somebody has an idea, or all of
us have ideas.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
And we meet up in the middle somewhere.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
But in this process, I was guiding the ship the
whole time, whereas in Dumpster Funk we take turns driving
kind of so to speak.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
But here I was doing all the driving.

Speaker 1 (03:10):
Okay, do you normally write songs or you suddenly got
inspirations that I want to write a set of songs?
What was the genesis?

Speaker 2 (03:18):
Well, I do write a lot.

Speaker 3 (03:20):
I have written a lot with Dumpster Funk, and I've
written a lot of lyrics and a lot of ideas
that we've had as a group. I've had a big
part in a lot of the songwriting. And I wrote
some songs maybe a few years ago for a project
called Neville Jacobs with a friend of minees by the
name of Chris Jacobs. He lives in Baltimore, great singer songwriter,

(03:42):
and he and I had a project and we did
a little dabbling and co wrote some things, and he
actually helped me with a few of these songs as well.
So it was a different mindset to start writing some
Ivan music. It was a different little mindset, you know.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
Okay, so you get all the demos, you talk about
going into the studio. What's the situation. You have a
home studio, use commercial studio? What studios?

Speaker 3 (04:09):
It was part It was mostly home studio stuff and
a couple of different spots. And it wasn't like I
was dem I was I was making it up as
I went along, basically, So it wasn't like I demoed
and then cut the songs. I was making it up
and putting parts on and building the tracks and that's
what they became. And it was not like I was

(04:31):
going to record them again, like I would build a
song with just a piano piece. And maybe this thing
called a rhythm king, a maestro rhythm king. It's a
little beatbox thing that maybe who used it, sly Slyestone
used it on this Fresh album. There was a guy
by the name of Timmy Thomas who had a song
called why Can't We Live Together? Back in the day

(04:54):
he had he used that little beatbox. So did a sugary.
Oh this used it the same little beat beatbox little thing.
I used that in a bunch of songs to when
I was starting out with the with the with the
ideas and that's and sometimes I would keep that rhythm
in the song and I'd put some live drums on
them and maybe some other little loopy thing, and maybe

(05:16):
I would have Tony C. Hall Tony Hall come and
play a bass, or I played bass on a couple
of things with some key bass, and I kind of
built it and made it up as I went along, because,
to tell you the truth, when I started out, I
had one song. I had one song that I wrote
by itself. It was a one off and it was
a song called Hey Altogether. That's the first song I

(05:38):
wrote for this project.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
And yeah, so have you heard Steve Winwood's version of
why Can't We Live Together?

Speaker 2 (05:47):
You know what, I've never heard that. I'm interested to
hear that.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
You know, you hear the you hear the beat box
on the original Timmy Thomas, it's the same song. It's
not like it's completely it's really great. As a keyboard player,
I think you would enjoy it. But are you technically savvy?
Are you a good engineer in the studio.

Speaker 3 (06:07):
I am not technically savvy at all.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
You know.

Speaker 3 (06:11):
The thing is, I there was a period in the
late eighties when I did a lot of my own recording.
I had a place in Los Angeles where I wrote
a lot of songs for my first record, and I
did a lot of the engineering.

Speaker 1 (06:23):
But this was before it.

Speaker 3 (06:25):
Went high tech and it went computer digital and stuff
like that, and I was given I was pretty good
with a drum machine and all that stuff back then,
But for this project kind I kind of dumb me
down a little bit, and I haven't really kept up
with some of the technical progression that we've made. And

(06:46):
I have friends that know how to do something. I
know how to tell someone what I want, and I
know how to look at the screen and say, see
that piece right there, that piece, let's blah blah blah
with that piece, you know, let's make a loop out
of that little one little section there, and things of
that nature. I know how to do that and editing.

(07:08):
If I'm in the room with someone who's technically savvy,
I could tell them what to do by what I'm hearing.

Speaker 1 (07:14):
Yeah, okay, the opening track, as you say, is all together.
There are a lot of special guests, your father, Bonnie, Ray,
Michael McDonald, trompone Shorty. How did they end up on
the record? How do you actually record?

Speaker 3 (07:28):
Well, that they were These pieces were all done separately
in their respective homes or their studios that they go
to wherever they live. Like Bonnie has an engineer near
her house where she lives in northern California, and she
had someone she sang. I sent her the song. Now,

(07:50):
the funny thing was Michael McDonald. I had cross paths
with him over the last several years, maybe about six
or seven years ago, there was a project that I
was a part of. It was a live performance thing.
It was called The Last They were doing a version
of the Last Waltz and it was included Warren Haynes

(08:13):
and Don was and Mike McDonald was in that group.
And I was a part of that. And that's where
I really kind of got to know Mike a little bit.

Speaker 1 (08:21):
Well.

Speaker 2 (08:21):
He happened to be in New Orleans. Oh, he was
coming to New Orleans.

Speaker 3 (08:25):
And this was like four years ago, like a little
bit right before the pandemic. He was coming to New
Orleans and I get I text sent them a text.
I'm like, Mike, I got this. Oh you're gonna you're
gonna be in New Orleans? How long you're gonna be
down here for? And we kind of he hit me
up and yeah, I'm gonna be down there for a
few days. Well, anyway, long story showed, he ended up

(08:45):
having a day or a couple of hours and he
came by the studio and I he had him sing
some stuff on this on this song, and I had
him sing some stuff on this song and he, uh,
he did.

Speaker 2 (09:04):
He did. It was amazing.

Speaker 3 (09:05):
It was amazing listening to him, listening to his voice,
especially when he left, and me and the engineer we
were just listening back at Michael McDonald's voice. This amazing,
you know, distinctive voice that I loved. Right, And then
I got I've got my dad.

Speaker 2 (09:23):
To sing some stuff. And the funny thing was the
stuff my dad saying.

Speaker 3 (09:27):
For some reason, it didn't I didn't get the right
stuff from my dad initially.

Speaker 1 (09:33):
And then Bonnie.

Speaker 3 (09:34):
I had just finished touring with Bonnie maybe a year
before that, and I was I had played you. I
known Bonnie for many years, so I found the right time,
and I'm like, I got this song, Bonnie, I'm gonna
have my dad on it. I got Mike McDonald on it,
and I'd love for you to sing on it. And
so she she, she said, Okay, send me the song.

(09:55):
I said to the song. She dug it. She got
with her engineer and she sang a bunch of stuff.
Find So I got it back and I listened and
I'm like, oh my god, this is so great. And
I had Mike McDonald and Bonnie singing on this, on
this choruses and on this bridge. And then I got
David Shaw. He lives in New Orleans. He's got a

(10:15):
band called the Revivalist. I got David Shaw to come
over and sang. He sang some harmonies on some of
the choruses and whatnot. I got Trumbone Shorty to put
a few little licks on it in the vamp section.

Speaker 1 (10:31):
I sent it.

Speaker 2 (10:32):
I ended up.

Speaker 3 (10:32):
Mike McDonald text me and says, hey, how's it going
with that song? Do you need anything else for me?
I'm like, yes, sure, I want to do a couple.
You want to do a couple of little ad libs?

Speaker 1 (10:42):
Perhaps?

Speaker 3 (10:43):
And he sang a few ad libs and he sang
some little ooh stuff in the beginning. So the first
voices you hear on this song is Mike McDonald. He
goes in the beginning. So anyway, long story show. I
ended up and then I called my dad. I said, Dad,
I said, listen, I didn't really get exactly what I
need it from you, but I need you to do.
I need about five or six just classic Aaron Neville yoldas.

(11:06):
You don't even have to sing any words. I just
need some oo. I need a few of those. Just
give me five or six of those and I'll have
everything I want.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
And so I ended up with all this beautiful stuff.

Speaker 3 (11:19):
And that's where I really had a fun time, sitting
with an engineer. It was this guy, this guy name
is Basie Bob, who helped me with edit all this stuff.

Speaker 1 (11:27):
And he mixed that song.

Speaker 3 (11:29):
And we sat in his studio and listened to this stuff,
and we listened to me singing, and here comes a
Bonnie rate little line. Here comes to Mike McDonald line,
and let's put an Aaron Neville yola right here. And
it was a beautiful thing. I had so much fun
doing that.

Speaker 1 (11:45):
Okay, So, as I referenced earlier, we're older, the world
has changed, acts put out new records and they immediately disappear.
So you finished the record. It doesn't sound sounds like
you did. Didn't cost that much. How did you ultimately
find a record company it amp it up for release.

Speaker 2 (12:07):
Well, that that was a I owed. I owed something.
I old Dumpster Funk for that.

Speaker 3 (12:13):
Dumpster Funk had been talking to this label of the
Mascot label group to do a Dumpster Funk record. Now,
Dumpster Funk had music in the can that we had
been working on over the past, you know, of five,
six or seven years, and so we had some stuff
that we had gathered up, some music. And then so

(12:33):
when Dumpster got to deal with this label, I had
this one song, his hay all together song that was done.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
And this is like I'm talking, this is doing two.

Speaker 3 (12:44):
This is like two twenty twenty when they said during
the pandemic twenty twenty twenty twenty one or something like that,
when Dumpster got to ink the deal with Mascot label group,
and they offered me a side a deal as well
based on the one song. So now we worked the
Dumpster record a little bit, we played tour and all

(13:06):
that stuff, and now it's time for me. I have
to write about eight or nine more songs. That's basically
what happened.

Speaker 1 (13:12):
Yeah, okay, so the record is done. You're talking to me,
but how do you plan to get the word out?
And you're gonna go on the road as I've been.

Speaker 3 (13:23):
Right, Well, I plan on going on the road this
ivan where it makes sense, especially early on, and then
I'm gonna incorporate some of this stuff, maybe one or
two things where where it also.

Speaker 2 (13:37):
Makes sense with Dumpster Funk.

Speaker 3 (13:39):
I might even do some double duties with Dumpster when
where we can where I might open up some Dumpster
Funk sets some shows and do an Ivan set. But
I'm gonna do whatever I have to do to get
this music out there, to get it get it heard
by some folks. So I'm ready to play.

Speaker 1 (13:57):
You know. So what's it like having your father be
Aaron Biftels.

Speaker 3 (14:04):
You know, it's pretty cool because he's a he's a
very cool guy man, and it was very you know
growing up with him. He was he was larger than life,
you know when I was a kid, but for.

Speaker 2 (14:16):
Many reasons, not just because he was this singer guy.

Speaker 3 (14:18):
Because when I was young, he hadn't really found any
like real success like he had. He was known around
town a bit, and I knew that by the time
I was maybe seven years old or something. He had
this big hit song called tell It Like It Is,
and we we I remember hearing that song and everybody's saying,

(14:39):
this is going to be a hit record.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
And all this stuff. And he didn't make he didn't
make any money.

Speaker 3 (14:44):
Off of that that music, so we didn't wait, wait.

Speaker 1 (14:47):
Wait, since I'm talking to you, do you have any
idea if it was a big hit record. While he
didn't make any money.

Speaker 3 (14:54):
The business side was not together at all, and the
people involved, you know, there was a there were a
lot of shady dealings going on in those days, and
somebody made some money, I'm sure, because it sold a
lot of a lot of copies and it was maybe
made it to maybe number.

Speaker 2 (15:10):
Two anyway, But this guy is big.

Speaker 3 (15:12):
He was He was generally a big guy, and he
was kind of tough and he I saw the respect
that he commanded from the people on the streets. I'm
talking about in the neighborhood. Like, not music people, I'm
talking about street people. They respected this guy, Aaron Neville

(15:33):
was respected, you know, not only in the music but
on the street. I mean, you know, he's got a
tattoo in his face. He had a tattoo in his
face back in the days, and everybody didn't. Everybody didn't
have tattoos, and so he was a pretty rough, you know,
tough dude, you know who, you know, held his own.
But it was also impressive that he could sing like

(15:53):
like an angel. Here's this big tough guy that he
his voice. He starts singing and he's got this light,
little beautiful voice.

Speaker 2 (16:02):
So you know what it was.

Speaker 3 (16:03):
It was very cool growing up with him, and then
when I got to be a teenager, he and I
got really close again.

Speaker 2 (16:11):
For there was some reasons that, you know, there.

Speaker 3 (16:14):
Was a time when he and my mom kind of
didn't see i'd I, and so I got to spend
a little bit of time with him as a teenager,
and he kind of treated me like I was kind
of a grown up a little bit, and I felt
pretty cool to get to hang with him during that period.
And sooner later, him and my mom they ironed things
out and we were back together as a family. And

(16:35):
by this time I started playing piano, and he showed
me a couple of songs on the piano he showed
me the first songs that I lunged how to play.
My dad showed me, and you know, soon after, I
mean a few years later, I was in the band
with he and his brothers, my uncles, with the Nether brothers,
and that was kind of where I got my educated,
My music education was playing with those guys. So it's

(16:58):
always been, you know, like just an honor to like
Aaron Aaron Nevills my dad. But I got to tell
you something a lot of people don't know is that
I was born named after him, and they changed my
name when I was very young for some other family reasons.

(17:18):
My mom's folks didn't really get on with my dad
that that.

Speaker 2 (17:22):
Well when he was when they were young, he was
a bad dude.

Speaker 3 (17:25):
And my mom's folks didn't like my dad too much,
so they changed my name from Aaron to Ivan, and
I still have his middle name. His name's Aaron Joseph
Neville Senior. My name is Ivan Joseph Neville. I have
a younger brother who later was he was named Aaron
James never Junior. So I was able to grow up

(17:46):
being the oldest of my siblings and kind of known
as Little Aaron but I was Ivan, so I had
my own identity, which I didn't have to totally live
in the shadow of Aaron Neville's son like that. So
if I would have been kept that name and I
would have been Aaron Jr. How different things might have been.

(18:06):
So there was that element as well. So, you know,
I was known as the oldest and little Aaron, but
my name was Ivan, so I had my own kind
of thing.

Speaker 1 (18:16):
How many kids in the family.

Speaker 3 (18:18):
I have two brothers and his sister, and I'm the oldest.

Speaker 1 (18:22):
And what are your two brothers and your sister up to?

Speaker 3 (18:26):
My sisters retired? She but ye know, she retired and
she works. She works works in a civil sheriff's office.
She's been working there. She worked there for thirty some
years and retired. My youngest brother, Jason, he sings and
he performs. He's got a band. He plays around town
in New Orleans. His name is Jason Chason Neville. And

(18:47):
my other brother, little Aaron, we call him Fred's. He
took on his own identity too. His nickname is Fred.
But he's Aaron Jr. And he does all kinds the
odd things, odd jobs and whatnot. But yeah, and he's
music being clined as well, but he didn't go into
music the way I did.

Speaker 1 (19:08):
Okay, so your father has this huge hit when you're
like seven, while you're growing up, does your father what's
he doing for a living? Is he singing for a
living or does he have another job?

Speaker 3 (19:19):
He was singing, and he had other jobs as well,
Like there were times when he was singing and he
would go on the road, in which I got to
tell you, I would I would welcome the times when
he was gone.

Speaker 2 (19:30):
There were times when he would leave because he was
a tough guy.

Speaker 3 (19:33):
He was a tough He was a stern father figure
in our house, and when he was gone it would
seem a.

Speaker 1 (19:39):
Little easier around around for me.

Speaker 3 (19:42):
I could get away with more stuff with my mom
than I could with my dad.

Speaker 2 (19:46):
But he when he was around, he played music.

Speaker 3 (19:50):
He had some jobs and he played with my uncle
aunt and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (19:55):
But he also had jobs working on the riverfront.

Speaker 3 (19:59):
I remember one time he showed up at the house
with a van would have sit with cigarettes and I
can remember the Yeah, the van had like cigarettes and
candy and stuff. He had all kinds of jobs, all
kinds of little jobs. But the riverfront was a was
a mainstay. That was his bread and butter. Like when
he didn't have any singing jobs, he would go work

(20:20):
on the riverfront.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
So my mom worked.

Speaker 3 (20:22):
My mom worked, she worked, She worked at Charity Charity
Hospital in New Orleans. My whole child, all my childhood.

Speaker 1 (20:30):
Yeah, I was gonna ask about that. Thanks for answering
telling me the story. So until you he had come
with age like eighteen, does your father ever strike it
rich or is he struggling and doing different stuff while
you're growing up?

Speaker 3 (20:44):
You know, he didn't strike it rich, but he was maintaining.
By the time I was eighteen, the Neville Brothers had
started playing as a group. He and my uncles, my
uncle Art, Charles and Cyril. They started playing as the
Neville Brothers around nineteen seventy seven, I would think, And

(21:07):
they started, uh seventy seven, seventy eight, and they started
They were making decent money as they started out, And
then I started playing with them pretty early on, like
maybe late.

Speaker 2 (21:19):
Seventy eight, early seventy nine. I started playing with the Nevill.

Speaker 3 (21:22):
Brothers as as an additional keyboard player and singing backups
and stuff.

Speaker 1 (21:34):
So, what what kind of kid were you growing up?

Speaker 3 (21:38):
I was pretty I was pretty smart early on, and
I started acting up, and I liked sports a lot.
But you know, I was pretty excitable. I was pretty
like fidgety and talked a lot. I told you know,
I was. I would tell a lot of stories and stuff,
and I was a pretty good kid.

Speaker 1 (21:58):
But I liked sports.

Speaker 2 (21:59):
I like play football, and I was musically inclined.

Speaker 3 (22:03):
I knew that I had I had a slight ability
to sing a little bit, but I was very shy
about it. And I did pick up a guitar when
I was about ten years old, and I asked my mom.
I said, Mom, I wanted guitar. She bought me a
guitar from the five and dime store. It was a
little electric Japanese electric model with a little some little

(22:24):
little amp. And I would play a little bit. I'd
play a couple of bass lines or guitar lines from
Sliner family Stone songs, maybe simple sing a simple song
I'd learned that. I learned chicken strut by the meters.
I learned maybe one or two Jackson five songs, and
then I lost interest. I didn't have the discipline at

(22:46):
the time, or I was very impatient with it, and
I didn't I put it down. Matter of fact, I
think I loaned it. I loaned it to my uncle
Cyril the guitar. I had kind of set it down
for a while. I wasn't playing it. See, let me
borrow that guitar, and I loaned in the guitar and
I never saw it again. And I wasn't that mad
about it because I had kind of lost interest in

(23:08):
playing it. Then I started playing piano when I was
about fifteen years old.

Speaker 1 (23:13):
Okay, you said you were living with your father. Your
father showed your stuff. Go a little deeper. How you
picked up the piano.

Speaker 3 (23:21):
Okay, Now, so at the time I was I was living,
I was I was living with my mom. When I
started going up to my dad's house, he was still
living in our old house where we had where I
had grown up at. And then when my mom and
him he got back together. We were all together on
a street called Valence Street, and Valence Street was pretty

(23:41):
much Neville Central. My uncle Art lived down the block
a block away. My grandmother's house, where my dad and
then grew up, was across the street from Art. I
had great aunts, great aunts, my great uncle, Big Chief
Jolly of the Wild, choppatolas.

Speaker 2 (23:57):
They were all around and my dad.

Speaker 3 (24:01):
We had my mom's She was my mom's piano that
she played as a kid. She took piano lessons as
a child and her mother and her parents bought her
a piano. And that piano was in our living room
in our house uptown, and I would sit down and
fool around my dad. You know, there was a guy
by the name of James Booker, and James Booker was

(24:24):
a family friend. He went to grade school with my dad,
he went to high school with my mom, and he
would stop by the house every so often. I mean
like maybe a couple two or three times a year.
James Booker would show up out of nowhere, and he
was this character. He was this very very unique person man.
And he would sit down and play the piano like

(24:45):
nothing I had ever heard in my life. And that
was very inspirational hearing him play. And I'm like, you know,
I might never get to play like that, but I
wouldn't mind playing a little bit of piano.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
That's some cool stuff. So my dad taught me a song.

Speaker 3 (24:58):
I think he taught me the song called Cabbage Alley,
which was a meters song. My uncle Art it was
a riff my uncle Art and it was kind of
a riff that he had kind of got from Professor
long Here, and I learned that song first. I think
my dad taught me Such a Night by Doctor John.
He taught me that, and one time when Booker was visiting,

(25:20):
he taught me a song by Professor long Here called
Big Chief. And those were my first ones that I
that I kind of would fool around with.

Speaker 2 (25:29):
And I immediately.

Speaker 3 (25:30):
Started making up little songs, like I started trying to
write pretty quickly, and I was just that was it?

Speaker 1 (25:38):
What was the inspiration to write? I don't know.

Speaker 3 (25:41):
I've listened to the radio all the time, and I liked,
you know, I liked all the local music that New
Orleans is just known for all the stuff that.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
You hear around and you hear on the radio, but.

Speaker 3 (25:51):
You'd also hear this other stuff you'd hear, you know,
like like I liked a lot of different music as
a kid. I liked the Beatles, I like the Stones,
I liked the Family Strong Jackson five. But in the
early seventies there was a lot of great music that
was playing that I had really dug a lot, like
Elton John stuff and later on the Doobie Brothers at

(26:14):
late seventies, and there was I started wanting to try
to write songs.

Speaker 1 (26:19):
How did you end up becoming proficient at the piano?

Speaker 2 (26:22):
I just I don't know. I just kind of kept
doing it.

Speaker 3 (26:24):
I kept at it, I kept playing a little bit,
and I kept I would sit down and just make
up little chord progressions. And when I was in high school,
when I was in eleventh and eleventh to twelfth grade,
I was in the stage band and the teacher, his
name was mister Francis. He would let me sit in

(26:46):
the back room. There was a little piano room, and
he'd let me sit in there and just play around.
And I would just be in there, playing and making
up stuff and practicing the things I knew. I should
have been studying more about music theory and how to
learn how to read music, which I did not. But
I kind of developed a little style of my own,

(27:06):
and I started writing songs and so the never but
when I was started playing with the Brothers, I started
incorporating some of my stuff and my stylings into their music.
And I would write songs and they would say, oh,
we might want to play that, and they would maybe
perform a couple of songs that I have perhaps written.

Speaker 1 (27:25):
You know, Okay, New Orleans is its own world, and
really the average person doesn't understand it in terms of music.
There was a heyday with Fats Domino. Then Doctor John
got signed to Atlantic in the early seventies, there was
another push. But explain New Orleans to us and where

(27:49):
you lived in the city.

Speaker 3 (27:52):
I can only explain New Orleans by talking about the
signature dish. And it's called gumbo, and it's kind of
a mixture of everything. It's a little bit of this
like gumbo from when I was growing up and my

(28:13):
mom and they made gumbo.

Speaker 2 (28:14):
They had a little bit, a little bit.

Speaker 3 (28:15):
They put some chicken, they'd have some seasoning onions, bell peppers, celery,
and garlic. They mix in a little bit of that.
They saltaste some chicken. They add some sausages to it.
They add some shrimp, some crab meat, and they would
make this thing called the root. And by the way,
my mom's maiden name, my mom's family's name was root

(28:37):
l o Ux, So they knew something about making a root.
And that's what that's with flour and oil and then
that roole and you add all those ingredients to that
root and that's what makes that gumbo special and it
tastes lea. You could taste a little bit of everything
in there. And that's what New Oleans music is. Because
you got brass bands, sounds, you got the more Dixieland

(29:01):
version of that, you got the more street version of it.
You have the Mardi Gras Indians, you have the sounds
that you hear on a Sunday afternoon when you go
on your pouch and there's a second line going down
the street. There's a social and pleasure club. These guys
they join these clubs and they put ready, they have
their little celebrations on a Sunday. And you know about

(29:24):
where the term second line comes from. Second line comes
from the funerals, the celebration at a funeral when someone dies,
you got the you got the casket, the body and
the family, and you got a brass band, and you
got the crowd behind the brass band.

Speaker 1 (29:41):
And that's the second line.

Speaker 3 (29:42):
And it's like, so there was music involved in every
aspect of New Orleans life, and it's all about the celebration.
And you know, I don't know, there's something about the
mixture of that, and you got the Caribbean vibe.

Speaker 2 (29:58):
You got the Caribbean rhythms that you hear in New
Orleans music.

Speaker 3 (30:03):
How that was a cross influence, like the Caribbean was
influenced by New Orleans music, like reggae reggae was influenced
by New Orleans music, as New Orleans was influenced by
all those sounds from all over the Caribbean and things
of that nature.

Speaker 2 (30:17):
So, man, there's a it's just so uh so gumbo.

Speaker 3 (30:21):
Gumbo is the simplest way for me to put how
I you know what I I mean when you think
of all of the count and you think of doctor John,
and you think of the Professor long Hair's and and
and uh and the Meters and and Alan Tucson, and
then you got the Marcella's family, the Neville family, the
Baptiste family, the Lasti family, all these music the Andrews,

(30:46):
all these musical families and and just it's it's it's
something to behold, I must tell you. And growing up
here it was absolutely so much fun and it just
seemed so natural. I didn't see, like, wow, I thought
everybody had all this cool music and all this cool food.
That were, you know, but obviously a lot of it

(31:07):
was unique is unique to New Orleans.

Speaker 1 (31:10):
Okay, let's talk more socially. You know, Bourbon Street, Party Street.
Then you go to the other side of town. You
have big homes. You have to lane where you grew up.
What was it like, and you know, did the experience racism?
You know, what was it like just living in the world.

Speaker 2 (31:28):
Yeah, there was, there was. There was definitely some racism.

Speaker 3 (31:31):
And you know, the neighborhoods in New Orleans is so
unique because you know, where I live right now, it's
not much different than where I lived long time ago,
back in the days on Valence Street. Right now, if
I walk three blocks toward the lake.

Speaker 1 (31:51):
I'm in the hood.

Speaker 3 (31:52):
I mean I'm in I'm in a neighborhood called Central
City where they might you might hear some gunshots go
off around there on a regular basis. You gotta watch it,
watch it back, you know, you know, be aware of
your surroundings and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (32:07):
Anyway, but if you walk three blocks toward the river.

Speaker 3 (32:11):
You in a place called what you called, it's called
uh hang On hang On Garden District.

Speaker 2 (32:17):
The Garden District is lots of old beautiful New.

Speaker 3 (32:20):
Orleans homes and it's obviously predominantly white, you know, And
that's kind of how New Orleans has always been.

Speaker 2 (32:30):
I mean, when I grew up on Vallence Street, we.

Speaker 3 (32:32):
Had a little area I would say in between Colisseum
Street or maybe Perry Street. Perry Street to the River
was predominantly black, but so so. And I lived three
or four blocks from Perry Street, but if I walked
half a block across Perry Street, it was it was.

(32:54):
It was similar to the Garden District. It was white neighborhoods.
And it was when I when I've come to know
as like maybe old old white New Orleans money, you know.

Speaker 2 (33:07):
And St.

Speaker 3 (33:08):
Charles Avenue was within walking distance from my house growing up.
And Saint Charles Avenue is absolutely old, big gazillion dollars,
million dollar homes. They look like, you know, they're like mansions.
And some of them also some of them take on there.
There's a few of them that have like a plantation
vibe to them. I ain't gonna lie, right, but.

Speaker 1 (33:30):
There was this thing.

Speaker 3 (33:31):
There was a division because Marti Gros, the Mardi Gras
parades were that was most that was uh, that was
mostly for white people. So the black people had their
one parade, it's called the Zulu Parades. So they figured
they would mock themselves and they would go and be
on floats in blackface, and that's that's that parade is

(33:56):
one of the most popular, most beloved parades of all
But it's still and mind you don't want to tell
you the truth. It's you would think it would be
drastically different now, but it's but it's actually not. You
would think the separation would would not be so drastic,
but it still is. Because my son who goes through school,

(34:20):
he goes to private school and he goes through I
went I went to Catholic school.

Speaker 2 (34:26):
I went to predominantly white school in grade school from
first grade all the.

Speaker 3 (34:30):
Way through seventh and that school is still predominantly white.
And that's that blows my mind, you know, and the
public schools which are predominantly black. And you got a
few charter schools that are mixed, but to charter schools,
you have to go through so much red tape to

(34:53):
get in these charter schools, and there it's you know,
it's so it's mind blowing to realize how separate we
kind of still are to some degree, you would think
that a lot of that stuff would have changed a
little bit more than it has, you know, I mean,
that's funny, man, and that you know, when I was

(35:14):
thinking about that song, hey, altogether, I was thinking about that,
I was thinking more. I was thinking more about community
and how we all grew up where I grew up.
You know, and you walk down the street and the
people in your neighborhood, you would wave to them and say, hey,
how you doing, how are you? And then you would
you would see a stranger, black, white, or whatever color

(35:36):
they were, and you could say, hey, how you doing,
and they would speak back to you, Hey, how are you?

Speaker 2 (35:40):
Good morning? Stuff like that, And it's.

Speaker 3 (35:43):
Over the last especially recently, you know, you know, people
because because everybody's opinions about this and that, political beliefs,
religious beliefs and all this, we've we've come to let
our opinions divide us so drastically. Whereas I think, you know,
I guess for a long time, maybe in politics a

(36:06):
lot of us agreed to disagree about some things, but
we could still be friends. Now it's gotten so polarized
that there's people, you know, who can't be friends with
each other because of their political beliefs or religious beliefs.

Speaker 2 (36:20):
The things of that nature.

Speaker 3 (36:21):
So you know, this song hey altogether is basically I
was trying to, you know, say something without being preachy,
but have put a positive spin on. Look, if we
just all if people just send hi to one stranger
a day, if you walking down the street and you
see somebody you've never seen in your like, you say hey,

(36:41):
how you doing? And that person responds it says, oh, hey,
how are you? That would be a beautiful thing. And
not that it's it's gonna happen, but it would be
cool if people did acknowledge one another a little bit
more because we're all just human. We're all human when
it you know, when the day ends, we all got

(37:02):
to do certain things that you know, we all have
in common. We all have to go use the bathroom
in a similar way. We all have to do you know,
we all brush our teeth. You know, we all got
to do certain stuff and and I think we you know,
it'd be it'd be cool if we remembered a little
more of our similarities and concentrated more on that than

(37:23):
our differences.

Speaker 1 (37:25):
Okay, so do you finish high school?

Speaker 2 (37:28):
I did.

Speaker 3 (37:28):
I finished high school. I finished graduated from Walter oh
Coin Senior High School. I had, by the way, I
had going to several schools.

Speaker 2 (37:37):
I did.

Speaker 3 (37:38):
I did a few little hands antics that went on
starting with my I think in seventh grade, I started
acting a little bit out and I, okay, moved around,
But I did. I finished high school. I went to college.
How long did you go to college? I went to
college for a couple of semesters, maybe three semesters, and
I and I quit.

Speaker 2 (37:59):
I started playing with the news a.

Speaker 1 (38:01):
Little bit slower. How did you quit college and end
up playing with the devil Brood?

Speaker 3 (38:07):
I was still I was in college, and I was
going let me see, I was going to university in
New Orleans. And I had my band. I had a
band that me and some of my friends, a band
called Renegade, And we were playing around, playing like you know,
like wedding receptions or school dances and stuff like that,
and a couple of frat parties here and there, and

(38:31):
I just kind of didn't I wanted to study, and
I knew that I should have studied harder. I knew
that I really wanted to I needed to apply myself
and I just I just didn't do it. And I
just I just my interests went to the music and
not the studious side of music. I wanted to play.
I wanted to play music, and I wanted to play

(38:52):
with my dad and my uncles. So I went to
university in New Orleans for one or two semesters, and
I went to a Gatto community college for half a semester,
and I had all music classes at del Gatto and
I didn't even stay. I started playing with my dad
and my uncles. I started getting those weekly checks, and

(39:14):
I was like, okay.

Speaker 1 (39:16):
Okay, how did you literally start playing with your dad
and your uncles because they had a group. I mean,
you know, do they want to let you in?

Speaker 2 (39:24):
Right? No, that's that's a good question.

Speaker 1 (39:26):
I don't know what were they thinking.

Speaker 3 (39:29):
You know the funny I'm gonna I'm gonna go back
a little bit and tell you My first paying gig
was with my dad.

Speaker 2 (39:36):
My dad he had a gig playing for a house party.

Speaker 3 (39:40):
This group of people that purchased this club called the
five oh one Club that is now known as Tippetinas,
one of the most beloved and famous UH venues to
play in New Orleans. Tippotina's. There's a group of people
that that that bought that club. They used to have
house parties that were in a basement in a house

(40:01):
on Calton Avenue, and my dad was hired to play
a party for them.

Speaker 1 (40:06):
So he got me.

Speaker 3 (40:08):
He got my great uncle George Landry Beating, also know
his big Chief Jolly of the watch oppatuita jolly. Myself
and my dad performed at these folks party and he
there was a piano, there was a set of Hunger drums,
there was a cow bell and tambourine, and we all
accompanied one another and we played some songs together and

(40:30):
there was a lot of weed smoke going on in
this party.

Speaker 2 (40:33):
It was a fun party and all of that kind
of stuff. Back then.

Speaker 3 (40:36):
This was magnets is in the seventies. This is like
maybe nineteen seventy seven, seventy six, seventy seven. And my
dad paid me one hundred dollars. He gave me a
hundred dollar bill. After the night was done, I was like,
what one hundred dollars for this? I got to play
music and smoke pot and I got a hundred hundred
dollars for that. I like that, so shortly after when

(41:01):
my dad and his brother started the Neville Brothers. Now
I eased into it. Now I didn't immediately start playing.

Speaker 1 (41:08):
They did.

Speaker 2 (41:08):
They did.

Speaker 3 (41:08):
I think it was their second or third tour they did.
They toured California, and I think it was called the
Mardy Gra Mambo, and it was the Neville Brothers along
with Doctor John and maybe I made I think it
was the Neville Brothers Doctor John, and I think and
it was. And they brought along my great uncle, Big

(41:29):
Chief Jolly, and it was the Never brother with the
Wild Chopp of Toolers and Doctor John opened the show.
And I went along as dressed up as an Indian,
as a Mardi Gras Indian. So I had one of
one of my big my uncle Jolly's Indian suits. I
would put that on and come out toward the end
of the show and be an Indian along with Jolly.

(41:51):
I think Cyril had a few feathers, and my uncle
Charles would go off stage and he put on the
Indian costume and we would do music that from the
Wild Chopp of Tula's album, which was the Neville Brothers
and the Meters performed that music and the recording studio
So that was my first tour with them. And the
fun thing was I did I there was a clavinet

(42:14):
rhythmic keyboard that you know, I would play. Sometimes they
didn't let me play that. I got to play Doctor John.
He invited me to play in his set. He would say,
I haven't man, why don't you come play face and
claud net with me?

Speaker 2 (42:30):
Come play somebody that funk and clavinet on right place.
I would go play the right place, wrong time with
him lavinet.

Speaker 1 (42:37):
And that was my.

Speaker 3 (42:38):
First uh uh entry into being with the Never Brothers band.
Then when we got back home, I had started writing
some songs. They let me come join the band. I
came in the band. I started playing the second or
third keyboard because they were at the time.

Speaker 2 (42:54):
There was another keyboard player.

Speaker 3 (42:56):
There was a guy named Jerald Chilman, my uncle Art,
and here comes Ivan as well. So there was three
keyboard players in that version of Neville Brother's band.

Speaker 1 (43:14):
Okay, you said your father was a tough guy. Were
your uncles like Campa? Were they different?

Speaker 2 (43:20):
Oh? They were, you know what, They were very in
their own ways, like Art.

Speaker 3 (43:25):
Was more of the father, I would say, kind of
a father figured all of them. To everybody, and he
was kind of he was the big brother, and they
all respected art. And how I looked at my dad.
I saw how my dad and him looked at art.
So art scared the.

Speaker 1 (43:43):
Crap out of me.

Speaker 3 (43:44):
When I was young, I was like, I was behaving
really well when I was around art.

Speaker 2 (43:49):
Usually at all times.

Speaker 1 (43:52):
We got really close and we started playing music together.

Speaker 3 (43:54):
But my uncle Cyrriel was the youngest of the brothers,
and he was closer in age to me and so,
but he had a wild streak in him, and he
was kind of the one that was more apt to
go kind of buck wild and kind of had to
keep an eye on soil back back then.

Speaker 2 (44:14):
And my uncle.

Speaker 3 (44:15):
Charles was the quiet one who was probably the most
lethal of all of them as far as being being
a tough guy. Charles is probably the most dangerous one
of all. But he was quiet, very soft spoken. But
don't get on his bad side, do not. He would
quietly give you a look like okay, and you would know,

(44:36):
you would know, okay, okay, I'm gonna shut my mouth up.
I'm not messing with Uncle Charles. So yeah, they all
had their own little version of you know, that tough side,
and they all carried it differently.

Speaker 1 (44:49):
Not only are you going on the road leaving the
home still a teenager making money with your father. So
what do I know, the eye fage guy and this
is long before smartphones, etc. They go on the road,
they're drinking and drugging, you know, having sex whatever. That

(45:10):
is part of the road. But you're also out with
your father.

Speaker 4 (45:12):
So what was your experience Like I was, Hey, I
was the youngest one, and those guys were all like
mostly kind of they were all married and stuff like
that at the time.

Speaker 3 (45:22):
So I was definitely doing all of that, all of
the above. I was drinking, drugging, I got a lot
of the overflow. I got a lot of the women
that those guys didn't spend time. They didn't you know,
they were like busy being cool guys, and they I
would do all of the dirty work for them. Believe me,

(45:44):
I know. I loved that. Part of it is weell
because I had to think for drinking and doing drugs.
I really enjoyed that stuff at that time. I really did.

Speaker 1 (45:56):
Okay, So how does it evolve from you playing in
the Double Brothers to the next thing.

Speaker 2 (46:04):
I ended?

Speaker 3 (46:04):
I wrote a bunch of songs. I started writing a
little bit more. I got an opportunity to go to
California once with UH and and perform and record with
a group called Rufus Rufus Uh you might know Rufus
and Shaka Khan.

Speaker 2 (46:21):
Shaka was the singer with the band Rufus.

Speaker 3 (46:24):
Well, they did a recording that Shaka wasn't wasn't was
not involved in it, and I was on a.

Speaker 2 (46:30):
Record with them.

Speaker 3 (46:31):
The record was called Sealed and Red, and I sang
some of the songs. I wrote a song that was
on that record and played keyboards on some of the stuff.
And that was my first real trip to Los Angeles
without like on my own. And then I came back
to New Orleans and I UH, I reacquainted with my

(46:53):
with my dad, my uncle's and we ended up going
We ended up going on the road and opening up
for the roll Stones, I think in nineteen eighty one,
and I was I met Keith Richards and Ron Woods
and those guys and hit it off with them.

Speaker 2 (47:12):
Pretty pretty, pretty pretty good, and.

Speaker 3 (47:17):
That kind of UH that that that in a later
time that would come, that relationship would come back and
I would I would explore more stuff with them. But
around nineteen eighty four eighty three, I went back to
Los Angeles and I moved to Los Angeles, maybe eighty

(47:37):
two eighty three, probably eighty.

Speaker 2 (47:40):
Three eighty three.

Speaker 3 (47:40):
I moved to Los Angeles and I met a friend
who was playing, who had previously played.

Speaker 1 (47:47):
With the Brothers.

Speaker 2 (47:48):
His name was hutch Hutchinson, hug Hutchinson was playing.

Speaker 3 (47:52):
He had met Bonnie Raid and some other mutual friends
that I knew some I knew of some of these people,
but he had joined Bonnie Rate's band. So in nineteen
eighty four I got a gig playing with Bonnie Ray
and I played with her from maybe eighty four to
maybe eighty six or eighty seven, maybe three four years,

(48:13):
three years or something like that.

Speaker 1 (48:16):
Well, that was a dark period in her career where
she lost her.

Speaker 3 (48:20):
She she had she she didn't had your loss. You
had didn't have the deal at the time, a record deal,
and she was mostly playing to like a cult kind
of following. But did she had a loyal a loyal following,
you know, on the circuit and it was not you
know what she would later do in the later in
the later eighties, she would And it's basically you know what,

(48:41):
it's basically probably a product of what she did.

Speaker 2 (48:43):
With her life.

Speaker 3 (48:45):
She kind of straightened her stuff out a little bit
because we were all partying. It was the eighties, and
by the time I left her group, uh, she had
she started. She changed her life a bit. And then
she's I mean her in her her story. You know,
that's her story. But I know she ended up making

(49:07):
that record of Nick a time late eighties in that
catapult of her career to a whole nother level, and
she became a big star.

Speaker 1 (49:17):
Okay, you're playing in her band, you gotta check. But
are you happy or you say, man, I want to
do my own thing, you know what?

Speaker 3 (49:27):
I was very happy. And then at some point while
while I was not on the road, we had a
little studio place we called the Room, and it was
on It was on Santa Monica Boulevard, Santa Monica, right
off of Vine Street, and it was right near all
kinds of other classic Clover studios, which was a famous
studio that I think Bruce Springsteen, maybe.

Speaker 2 (49:50):
Even maybe even Elvis might have recorded. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (49:53):
I heard all kinds of people recorded right across the
parking lot from our little place. Paramount Studios was a
maybe on the other side of the street, as was
SI R. It's a lot of stuff going on around there,
and I would be in this place. I started writing
songs there. I started developing what would become my first
album and my answer if my ancestors could see me now.

(50:16):
So basically, when I stopped playing with Bonnie around eighty
six or eighty seven, I started working on that music.
It's something cool happened along the way too, Like right,
Bonnie had just finished and I don't know, this may
be one of your questions you might have to do.
I don't know, but I'm just gonna go into it.

(50:38):
This is a it's a cool story. When I finished
the tour with Bonnie in New York, I think it
was around nineteen eighty six, maybe eighties, it had to
be eighty six, and the Rolling Stones were recording in
New York and I happened to go to a the
session where they were recording, and I ended up singing

(51:00):
backups and playing bass guitar on a song on an
album called Dirty Work by The Stones. And got to say,
that's my favorite credit of all time on any record,
was playing bass on the Stones record and that that
kind of kindled rekindle a little spark between me and

(51:23):
Keith during those sessions, which would later I would later
get a call from him to help him with some
solo stuff he was working on.

Speaker 1 (51:33):
But yeah, okay, how does it end with Bonnie?

Speaker 2 (51:39):
No, we were I had, I think, I wanted. I wanted.

Speaker 3 (51:43):
I wanted to start working more on my own stuff,
and I was ready that I had written all these
songs and I got a chance to. So I was
talking to some people about managing me as well, and
I talked to someone that was at the time, Bill
Graham was managing my dad and my uncle's and someone
over there was talking to me about doing getting getting

(52:04):
myself a record deal and stuff like that, and I
joined up with them with Bill Graham's management company, and
I got a record recording contract. So I had to
go on and do you know, do my own thing.

Speaker 1 (52:18):
Okay, how did Diddy Gorchbar end up being the producer
I had?

Speaker 3 (52:23):
You know, when I met I met Danny through some
other mutual friends. So when I was when I did
the Dirty Work album, is where I met Steve. No,
you know Steve Jordans a matter of fact, No, you
know what I met. Jim Keltner brought Steve Jordan to
our studio in La one time, and that's when I

(52:43):
met Steve Jordan. But when I went to these dirty
Work sessions there Steve Jordan was and he and Charlie
Drayton were at those sessions and we got acquainted during
that time. And fast forward, I'm in La talking to
the label about who was going to possibly produce my

(53:04):
record and we talked to one person that Uh, I
forget the guy's name, but he was.

Speaker 2 (53:11):
He was a cool guy. I just didn't at.

Speaker 3 (53:13):
The time, I was really partying heavy and I was one.
I was into playing music, but I was into having
a good time as well. My priorities I don't know what.
I guess the music was at that time. The music
was more important, but I still I wanted to have
a fun time. And I met with this guy, I
think his name was David Segerson and to maybe produce

(53:36):
and he I didn't He and I didn't really click,
so they said, well we maybe, and I happened to
meet up with with Jordan and someone we were doing
some stuff with, Keith Uh. I had been hanging out
with Keith a little bit, and then we were all
I was gonna meet Jordan and some other fellas at

(53:58):
the Chateau Montmont and and and.

Speaker 2 (54:01):
There was Coach. That's where I met Coach.

Speaker 3 (54:03):
And we were sitting in a room hanging partying, and
and I had heard of Coach. I'd heard he had
done work with Don Henley and stuff like that. And
he was a cat who had been around on the
California scene and played with Linda Ronstat and James Taylor
and all this stuff.

Speaker 2 (54:20):
So I and I met Cooch and he was a
cool guy.

Speaker 3 (54:23):
And then his name came up, said maybe, how would
you feel about working with this guy, Coach Dandy Kochmint
And I'm like, yeah, you know what, I just hung
out with him like two weeks ago with Jordans and them. Yeah,
I could. I could work with that cat. But you
know what funny thing was, he wasn't. He didn't let
me get away with all my party and ship stuff.

(54:44):
When we when we got the recording, he was he
put he put the he put the foot down and
was like, you know what, dude, this is your record.
You got to show up for this stint. Partying is
one thing, but you gotta you gotta make your music.
And he was a pretty stern character, you know, and
it was an amazing time working with him as well.

Speaker 1 (55:08):
Okay, you actually have a hit and you're on MTV.
I think that's why I first became aware of you.
What was that experience like for you?

Speaker 3 (55:18):
It was it was a lot of fun. I was
kind of I was a little bit confused because it
seemed to me like the label. The people at the
record label were not They didn't understand because I was
my music was not. I wasn't didn't sound like some
guy that was from the Neville family in New Orleans,

(55:39):
first of all, and I didn't sound really like a
black guy at the time. I was making music that
sounded more rock pop kind of stuff. So they didn't
really know what to do with me, I thought, and
I was playing doing I was open. Matter of fact
around this time, right when I was making when I
was finished making my record, Keith called up and he

(56:01):
was gonna make he started working on on Keith Richard's
first solo album, Talk is Cheap. So I did that
record with him, and then I ended up doing I
ended up opening up for some of the Keith Richards,
an expensive Windo shows. I opened up for that for Keith,

(56:21):
and then I played with Keith, and I did a
lot of ground, a lot of stuff that you're supposed
to do when you have a record out. I was
on MTV or it was playing the videos and the
song the one song went to like number twenty something
on the pop charts, I believe, or twenty seven or
something like that, and it was pretty doing pretty well,

(56:41):
but it didn't go any further than that. And I
had a couple of songs that were in films, that
song Not Just Another Girl, and it was a song
called Falling out of Love that was.

Speaker 2 (56:52):
In a John Ritter movie called skin Deep.

Speaker 3 (56:57):
I was doing a lot of stuff, and you think
that it would have translated into a little bit more
a more success and more uh touring and more money,
but you know what, and it was a combination of
maybe a little miss uh, I ain't gonna say mismanageable,
but them not really knowing what to do with me
because I did everything I thought I was supposed to do.

(57:18):
I toured with Robert Cray, I opened up for Little Feet,
I opened up for Keith, played with the Winos, I
was visible on MTV, but you know what, I was
getting loaded.

Speaker 2 (57:28):
I was getting high as.

Speaker 3 (57:30):
A kite on a daily basis, and so that was
probably that probably had something to do with some of
the non productive factor, because there were times when I
did I would I didn't show up for a thing,
a thing or two here and there. I maybe didn't

(57:50):
show up, or I showed up, and maybe the people
were maybe like, damn, I we wish he wouldn't have
showed up because I was doing a lot of drugs.
I was doing a lot of coke, drinking a lot,
and I was it was. It was kind of taking
a toll to to many degrees, to a to a.

Speaker 2 (58:09):
In a big way.

Speaker 3 (58:10):
Because by the time the nineties, the nineties hit and
then we did I did an. The second record never
came out on Poly Poly Door, the follow up never
came out. I was pretty I was doing I was
pretty heavy into getting high and.

Speaker 2 (58:28):
The drug the drug use and all that started.

Speaker 3 (58:30):
Taking a uh kind of a uh you know, taking
a precedent over the music.

Speaker 2 (58:38):
And it was that was I was.

Speaker 3 (58:41):
It was more important for me to get loaded than
it was to make music. Now I was still making
music and I was still playing. I was I did
Keeps second record, we did another couple of tours. I
did another record finally called Thanks. When I was making
that record, I was living in New York at the time,
and I was pretty I was coming to the point

(59:03):
where I was just spiraling out of control and I
was gonna soon be going down because by the time
I played on a Voodoo Lounge album, which was a
total like when I played on Dirty Work, it was
a fun experience. It was I'm playing there when we're
in a studio with the Rolling Stones, and it was

(59:24):
like nineteen eighty six or something like that, and everything
was going on, and I was getting high and I
was playing some music with the greatest rock and roll
band in the world. I was having a blast. But
by the time nineteen ninety five hit, I wasn't having
so much fun anymore. I wasn't having fun and the

(59:47):
drugs and alcohol abuse was taken over and the music
was less important to me. Like I said, And I
remember I remember one night in particular. I remember I
was in I was in Los Angeles. I was in
a club place called the Viper Room. You heard of
the Viper Room before.

Speaker 1 (01:00:08):
I was in the Viper Room, and it was a
hot night.

Speaker 3 (01:00:13):
The Stones were in town that week playing and it
was like star studyed. It was like all the musicians.
It was a musicians dream to be in this room.
I think the band Bernard Fowler and Stevie Sallas and
Carmin Rojas had a band and I was playing with
them a little bit, and up on stage at some

(01:00:34):
point was all of us, Billy Gibbons from Zz Top,
Michael Hutchins from in Excess, and Adam Durrants from County Crows,
and it was women like you wouldn't believe in drugs
all over the place. And I was absolutely miserable. I
was miserable. And I remember that night, I'm like, why

(01:00:56):
am I not having fun? Why is this not the
most fun night in ever? And it was because I
had I was spiritually sick. I was spiritually and emotionally sick.
It was the things I was doing had run its
course and it was time for me to start to

(01:01:17):
figure out a way to change my life.

Speaker 2 (01:01:19):
Now. It took me until nineteen ninety eight to make
that change.

Speaker 5 (01:01:26):
And yeah, it was like I got, okay, you have
to ru music the VIP room, I mean fun. How
do you make the change?

Speaker 1 (01:01:38):
What is that look like it took a long time.

Speaker 3 (01:01:40):
It took some another couple of years, and I was
just kind of delving deeper into the drug world, and
you know, I was doing you know, I had been
doing cocaine and drinking like on a regular basis every day.
I was smoking crack at the time I was doing that,
you know, I was. I was pretty miserable, and you know,

(01:02:03):
I'm fortunate that I escaped. I had gone to I
had gone to rehabs. I had gone to drug treatment centers.
I had been to five of them up to this point.
I had started going. I had started going, like around
nineteen eighty nine. I went to the Betty Ford Center,
and I got out and I didn't do anything to
better myself or to try to find some program or

(01:02:24):
find some formula that was working without drugs and alcohol.

Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
And I didn't.

Speaker 3 (01:02:28):
It didn't work, it didn't take and I went to
rehabs five more times. The sixth time was my last time.
The last time I went, I was in nineteen ninety eight.
And it wasn't anything spectacular that had happened. It was
just that I was just I had this big hole

(01:02:49):
in the middle of me, this big hole inside me
that was I couldn't fill it. And with all the
drugs and all the alcohol, I couldn't fill that hole.
And I knew it, and I went to I called someone.
I called the guy by the name of Buddy Arnold.
Buddy Arnold had come up with this thing called MAP,
the Musician's Assistance Program, and Buddy I had. I had

(01:03:11):
met with Buddy. It was maybe in June of nineteen
ninety eight and my friend rest his soul, Marty Grebb.
Marty Greb who was an amazing musician who played with
me and Bonnie rates Band years before. He had been
sober for like maybe twelve or thirteen years at the time.
And I called him up as as Marty, which come

(01:03:34):
get me, man, I think, I'm I want to try
to go to treatment reab, you know. So he come
and got me and I went to see Buddy Arnold
at the Musicians Union on Vine Street. That was where
the office was for the Musician's Assistance Program. And I
talked to Buddy, Buddy, you know, did with the assessment

(01:03:55):
and whatnot, and it's okay, we got a place for you.
And it was maybe a Thursday, and I was like, ah,
how about if I come back Monday and we go
to this place. And Buddy said, you know what I
haven't Yeah, yeah, you jive call me a jive MF
jive man SAMF.

Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
And he said, you.

Speaker 3 (01:04:15):
Know what, don't o D don't go to jail. Call
me when you're ready. So this is about around June
of ninety eight, so August two, two or so months later,
I was in that same kind of frame of mind,
in the depths of despair, and I.

Speaker 2 (01:04:43):
I called Marty.

Speaker 3 (01:04:44):
I said, Marty, can we get a hold of Buddy
tonight because I need to go and I don't want
to wait until tomorrow. I don't want to wait till Monday.
We can go right now. And it was a Thursday.
The funny thing was there had been an intervention that
was playing that following Sunday at the Universal Amphitheater where
the Neville Brothers, Doctor John and bb King were playing

(01:05:07):
the show. And the brothers and Doctor John had they
had talked to Buddy had talked to these people, and
they were gonna corral me. I was going to go
to this concert and somebody was gonna put me in
a car and bring me to some treatment center. But
I beat them to the punch, and that Thursday, Marty
came and picked me up. This last time, he picked

(01:05:28):
me up and brought me to this place and passed
it called Buddy on and woke Buddy up about twelve
midnight that night and brought me to this place in
Pasadena called Larsoncinas Hospital. And I went there and that
was that was it. I went there for twenty eight
days or so, and I did, you know, I did
what you do when you go to reab, you know.

(01:05:49):
I knew the lingo, I knew what to do. But
for some reason, something happened. I got out of that
place and I did what these people told me to do,
and I started working a twelve step program and all
of that, and I just I got in there.

Speaker 2 (01:06:04):
I got into it, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:06:05):
And I knew people I knew Bonnie and Steve Bruton
and Mike Finnegan and Marty and a few other people
that I knew that were musicians who had gotten sober.
So that helped and that inspired me. And I saw
others who had done it, you know. I saw Steve
Jones from the Sex Pistols. He used to go to

(01:06:27):
this one meeting. I used to go to saw a
guy named Tony Morehead used to he was this big
time tour manager. And I saw a bunch of people
doing this thing, and I just started doing it. And
the funny thing was I was wanted and when I
play music again, what's gonna happen?

Speaker 2 (01:06:43):
Am I gonna be creative and all this crap?

Speaker 3 (01:06:46):
And when I started, I was playing with a band
called the Spin Doctors at the time, that was the
last gig.

Speaker 1 (01:06:55):
On the block.

Speaker 3 (01:06:57):
Their fame had kind of waned a little bit. They
had kind of they had peaked and were kind of
on the downslide from where they where they where their
peaked success was. But they were still working and they
were still performing. And I was playing keyboards with Spin
Doctors during my first couple of years, and uh, I
was able to do it, you know, and and and

(01:07:19):
realize the beauty and how cool it was to play
music and not be all, you know, stuck and stupid stuck,
and and not be mine altered and stuff like that.
And it became a beautiful thing over a period of
time one, you know, and I it's twenty five years

(01:07:41):
coming up on twenty five years later this year, it'll
be twenty five years.

Speaker 1 (01:07:53):
Okay, the first five times you went to uh, was
that because somebody told you you had to go? Or
was not because you wanted to go? You know what?

Speaker 3 (01:08:03):
Every one of those times it was for one of
those type of reasons. The first time I was told
to go, the second time I had another reason to go.
I went because I had my The second time I
went my Oh no, the second time I was gone,
I was going to be arrested. I was going to
be arrested. Second time I was going to maybe go

(01:08:23):
to jail. I had gotten popped. I got popped in
lax for something from possession or some shit whatever. And
then the third time, my daughter was born and I
had I was trying to straighten up to be a
better dad, which it took me another It took me
another eight years after she was born. She was born
in nineteen ninety. In ninety eight, I finally did it.

(01:08:46):
But I've gone to Yeah, I had gone for all
the you know, for me, would I like to say
that I don't think there's any bad reason to try,
whether it's because you want to go or because of
other people, because you never know it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:59):
Maybe it'll stick, maybe it won't.

Speaker 1 (01:09:01):
But for me.

Speaker 2 (01:09:02):
Those other times didn't It didn't work, and I.

Speaker 1 (01:09:06):
Was okay, so the five times it doesn't work, How
long does it take until you fall off the wagon?

Speaker 2 (01:09:16):
Well, some sometimes it took like the next day.

Speaker 3 (01:09:18):
I sometimes it took one day.

Speaker 1 (01:09:23):
Sometimes I would leave a rehab.

Speaker 3 (01:09:24):
At least twice or three times I left rehab and
went straight back to getting loaded. At least three times.
There was a couple of times where I maybe stayed
sober for maybe ninety days, three months. Maybe once I
stayed clean for it, maybe six months. And yeah, maybe
twice I stayed clean along a little bit longer than normal.

(01:09:46):
But it was pretty much inevitable until I figured out
that I was done and that I don't you know,
I kind of made up. I made up in my mind,
and I kind of accepted some things, and I kind
of followed this. I saw this, uh uh, you know,
this little game plan, this format that I was that
was laid out in front of me. I knew about it,

(01:10:08):
and I kind of did what these people told me
to do. And my friends that I knew, I started
doing this stuff and it just started working, and I
started figuring out about, you know, about myself and how
to how to be comfortable in my own skin on
the match without having to you know, be around people
and not have to have a drink, and you know,

(01:10:30):
and be okay with being somewhat sensitive and somewhat vulnerable
and awkward and those human feelings that we get that
we try to mask and we try to you know,
take off the edge. I figured that, you know what,
I think I can deal with this stuff without taking it.

Speaker 1 (01:10:48):
What edge is there?

Speaker 3 (01:10:49):
Okay, I feel a little bit uncomfortable, so what let
me just try to look within and feel some comfort
here if I can't. And I kind of just took it.
I took uh. I took kind of pride in in
in getting getting through those times, and especially early on
it was more difficult. As time went on, it just

(01:11:09):
got easier to do.

Speaker 1 (01:11:12):
And at this late date, did you ever go to
a meeting?

Speaker 2 (01:11:15):
I still do? Yeah, I still go. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:11:20):
Okay, so you you play with the spin doctors. What's
the next step? After that?

Speaker 3 (01:11:27):
I started working on some of my own music again,
and I did a record called Uh. The record was
initially called Saturday Morning Music, but I repackaged that same record,
and I something a friend of mine that I that
I met. His name is Gary, Gary Gold. He he
was we we had an acquaint I was acquainted with

(01:11:49):
Bruce Willis, and Bruce Willis had a studio up his
house up up up maul Holland near Colewater Canyon and
somewhere up there. And I recorded that record up at
Bruce's house, and Bruce decided he didn't want to be
in the business anymore.

Speaker 2 (01:12:05):
We did the record.

Speaker 3 (01:12:06):
It was put out on a label that Bruce had
kind of come up with, and he didn't want to
be involved in that business anymore, and so he let
me say take the record, do what you want with it,
and I re released it and repackaged it. It was
called initially Saturday Morning Music, and then it was the
re released version was called Scrape, and it was some

(01:12:28):
songs that a lot of songs that were written about
kind of where I was at that point and trying
to you know, trying to be a man and trying
to mature as an adult and stuff like that. Because
then you realize, when you do take away the drugs
and alcohol, you realize how stunted your growth had been
for many years. You know, you realize how you know,

(01:12:50):
how emotionally immature that I really was, and so it
took a lot, you know, to a lot of acceptance
to try to grow it the person.

Speaker 1 (01:13:00):
You know. Okay, rehab is expensive. Sometimes insurance pays. You know,
what was it like financially for you? Okay?

Speaker 3 (01:13:13):
So the first five rehabs were all paid by insurance.
I had done enough sag stuff where I had done
enough songs and films and things of that nature. And
over the years that I was able to, I had
insurance to pay for rehabs and they would pay probably
what fourteen fifteen grand or something, and I would maybe

(01:13:36):
do pay like a deduction or what they call it
a prem what they call that the.

Speaker 1 (01:13:41):
Deductible, the deductible.

Speaker 3 (01:13:42):
I would pay maybe something, And there were times when
I didn't pay, I didn't pay anything. But the last
one was paid for by Music Cares and by MAP
Music Musicians' Assistance Program. They paid for me to go
to that last one. The insurance was used up on
the first. I went five times and it was paid

(01:14:03):
for and that last one I had run out of
all of that stuff. And Music Musicians Assistance Program, now
you know, it is Music Cares, and that's what they do.
They're still doing that stuff for people, and they paid
for my treatment.

Speaker 1 (01:14:22):
Did you have any did you have any guilt? Did
you think that helped you? Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:14:27):
That I had used up all of these people's money,
that U using MAPS money?

Speaker 1 (01:14:32):
Oh, you know?

Speaker 2 (01:14:33):
And no, I didn't have any joke I felt.

Speaker 3 (01:14:35):
I was so kind of I was so tore up
and just kind of desperate to try to get my
life somewhat together.

Speaker 2 (01:14:42):
Because I knew.

Speaker 3 (01:14:44):
I was like, you know what, I might not get
another chance like this, and I better try to do this.
I've had chances before and I blew them, So maybe
this is the one.

Speaker 2 (01:14:54):
Let me try it, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:14:57):
Okay, So you play with spin Doctors, you make another
record which you know as me package comes out twice.
Where does that leave it? I ended up?

Speaker 2 (01:15:09):
I end up?

Speaker 3 (01:15:10):
Uh I did that record. I soon started. I got
back my uncle Art. My uncle Art had had a
back surgery and I had to come and help him out,
and I subbed for him with the Neville Brothers. This
is in maybe two thousand and one, two thousand and two.

(01:15:32):
While the time I was those records had come out
and things of that nature. I ended up playing back
with the Brothers. I played with my dad and my
uncles for a while. And during that time I started
a band. In two thousand and three, we had a
one off gig at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.

(01:15:53):
I started a band called Dumpster Phone.

Speaker 1 (01:15:56):
Okay, a couple of questions. First, you're cleaning, so you're
out with the brothers. What are they doing?

Speaker 2 (01:16:05):
You know what?

Speaker 3 (01:16:06):
Those guys had pretty much mellowed out during this time.
They were not doing They were all cleaning their own ways.
I mean, they weren't like practicing, uh a twelve step
kind of thing or whatever, but they were they were
pretty tame.

Speaker 2 (01:16:21):
Like there was a bus.

Speaker 3 (01:16:22):
There was a there was maybe two tour buses, and
one bus was the bus you went on if you
didn't want to be around marijuana smoke. And the other
bus was the bus that people some of the younger
people like my you know, some people in the band
that still smoked and you I was on.

Speaker 2 (01:16:39):
The clean bus. I was on the clean bus, and
yeah it was cool.

Speaker 1 (01:16:45):
Okay, some people there's just turned out California sober people
occasionally have a drake or keep people occasionally smoke, and
then ultimately that David Crosby smoked a little bit, are you.

Speaker 3 (01:16:58):
I'm one hundred percent sover since nineteen ninety and I've
had nothing but maybe an advil.

Speaker 1 (01:17:06):
That's it, you know, Okay, So tell us a little
bit slower how you end up forming the band that
becomes dumpster Fuck.

Speaker 3 (01:17:15):
I got an offer to play the Jazz and Heritage
Festival in two thousand and three, and I was thinking
to myself, what do I want to do. Do I
want to put together a band to back up ivan
Neville And I'm thinking, no, you know what, I want
to put together a band like just I want a
band of guys where I don't sing all the songs,

(01:17:36):
where I got other guys that sing and we all
can play and create some cool, unique thing. And I
was thinking, so I said, yeah, that's what I'm going
to do. And let me think of who I'm going
to call for to play bass. It's either gonna be
Nick Daniels or it's gonna be Tony Hall. And you
know what, I called both of them, and I said,
because I know Tony can play guitar as well. But

(01:17:59):
I already had some songs in mind that I can
call can incorporate two basses. So I said we'll call
it get Tony and Nick I called Raymond Weber for drums.
Raymond had been playing with Tony a little bit on
the side on some other stuff, and I think I
think Raymond and Tony had been playing with Harry Connick Jr. Together,

(01:18:20):
and I called up Raymond. I called Ian my cousin Ian.
And for the first gig, it was probably other people
that was involved. I think my younger brother Fred, he
played percussion and sang Dirty Dozen brass band with a
horn section.

Speaker 1 (01:18:34):
And we had.

Speaker 3 (01:18:35):
Juniora mcgeechee, Japanese guitar player who's a New Orleans Cat
became a New Orleans Cat on guitar as well, And
that was the first version of Dumpster Funk, and I
called it dumpster Funk I had. I had written some
songs with my two younger brothers, and there was a
song that we had that I came I was trying

(01:18:56):
to think of what's stinky, what's really nasty and stinky,
and I came up with the with the term with
the word dumpster funk. I'm like, dumpster funk, what's nastier
than a dumpster? And so that became the name of
the band. And for that first gig, it was called
ivan Nevills Dumpster Funk, and we played one show and
that was it, and then we ended up playing a

(01:19:17):
couple of more one offs. We played Bonneroo Music Festival
a few years later, and we played a gig here
and there around the time of Jazz Festival. We played
Jazz Festival the next couple of years, and we played
a few shows around the Jazz Festival night night shows,
and we played Bonnaroo, I think, and after when Katrina

(01:19:40):
happened in five we were all obviously, people were everywhere
and we weren't able to come back to New Orleans.
And then Dumpster played way more shows, and then eventually
we played Bonnaroo Music Festival and it was an epic set.
We played at two.

Speaker 2 (01:20:00):
In the morning. We played right after Doctor John.

Speaker 3 (01:20:02):
Doctor John had a set, He had a set set
and it was called a night Tripper.

Speaker 1 (01:20:07):
He did the night trip a set.

Speaker 3 (01:20:09):
Nobody had seen that in years, and we did a
Dumpster Funk set right after Doctor John Knight Triper set,
and it was crushing and that was like, Okay, we're this.

Speaker 1 (01:20:19):
Is a band.

Speaker 3 (01:20:20):
This is a band, And we basically became a full
time band the following year and yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:20:29):
How many dates a year do you play as Dumpster Funk?

Speaker 3 (01:20:32):
I don't know how many dates we play a year,
Maybe one hundred or so, maybe something like that.

Speaker 1 (01:20:36):
Maybe, So that's you main source of income in this period.
You you're playing with the brothers and the two buses,
you get called at O three to do jazz Fest
the next five years years or so in between before
it becomes full time dumpster Funk. What are you doing?

Speaker 2 (01:20:57):
I was Dumpster Funk. I could do others stuff. I
had other projects.

Speaker 3 (01:21:01):
I had another project that we did that was born
out of the out of Katrina, called the New Orleans
Social Club, and that was a band with myself, myself,
Raymond Webber.

Speaker 2 (01:21:12):
George Porter Jr.

Speaker 3 (01:21:13):
And Leon Os Telly from the Meters along with Henry Butler.
We did a record we were stranded in Austin just
right after Katrina. We did a record called sing Me
Back Home. And they had a bunch of special guests uncle,
my uncle, Cyril, Willie T from New Orleans or Willy
Willy Willie T, h Irma, Thomas trum On, Shorty John Bote,

(01:21:40):
and some others I can't think of right now I
think sub Dudes.

Speaker 2 (01:21:46):
That was a record called sing Me Back Home.

Speaker 3 (01:21:47):
That was a project that we played maybe six dates
a year with that group, and just obvious recording sessions
with various people would call me up to play on
a record here or two or whatever her and just stay.
I just stayed busy doing stuff, you know, and Dumpster
played a lot of shows.

Speaker 1 (01:22:07):
Where were you when Katrina happened?

Speaker 3 (01:22:10):
I was in Brazil. We were in Brazil playing a gig.
Tony was doing an annual gig in Brazil in the
month during the month of August, and we were over
there and a bunch of us were over there. It
was most of the guys that dumps the Funk were there,
and No May a matter of fact, I think no,

(01:22:32):
the whole Dumpster Funk, the whole band Dumpster Funk was
that was over there, as was John uh wh who
else was there, Develle Crawford, Uh, Terrence Simeon, a few
other a few other groups that I can't think of
with New Orleans groups.

Speaker 2 (01:22:50):
And we were all over there in Brazil.

Speaker 3 (01:22:51):
And then we were watching it, watching the news as
best we could, and we saw this hurricane coming to
hit New Orleans, we got stranded over there, which I mean,
if you're in Brazil, it's not the worst place to
be stranded, I guess.

Speaker 2 (01:23:06):
And then we couldn't come back to New Orleans.

Speaker 3 (01:23:09):
And then we I flew to Hawaii from from uh,
from from Brazil. We had a gig in Brazil and
in Hawaii Jumps to funk it. We played in Hawaii
and then uh, we found out that New Orleans was
underwater and all of that, that all that in that
that uh happened here, the tragic stories that we heard

(01:23:34):
about people that were in New Orleans.

Speaker 2 (01:23:36):
It was pretty pretty pretty sad.

Speaker 1 (01:23:40):
What happened to your property in the world? You know what?

Speaker 2 (01:23:43):
At that time, I was in between stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:23:45):
I had a place in California with my with my
my ex wife and my daughter, and I had kind
of been spending most of my time in New Orleans
at my mom and dad's place. And that place got
maybe eight feet of water in that house. And I
never went back to that house. My mom and dad
never went back to that house.

Speaker 1 (01:24:07):
So where are your mom and dad now?

Speaker 3 (01:24:08):
Well, my mom passed away in seven and my dad's
living in New York. Now, he's living in New York
he got remarried and he's got a farm up there
in New York, upstate New York, and he's chilling. He
and his dog Apache and his wife Sarah, My mom,
Joel rue Neville. She passed away in seven. She died

(01:24:29):
of cancer.

Speaker 2 (01:24:31):
And uh.

Speaker 1 (01:24:34):
Okay, southern California kind of like New Orleans without humidity
Hawaiian between New York state farm could be more different
from New Orleans. Yeah, and he's happy that, you know,
It's funny.

Speaker 2 (01:24:51):
He loves it.

Speaker 3 (01:24:53):
And for years, I don't think he ever really cared
for New York that much.

Speaker 2 (01:25:00):
I remember when we used to go to New York.
He couldn't.

Speaker 3 (01:25:02):
He'd stay in the hotel room the whole time, in
all the club sandwiches and the hey good way to
get out of there. But he had had some experiences
in New York that I guess maybe you know, and
some of it was was he had some dark times
in New York back in the days that I'm sure
he doesn't regret, because they had a lot of stuff
was bowing out of that. But he loved it where

(01:25:24):
he is now. He's got a farm. He and his
wife they up there growing garlic and eating their fresh
eggs and stuff like that. They grow all you know,
food and vegetables and whatnot. And he likes that. He
likes it. Let's go back to funk. What's your definition

(01:25:47):
of funk? And funk has had very peaks in the seventies,
et cetera. Where's funk in the marketplace today?

Speaker 1 (01:25:55):
What can it become?

Speaker 2 (01:25:56):
That's a hard one.

Speaker 3 (01:25:56):
The definition, you know, what funk is is just vibe, man,
and it's kind.

Speaker 2 (01:26:01):
Of where the groove. You got the groove, you.

Speaker 3 (01:26:04):
Got drum space, and it can be you know, you
got the one, you got the one that, but then
you got space. And my, my, my idea of funk
is where where the notes are not played in between
the notes is to me is where the funk lives.
You got the one and then you got the space.

(01:26:27):
Boom d do do do boom.

Speaker 1 (01:26:34):
Could do you can do do big, big dude? You
know that. I mean, that's just something that just came
to mind, just all though. What that is.

Speaker 3 (01:26:42):
But funk is very is it's all kinds of funk.
There's a lot of different variations of funk. But to me,
funk is where the where the notes are not the
space in between the grooves.

Speaker 1 (01:26:56):
You're touring, you're with dumpster funk, with just a funk
band in your own unique way. What's the status of
funk in America in the world today.

Speaker 3 (01:27:07):
There's a lot of groups that are borrowing from the period,
you know, there's a lot of funks that a lot
of groups that try to that. I guess they've listened
to that stuff that were coming out of the seventies,
the early seventies specifically, And there is there are some

(01:27:29):
there is some music out there that's pretty funky and nasty.

Speaker 2 (01:27:33):
There is some stuff, and I guess in its own way.

Speaker 3 (01:27:38):
It's being kept alive, it's being it's it's still it's
still growing, it's still generating, and it's still it's still regenerating,
like it's influencing next generations and because of what what
what funk did for hip hop and how that regenerated
funk in some way, and it keeps, it keeps kind

(01:28:00):
of reinventing.

Speaker 2 (01:28:01):
Itself in some kind of in some way or another.

Speaker 3 (01:28:04):
And I think it's alive and well, I mean, you're
not gonna hear as much of it as you, you know,
as you used to hear, but it's it's alive and well.

Speaker 1 (01:28:20):
Okay, you play the dumpster Funk. You have this new
solo record. The game used to be completely different. The
game used to be I want to get a label deal.
The label is going to spread the name and hopefully
something catches fire. Today there's so much stuff in the marketplace.
Are you fine with being where you are? Or you'd

(01:28:41):
have a desire or a burning desire to have more
people aware of your music?

Speaker 3 (01:28:46):
Yeah, I definitely want you definitely, you definitely kind of uh.

Speaker 2 (01:28:52):
You want you want more people to be aware of
what you're doing.

Speaker 3 (01:28:57):
I feel like I got, you know, I got some
cool messages in some of this music, and this music
is very it's very refreshing, I think, and it's soulful,
and I really want people to hear it, you know.
And I mean in this day and age, you got
to hope that, you know, right, people hear it and
you maybe get some songs and some films or some

(01:29:20):
some that and that and that venue that's kind of
where you know, it can really get that extra little
leap to the next next thing, to that extra little life.
You know, So you you gotta be optimistic about it
and hope that it can get out there and hope
the right people can hear it, and enough people hear it,

(01:29:43):
you know, because it needs to touch some souls, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:29:49):
So how many times have been married?

Speaker 2 (01:29:51):
I've been married once and soon to be married again.

Speaker 1 (01:29:58):
I'm with Okay, okay, how many kids do you have?

Speaker 2 (01:30:03):
Two kids?

Speaker 3 (01:30:04):
One one on a grown young lady by the name
of Ivy, Ivy Joel. She's thirty two, and I have
a son who's nine. His name is Isaiah.

Speaker 1 (01:30:16):
Okay, okay, a little bit slower. So you have the
daughter with your first wife. What is your daughter up?
What is Ivy up to today?

Speaker 3 (01:30:24):
Ivy is right now, Ivy's working. She works for groomed
for grooming pets. She's really into animals and she does,
uh she does. She has a little dog walking side
business and she works at a pet grooming place. And
she's a hustler. She does a little bit of everything.
She does a I think she does a little driving,

(01:30:47):
does a little delivering stuff and yeah, she but she
her passion right now is dog grooming animals, grooming animals.

Speaker 1 (01:30:57):
Is she off the payroll?

Speaker 2 (01:31:00):
Is he off the pay rum? You know?

Speaker 1 (01:31:03):
Not?

Speaker 2 (01:31:03):
I mean not really, but.

Speaker 3 (01:31:06):
Kind of you She's got she does her own thing,
but actually I still help out a little bit.

Speaker 1 (01:31:13):
Okay. And then did substances break up your first marriage
or what happened?

Speaker 3 (01:31:18):
Nah, it's just kind of you know, we you know,
we kind of grew apart somewhere in there. I mean,
there was a lot of that, you know, the substance
when when when?

Speaker 1 (01:31:29):
When?

Speaker 3 (01:31:30):
When when all that stopped? You know, and you kind
of just grow kind of apart from a person. You know,
we kind of grew apart and it just wasn't the same. Uh,
we weren't on the same path anymore, you know to
some degree, and you just kind of, I don't know,
you outgrew I don't know. Your relationships just do that

(01:31:51):
sometimes where you just he's somewhere else, you know, and.

Speaker 1 (01:31:56):
It Okay, So you're saying it wasn't the drugs an
alcohol that broke up the relationship. It was when you
got sober.

Speaker 3 (01:32:03):
That's probably is the combination of the two, because the
drugs and alcohol made it very There were some dark
periods in there, but when the so when the so
so sobriety started, that wasn't it wasn't exact like if
that's not if you're it's hard. It's hard to be
on the exact same page with someone, especially on that path.

Speaker 2 (01:32:25):
So that uh, she had her own path.

Speaker 3 (01:32:30):
In that avenue, and and I have my own path,
and we basically grew apart.

Speaker 2 (01:32:35):
I mean we and we're friends.

Speaker 1 (01:32:38):
Okay, this woman you're going to marry imminently? Is she
the mother of the nine year old?

Speaker 2 (01:32:43):
She's the mother of the nine year old?

Speaker 1 (01:32:45):
Yes? Yes, So why do you suddenly get married after all?
You know?

Speaker 2 (01:32:53):
Yeah, you would go there right, you know. It's you know,
one of those things.

Speaker 1 (01:32:58):
Man.

Speaker 2 (01:32:59):
I love I love her, and.

Speaker 3 (01:33:02):
I just kind of I think we should we should
we should just do it, you know, sheould just be married,
you know, and then it just and you know what's
funny is my my son was like, why why do
you remmmy? He have different names? And that's come up before.
But I don't even think she wants to change her name.
I think she's going to keep her own last name.
She didn't want to change her name in the novel, so,

(01:33:24):
uh whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:33:26):
So how did you beat her?

Speaker 2 (01:33:28):
I met her? I met her actually through music. I
met her through music at uh at.

Speaker 3 (01:33:34):
Uh maybe I've first met her at at tip of
tin as as a matter of fact, and mutual friends.

Speaker 1 (01:33:42):
Mutual friends.

Speaker 3 (01:33:43):
She she knew some some some uh, we had some
similar acquaintances and happened to kind of some sparks, kind
of had something and something happened. We saw each other
one time and it was like, oh you how you doing?
It's not and then went from there and then next thing,
you know, we've been together for quite a while.

Speaker 1 (01:34:06):
Okay. I could tell only after a couple of minutes
that you're a great guy, a great friend, great to
hang around. So is this part of your success that
people like you and they will want to hang around you?
Say that again?

Speaker 2 (01:34:23):
I didn't. I didn't get that cause yet.

Speaker 1 (01:34:25):
Okay, you're there's something about you that's very inviting. Talk
to you and it's like you're intelligent, you're warm, you're laughing,
you're good. Hay, okay, is that been part of your success?
Like you know, working with Bonnie of course you knew much,
or working with Keith, you know, do they just like

(01:34:47):
being around you? You know?

Speaker 3 (01:34:49):
I'd like to think so. I'd like to think that,
you know, people kind of have a fun time around me,
and I'm I'm kind of I'm a funny guy sometimes
as well, and I try. I tend to to to
be in a decent mood for the most part, and
I tend I think people kind of enjoy being around
me a little bit, and I really, I really appreciate that.

Speaker 2 (01:35:12):
Actually I'm not a bad guy.

Speaker 1 (01:35:16):
Okay, but uh, in typical life, and I realize every
day isn't identical. But you're home. To what degree are
you in contact with other people? Texting, email, talking on
the phone, or only when you need something? What's your
life like?

Speaker 3 (01:35:32):
I stay in touch with people. I call people sometimes
just to say hi, you know. I call people and say, hey,
it was up, Yeah, how you doing.

Speaker 2 (01:35:39):
I'm you know what.

Speaker 3 (01:35:40):
I talked to a buddy of mine, a friend. Uh
uh his name, his name Dwight. I talked to Dwight.
I was just thought of I thought about him, and
I'm like, uh, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:35:57):
I just called him up.

Speaker 2 (01:35:58):
I called him up.

Speaker 1 (01:35:58):
Hey, how you doing? Said, oh, what's going on?

Speaker 3 (01:36:01):
Man? So glad you called. But you know what, I
have a friend that I've known since I was I've
known him since I was in ninth grade, and we
talked almost at least every few days. And I do
stuff like that, Like I got folks that I kind
of just stay in touch with and I just we

(01:36:21):
just you know, have conversations and talk.

Speaker 1 (01:36:24):
Are they civilians or are they in the business.

Speaker 3 (01:36:27):
My boy, my friend Rage Rage, I've known, you know what.
He's not in the business now, he's a civilian. But
he and I actually wrote songs together be back in
the days. We were songwriter. We were budding songwriters when
we were teenagers. But he went on to do some
different things as and I stayed into the music and
me and I just are close friends and we've remained

(01:36:48):
close for many years.

Speaker 1 (01:36:51):
Yeah, okay, So in a typical day, are you hearing
from other musicians? Is that constantly going on? Or is
that only when you cross paths.

Speaker 3 (01:37:02):
That that that happens? Look mostly mostly the close circle,
our inner circle. I hear, you know, like I might
hear from George Porter Junior every you know, every so often, Hey,
what's up by and blah blah blah. We have something
to talk about. We have a show that we're doing
in the coming weeks, and we may talk about that.
I talk to Tony Hall, who plays bass and dumps

(01:37:24):
the funk and he plays on my record, the solo record.
I talk to Tony pretty every day. I talk to
Tony every day. I talk to my cousin Ian at
least almost every every day. And I talk to my brother,
my brother Fred, probably once a week. I probably talked
to my dad probably every two days at least. And

(01:37:47):
I have a group I have a group text with
my dad, my aunt and my uncle and some of
my cousins, and we have a group text that we
say good morning every day.

Speaker 1 (01:37:58):
Every day, say good morning. The rest of the day.

Speaker 2 (01:38:02):
What happens the reason say good nothing more, just say
good morning.

Speaker 3 (01:38:05):
Somebody might text later on it says oh I'm late, hey,
But I usually send good morning in some in a
foreign language. I go and look up good morning in
many languages, and I send my text via whatever language
I found that looked interesting for that morning. I send
it and my aunt, my aunt athel Groth, she will
go and look up that language and tell me what

(01:38:28):
it is. And she'll say, oh, is that Arabic or
is that whatever language is that Korean or whatever language
you chose today, And I'll put the thumbs up by
her answer if it's correct.

Speaker 1 (01:38:42):
Well, you're talking about you're talking about good morning? Are
you an early morning person.

Speaker 2 (01:38:47):
Or I'm early.

Speaker 3 (01:38:48):
I got well, I have a nine year old, so
he goes to school, so I got it. My first uh,
my first duty of the day is I got to
make him breakfast at like six forty five.

Speaker 2 (01:39:01):
So I'm up. I'm up, six thirty five, six forty
I'm up.

Speaker 1 (01:39:06):
Okay. And you talked about being down and ultimately going
to rehab, and then you said just a few minutes
ago that you're a generally up guy. What's it like
when you're down?

Speaker 3 (01:39:20):
You know, that happens sometimes, it's just it's just kind
of it passes, basically. I mean, you kind of have
times when you feel a little when you and that's
usually when I'm thinking about when I'm in my own mind,
almost in my own head, thinking about me, that's usually

(01:39:41):
when the the uh, the more negative uh ivan comes
to the fourth to the fourth to the uh to
the you know, appears. He rears his ugly head, and
I'm you know, I have to just work out of
it it basically, I have to just figure out Okay.

(01:40:03):
Usually when I start thinking about what can I do
for somebody else, Like sometimes in the morning, I might
wake up and I might have an impending doom concept
going on in my head and I'm not feeling very positive,
and then I remember, oh, I got to go and
make breakfast for Isaiah, and I immediately.

Speaker 2 (01:40:23):
Thinking of someone else other than myself.

Speaker 3 (01:40:25):
It changes my concept, it changes my outlook, and I
use that tool a lot. If I get into a funk,
I try to think of what I could do maybe
for someone else, or I'll call someone that may need
a helping hand in some nature of some kind.

Speaker 6 (01:40:46):
And that's kind of what I do in those situations. Now,
I know you've ben asked a million times and I
don't want to. I'm not looking for some story that
hasn't been.

Speaker 1 (01:40:58):
Told, but since you know, what's the story with Keith Richards.

Speaker 3 (01:41:03):
Keith is absolutely an amazing cat man. He's so intelligent,
he's so like, very nice man.

Speaker 2 (01:41:14):
All the stories that we've always you know, heard about.

Speaker 3 (01:41:17):
Keith over the years, and how notorious he's known for being.
Now I've been hey, I've been around him and some
hell in some serious Hans, and we've had some amazing Hans.

Speaker 2 (01:41:31):
But he's probably the most.

Speaker 3 (01:41:34):
I would say, the most productive and structured person in
those kind of environments that I've ever been around. Like
when we when we were into those kinds of things,
like into the whatever substances who were doing or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:41:52):
He was always the guy that was focused on the music.

Speaker 3 (01:41:57):
And whereas another like myself or other would be waiting
for the next round of drink and drug, he's still
playing this riff.

Speaker 2 (01:42:09):
You're like, oh my god, look at him.

Speaker 3 (01:42:11):
He's all about the music and he's one of the
most productive people I've ever been around in that mindset,
I mean, you know, and to see him how he's
you know, he's had to adjust his his situation in
his life. As you get older, you have to change
a little bit, you have to. And I mean Keith's

(01:42:33):
with Keiths with seventy what is he seventy eight or seventy?

Speaker 1 (01:42:36):
How old is.

Speaker 2 (01:42:39):
I mean?

Speaker 1 (01:42:41):
You right?

Speaker 3 (01:42:43):
I mean, look he's man, he's and they're they're just
working on a new record from what I understand, and
a possible another tour, you know, so he's still doing it. Man,
He's He's an amazing cat. He's always been.

Speaker 1 (01:42:59):
A very a very sweet man to me.

Speaker 3 (01:43:02):
You know, He's like a big brother, an uncle, and
uh yeah, I cherish uh my time with him and
in my relationship with him.

Speaker 2 (01:43:13):
I really do.

Speaker 1 (01:43:15):
He's seventy nine eighty at the end of the year December.
You know, people like Bonnie and Keith. Do you keep
in contact with him or you're just gonna run into
him at some point?

Speaker 3 (01:43:27):
No, I keep I keep I keep contact with Keith.
I mean, you know, you you've got every blue moon
or so. I might call him up just to see
what he's doing, to check in with him, and he's
not like he's got a cell phone. Well, you know,
I've ever seen him with a cell phone. So I
called him on his landline at home when I kind

(01:43:47):
of maybe maybe get a heads up and just find
out if he's home. I usually get a heads up,
and if I think he's home, I just give it
a shot and call and you and he might if
he's walking by the phone, he might pick up.

Speaker 2 (01:44:02):
He sees my name, you probably pick up and say, oh, hey,
I was up.

Speaker 3 (01:44:05):
And we'll have a chat and talk or whatever, and
that's it. But yeah, I do stay in touch with him.

Speaker 1 (01:44:13):
Okay, you've been through a lot. We've delineated it, both
the drugs and alcohol. You have a pedigree with your family,
You've had successes and solo artists to what degree are
you concerned about legacy If everything just goes around like
now and you end up dying twenty years from now,

(01:44:36):
are you happy or not if you want to die
twenty forty years now, are you really concerned with leaving
your mondy?

Speaker 2 (01:44:43):
You know, I kind of.

Speaker 1 (01:44:47):
I just want to do the best I.

Speaker 3 (01:44:48):
Can while I'm around here, you know, and try to
just enjoy the rest of this journey, you know. And
I want my son to remember his dad's cool guy
and uh uh, you know, a righteous person that you know,
try to be helpful to others, and just what I

(01:45:10):
just want to to be remembered as someone who tried
to help a little bit, who tried to help someone
else when he had the chance, and to.

Speaker 2 (01:45:19):
That's mostly it, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:45:20):
And it made some good music here and there, you know,
and hopefully some of this music will, you know, people
will listen to it and it will create those times
and places that music has done for me in my life,
because there are songs that I hear that remind me
of places and people, and hopefully some of my music
touches people like that, you know. That's that's really all

(01:45:42):
I can ask for.

Speaker 1 (01:45:46):
Well, on that note, it's been great talking to you Ivan.
Really you're a great guy. I want to wish you
luck on the record. And once again, as I say,
you know, people send me this stuff and you know
I rolled my eyes, but I was shocked your stuff is.

Speaker 2 (01:46:00):
Thank you very much, thank you, thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:46:02):
I wish you success. I can't tell you whether you're
going to have it or die right right people, but
if people met you when they hurt the record, you
know you've got a good shot.

Speaker 2 (01:46:10):
Thank you very much, man, I really really appreciate it.
Thank you a lot. Man. Thanks for talking.

Speaker 1 (01:46:15):
Man.

Speaker 2 (01:46:15):
I enjoy talking to you.

Speaker 1 (01:46:17):
I love talking to you too. In any event, till
next time. This is Bob Leftsis