A Conversation with Aaron Neville – HuffPost 11.1.10

 

Mike Ragogna: Hi Aaron, thanks for giving us your time today. Let’s just dive right into your new album, I Know I’ve Been Changed. Joe Henry produced it?

Aaron Neville: Right.

MR: And you feature Allen Toussaint on piano–Toussaint, of course, being another New Orleans legend.

AN: Well, not just that, but he’s also my first producer, and we had like a fifty year anniversary. He recorded my first record back in ’60.

MR: Right. How far back do you go with Allen?

AN: Well, Allen and I went to school together and we lived not far from each other.

MR: Do you remember which songs you recorded during those original sessions?

AN: I did a song called “Over You,” and I did a split session with a group called The Del-Royals. I did “Over You” and the other side was “Every Day.”

MR: So, fifty years goes by, but over the years, you’ve worked together occasionally. What are some of those other projects?

AN: We’ve done stuff in between. I recorded many records from ’60 to ’64, then I went to another label where I did “Tell It Like It Is” in ’65, released in ’66. Allen and I hooked back up in the early ’70s and did “Hercules” and a bunch of other stuff.

MR: Would you describe I Know I’ve Been Changed as, basically, a stripped down gospel album?

AN: I think I would. It’s like old time gospel stuff. There are a couple of things that I heard a long time ago, and some of it was new to me.

MR: How did you decide which songs to record?

AN: Well, it was picked between me, Joe Henry, and Ken Pennell from EMI. We had a lot of stuff to pick from, and this was like the cream of the crop, I guess, that we came out with.

MR: Were there songs recorded for this project that didn’t make the cut?

AN: Just one. I did a Sam Cooke thing, “Touch The Hem Of His Garment.”

MR: Beautiful. A couple of my favorite songs on I Know I’ve Been Changed are the title track and “I Done Made Up My Mind.” Are there a couple of songs presented here that you associate with specific stories in your life?

AN: One of the Sam Cooke things I did was “I’m So Glad,” and that was one of the songs my boys and I would do walking down the streets in New Orleans as teenagers. We might have been going to get into mischief or whatever, but we’d be singing “I’m So Glad (Trouble Don’t Last)” trying to sound like Sam and The Soul Stirrers. “I Am A Pilgrim”–I think Sam and them did that too back in the day, but I like the version that I’m doing on this record.

MR: You are, of course, part of the famed Neville Brothers.

AN: Right.

MR: Just for the history lesson, can you tell us the back story of The Neville Brothers? Like, before you recorded, you obviously played together.

AN: Yeah, we played together. Two or three of us performed from the ’50s on into the ’60s, then Cyril came into the picture, my younger brother, but it was either two or three of us, it was never all four of us until we got together in ’76 and did The Wild Tchoupitoulas with my uncle, Big Chief Jolly, for Mardi Gras. Then, in ’77, we got together as The Neville Brothers and recorded the first all-Neville Brothers album in ’78, and that’s called The Neville Brothers.

MR: Between your solo material and The Neville Brothers albums, you’ve amassed a body of work that is considered essential for many record collections.

AN: Yeah, no doubt. My brother Art is the founder of the group The Meters, which a lot of rappers liked to sample, and Cyril has sung on a lot of stuff with them too.

MR: As Aaron Neville, you’ve had memorable hits in addition to “Tell It Like It Is.” There were the duets “Don’t Know Much” and “All My Life” with Linda Ronstadt, and “Something Is Wrong With My Baby” among others. How did your association with Linda Ronstadt begin?

AN: ’84 was the World’s Fair in New Orleans and Linda was playing the amphitheater. My brothers and I were playing at Pete Fountain’s club on the grounds of the World’s Fair, and she came to see us one night. Somebody told me she was in the audience, so I dedicated a song to her, called her up on stage, and she came up and we sang some doo-wop together. She told the press that that was the highlight of her tour, and she felt like Cinderella at the ball–she got to sing with her favorite band and favorite singers.

At that time, Allen Toussaint and I had come up with the idea of an organization we co-founded called New Orleans Artists Against Hunger And Homelessness because I’d been seeing those ads on the TV where you see the kids crying with flies and their big stomachs and all that. I’d sit up sometimes at night and cry my eyes out. I was sending money and my wife said, “Well, how do you know they’re getting the money?” She reminded me, “You know, we’ve got hungry people here in New Orleans.” At the same time, Allen Toussaint was doing the same thing, so we collaborated and came up with that. I asked Linda to come and do a benefit with us and she agreed. She came down and we got a chance to sing together, and started talking about doing a record–that was ’85. We talked about it, but we didn’t get together until ’89 or something like that. And the rest is history.

MR: And a classic album with many hits resulted. But your solo album also was well respected.

AN: My first solo thing that I did on A&M records was the Warm Your Heart album, and she produced that.

MR: It was a great re-introduction of Aaron Neville.

AN: Yeah, it definitely was.

MR: Let’s talk about the New Orleans connection some more. Your home was devastated in ’05 by Hurricane Katrina. How long did it take to get everything back in relative order?

AN: Well, I had to move to Nashville because my wife at the time had been diagnosed with lung cancer in ’04, so we left in ’05 because she needed doctor care, but there weren’t doctors. So, we just took a residence right out of Nashville, where she could be cared for at a hospital. We did a good job of keeping it together until she passed in ’07. I couldn’t go back because I have asthma, so I didn’t get back until ’08 to do the Jazz Fest with the brothers. We had to miss ’06 and ’07. I finally got a house in Covington, Louisiana, because I just got tired of running from the water, you know? Me and my family have been running since before Katrina. If I was on the road, I’d call them and say, “Get out.” Because I knew they were surrounded by water, sitting in a bowl, you know?

MR: Obviously, at the time Katrina happened, you must have been out of your mind about it.

AN: I couldn’t even begin to explain. It was like a loss I’d never felt before. The New Orleans people usually can bounce back from anything, but this thing hit us for a loop. I run across musicians from New Orleans, and they all have the same look–the same look I had–“Wow, man. It really done it this time. It took our city.” It was heavy.

MR: I imagine one of the things that got you through was your faith.

AN: Yeah, no doubt.

MR: On I Know I’ve Been Changed, you cover songs by Brother Joe May, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Blind Boys Of Alabama, and many major artists in the gospel field. Are there any songs on the project that were especially inspiring to you?

AN: The Sam Cooke song “I’m So Glad” and definitely “I Am A Pilgrim”– that’s one of my favorites on the album. I like the track “Meeting At The Building” too.

MR: And “Oh Freedom,” to me, is one of the more touching tracks on the album.

AN: I meant to say that too. “Oh Freedom” is definitely special, yeah.

MR: And it has that amazing background vocal section.

AN: They really added to it, you know? We did this whole album in five days. I don’t know if we told you that.

MR: No, tell me about the process.

AN: Well, we did it in Joe Henry’s basement studio. Everybody came, and we’d be locked in there from one o’clock to seven at night. I sang the songs so many times with the band to get the band together, but because they were great musicians, it didn’t really take much, and that’s why it only took five days.

MR: It’s pretty stripped down, and that approach really allows the performances to shine.

AN: Yeah, no doubt.

MR: Since fifty years have passed since your first recordings, what do you think are the major changes that have happened to Aaron Neville?

AN: Well, I’ve gone through a lot of changes at different times in my life. I couldn’t pinpoint any specific one. I’ve been religious all my life–since I was a little boy–and obviously, I’ve been through ups and downs, you know? And I’ve come out on the other side.

MR: Are you planning on singing any more national anthems anytime soon?

AN: Yeah, that’s cool. I did one for the opening of the Giants game this year, at the new stadium in New Jersey. I also sang it for the Bruins in Boston.

MR: Cool, so in addition to being the official voice of “Ave Maria,” you’ve become the national anthem king.

AN: (laughs) Well, for one thing, I just do it a capella. A lot of people need a lot of production around it, but I just go in there and do it a capella, you know?

MR: I also admire a few of your more recent albums such as Nature Boy and Bring It On Home. After all these years, how do you keep up the inspiration?

AN: Well, it was God that gave me my voice, and it’s His voice. I’m just thankful to be singing because singing to me is like medicine–it makes everything alright, and I wanted to make it alright for the people that are listening, you know?

MR: Nice.

AN: I want them to feel what I’m feeling.

MR: Beautiful. Aaron, what’s in the future? Are you going to be going on tour to support this album?

AN: I have a Christmas tour starting right after Thanksgiving. I’ve been doing this Christmas tour for three years, now that I’ve recorded this great Christmas album. We have long shows because I’ve got so much material I want to do and I can’t do it in a short show.

MR: Aaron, might you have any advice for new artists?

AN: Yeah, it’s called the music business, so make sure you’re mind is on the business, and make sure it’s what you want to do because it’s not an easy business to get into. The record business is so different from how it was a long time ago. In this line of business, make sure you’ve got a backup plan.

Transcribed by Ryan Gaffney