Chicago musician Neal Francis visited The Current studio while on tour in support of his full-length "In Plain Sight" and its follow-up EP, "Sentimental Garbage." Francis and his bandmates played songs from the LP, as well as Francis's debut single. Following on the music, Neal Francis sat down with host Bill DeVille for a conversation about how the album came together during the pandemic, and how Francis and his bandmates rehearsed and recorded a lot of the songs in a church where Francis had been living.

Watch and listen to the full session above, and read a transcript of the interview below.

Interview Transcript

Edited for clarity.

Bill DeVille: Hey, I'm Bill DeVille and I'm here in the Maud Moon Wayerhaeuser Studio, and I'm here with Neal Francis. How're you doing, Neal?

Neal Francis: How are you doing, Bill? Good to see you.

Bill DeVille: It's nice to see you. How was, how's the tour going with Marcus King? 

Neal Francis: It's been going great. Just, you know, ripping it up out there every night.

Bill DeVille: Yeah, it must be nice to be out on the road. I mean, how did you get through the pandemic, I mean, without playing live?

Neal Francis: We played with each other in a literal sense, in the basement, just making music making new music, recording an album. We had a church that I inhabited in Chicago that we just built out our own studio.

Bill DeVille: So tell me about about this church that you lived in. So you were an apartment, and then all you moved into this church. How did that work out? I mean...

Neal Francis: Yeah, so I just kind of threw myself at the mercy of the church councilwoman there. And after a kind of turbulent period of my life, I just asked if I could live in the parsonage, which at that time was vacant, and she graciously let me stay there. And it ended up being for about 21 months, although at the time I asked her, it seemed like it might have been a short-term situation. But yeah, I just lived there by myself for a while and then our drummer Collin O'Brien moved in.

Bill DeVille: And you set up and recorded, then, in this, this parsonage?

Neal Francis: Yeah. So gradually, especially after we came off tour in March of 2020, when all the tour dates were canceled, I ended up just slowly acquiring gear from friends; like, our guitarist Kellen Boersma left a tape machine for me, and I just started messing around with that and doing demos, which became the bulk of In Plain Sight, our last record.

Bill DeVille: Was there any divine intervention or anything when you were going through the recording process?

Neal Francis: I believe so. I believe the whole thing was some sort of miracle, if you will, just whatever terminology you want to use. But it was definitely not something I could have ever planned for myself, just having that roof over my head during the most uncertain time in our, you know, professional lives, just, you know, [in exchange] for very modest duties at the church.

Bill DeVille: Right. So you've been through such a whirlwind lately. I just saw you at Americana Fest a week and a half ago in in Nashville, Tennessee, where you were a nominee for Best Emerging Artist, and it was so cool to see you play with that band with Don Was and Buddy Miller, and Brady Blade and people like that. That was so awesome. You sounded great.  

Neal Francis: Thank you.

Bill DeVille: So congratulations on that nomination. What's it like playing in a place like the Ryman, “the Mother Church of Country Music,” as they say.

Neal Francis: It's definitely one of those places that has a palpable energy to it, like the Fillmore in San Francisco or the Capitol Theatre in New York. You know, those places are hallowed ground, if you will. And every — all the musicians there treat it with reverence as well. And so we had a chance to open for Amos Lee there two nights over the summer. And that was really great as well. And we're going back with Marcus here in a few weeks.

Bill DeVille: So it was just a little bit of a warm-up before you head back and do your own full set in a few weeks.

Neal Francis: We've played greater than 1% of all the nights of this year at the Ryman Auditorium. It's five — we're going to complete five nights on this next two-night stand with Marcus.

Bill DeVille: That's so awesome. When I watch you play and I hear you play, I hear so much kind of a New Orleans style; perhaps maybe Allen Toussaint influenced or Dr. John. Are those two touchstones for you? I mean, artists like that?

Neal Francis: Yeah, undoubtedly. I really gravitated towards the music of Allen Toussaint and the records he produced in my late teens, early 20s. And I had already been listening to several records he produced without knowing that he was involved.

Bill DeVille: He was such a behind-the-scenes kind of guy, wasn't he?

Neal Francis: Absolutely, and I mean, you know the music that he was responsible for producing, like Lee Dorsey and Ernie K-Doe, and Dr. John and the Meters, and it's like this, you know, Labelle, all this music that he wrote and produced and even sang background vocals on all these recordings. It has a very distinct blend of rock, soul, gospel, country, and it's like its own genre almost unto itself.

Bill DeVille: And he had that such easygoing vibe; just seemed like just a nice fella. I never met him or anything, but he just seemed like he was so casual and so honest and forthright and just seemed like a really good dude.

Neal Francis: Yeah, he definitely gave that energy, and I never had a chance to meet him before he passed. But I've met people who knew him well and I've heard nothing but just that he was a very graceful person. And that's, I guess, another thing to look up to.

Bill DeVille: Yeah. What brought you to music? I saw you learned to play piano at age four. Was that something, "Mom, I really want to play piano," or did your folks push it on you? Or how did that work out?

Neal Francis: I think it was mostly the fact that there was a piano in the house and I became interested, and started picking things apart by year. My mom knew some piano and so she taught me some things as well. And then we had a great record collection in my house growing up. My dad and my mom both had records and—

Bill DeVille: What were some of your go-tos?

Neal Francis: Oh, I mean, growing up, I listened to so so much, you know, everything from like the Who, Stevie Wonder, The Beatles. Like, Broadway shows, like Phantom of the Opera and classical music. Like I remember listening to Carmen by Bizet a quite a lot. And just like, it was all in the stew, you know? And then blues, I became really interested in blues piano when I was, like, six or seven.

Bill DeVille: Did you get — I mean, you were probably very young when you were first starting to hear, you know, Chicago blues — but being in Chicago, did your parents bring you into some of the clubs? Sneak you in or anything like that?

Neal Francis: Yeah, following my interest in blues, my dad took me to a blues club on the West Side called Rose's Lounge when I was 12. And you know, I had already been listening to that music for a long time. And he took me to see Pinetop Perkins who—

Bill DeVille: A legendary piano player, yeah!

Neal Francis: Yeah, he was already in his 80s at that point, but you know, I just really became enthralled with that music and ended up playing in those clubs for a long time in my teens and 20s.

Bill DeVille: Was it at this point you met Muddy Waters's son, then?

Neal Francis: That was at the end of high school. There was, I had a band in high school called the Reverend Funk Connection. 

Bill DeVille: That's a great name!

Neal Francis: Yeah, thank you. This guy, Larry, was the manager of that high school band, and was also like, "I've got this guy, Larry Williams, he goes by Mud Morganfield. He's the oldest son of Muddy Waters, and he needs a piano player." And I was like, "Well, I've been listening — like aping — the Otis band style for a long time," and ended up playing with him in clubs around Chicago. We went to Switzerland. We went to San Francisco, we went all over.

Bill DeVille: Did he have any great stories about his dad that he told you or anything?

Neal Francis: The one thing I remember, I, you know, I didn't spend a terrible amount of time in that group. But I do remember him saying that his dad would visit him in Westmont, Illinois, every year and bring him a drum kit for Christmas. Which I think meant that he got a drum kit for Christmas every year, but I'm not sure.

Bill DeVille: What happened to all those drum kits?

Neal Francis: Right. I just don't know. I might be misinterpreting the story, but I'm pretty sure that's what he was saying.

Bill DeVille: So a while ago, I was doing our concert calendar at The Current, it was a Saturday afternoon, and I mentioned, "And Neal Francis will be back in town, he just played last week, and he'll be back..." and I realized what I did: there's two Neal Francises is out on the road.

Neal Francis: Oh, are they, were they here?

Bill DeVille: They were here, too. Not at the station, but they did perform in town. 

Neal Francis: Oh, right on. 

Bill DeVille: Can both Neal Francises coexist happily in this world?

Neal Francis: We do coexist. Yeah.

Bill DeVille: That's kind of strange, isn't it?

Neal Francis: We're already inhabiting this world. There's much stranger things. I actually think Mark and Jordan are nice guys. They really helped us out at Outside Lands when our sets were back to back. Maybe as a joke, or maybe as a... like, the promoter of the festival just put our sets right next to each other, probably to aid people who might be confused, which happens a lot. The amp that was provided for me was busted, and Mark from Neal Frances, without any hesitation, let me use his guitar amp.

Bill DeVille: Well, that's awesome.

Neal Francis: It was really nice of him.

Bill DeVille: So you can coexist, which is a nice thing.

Neal Francis: Yeah. They're nice people, and I like their music.

Bill DeVille: Nice. Well, it's been so nice chatting with you, Mr. Francis.

Neal Francis: Likewise, Bill.

Bill DeVille: Yes, cheers.

Neal Francis: Yeah. Thanks, man.

Video Segments

00:00:00 Alameda Apartments
00:06:08 Can’t Stop the Rain
00:10:37 Changes
00:17:20 Interview with host Bill DeVille

Songs 1 and 2 are from Neal Francis’s 2021 album, In Plain Sight, available on ATO Records; song 3 is from Francis’s 2019 debut, Changes, released on Colemine Records.

Band members

Neal Francis – vocals, piano
Kellen Boersma – guitar
Mike Starr – bass
Collin O’Brien – drums

Credits

Guest – Neal Francis
Host – Bill DeVille
Producer – Derrick Stevens
Video Director – Erik Stromstad
Camera Operators – Erik Stromstad, Thor Cramer Bornemann
Video Post Production – Eric Xu Romani
Audio – Evan Clark
Graphics – Natalia Toledo
Digital Producer – Luke Taylor

External Link

Neal Francis – official site