A Conversation with Dumpstaphunk’s Ivan Neville – HuffPost 8.16.13

Mike Ragogna: Ivan Neville, you have no right to be part of such an incredibly musical family. What do you have to say for yourself?

Ivan Neville: [laughs] I was just born into this thing, a bunch of musicians, and it happens to be in New Orleans as well, so that just adds a little bonus to it.

MR: Having Aaron Neville as your dad, that has to have had just a little bit of an influence on you, don’t you think?

IN: Oh, most definitely, most definitely. Growing up, that’s all I really saw was my dad and my uncle. They were all musicians. I guess eventually, it just took hold of me. I was like, “Okay, this is what I want to do as well.”

MR: So, this new Dumpstaphunk project funks along with folks like Trombone Shorty, Annie DeFranco, and Flea guesting. Were you trying to out-funk the funkiest?

IN: Yeah, you know…I don’t know! We were not really thinking along those lines. Obviously, we want to get people to hear what we’re trying to do. Basically, our goal is for someone to kind of understand that, “Okay, damn, this is kind of stanky.” We’re influenced by many different things, and it all kind of stems from some sort of bluesy rock ‘n’ roll gospel funk s**t. That’s kind of what it is, and it all comes from the stuff that we listen to. We just try to say that music is so great, music in general is such a cool thing that we were blessed with, you know? We’re music lovers and we want people to hear that and feel that in our music. We’re blessed to be musicians, but we’re music lovers and fans, and that’s what we want people to get. We’re trying to relate. We share, we’ve been blessed to be a channel of some cool stuff, and it just happens that most of it is kind of stanky.

MR: There a few groups I think you’d really dig, like Parliament and Sly & The Family Stone.

IN: [laughs] Most definitely, those are huge influences on us. We come from New Orleans, so The Meters and my dad and the brothers and things of that nature are naturally embedded in us. There are three members of the band that grew up listening to the radio in the seventies, and the music of Sly & The Family Stone in the late sixties and early seventies. That music was so special, it was so broad where it was rock ‘n’ roll; it was funk, it was gospel, it was blues, it was all of that mixed together, and it was as well with Parliament/Funkadelic. Pretty much those two bands incorporate a lot of what we aspire to do. Vocally, we’ve got four people in the band that all sing, and we incorporate that and that’s influenced by the bands you mentioned as well. We love that stuff and the fact that we’re even in the same sentence with that is an absolute honor.

MR: Yeah, and it’s great your uncle Art is on the album.

IN: Yeah, Art’s on it. He just came into the studio one day with Ian, who is Art’s son, which makes him my cousin. Art came to the studio one day to hang with us and we said, “Okay Art, you want to play on this song?” He played and it was just so natural. What I love about his performance is we’ve got Rebirth on that song, we’ve got Trombone Shorty on that song, and you can hear all of it. You know that’s Art playing the Fender Rhodes all through that song. It’s not too loud, but it’s in there just enough that you can hear that Art Neville kind of thing, and I love that about that track.

MR: Now, Flea totally makes sense, Rebirth Brass Band totally make sense, Grooveline Horns, totally. Ani DiFranco? I mean she’s awesome, but that was a surprise.

IN: Yeah, I’ll tell you how that happened, which is really a great story as well. Ani DiFranco’s husband, his name is Mike Napolitano, also known as Nappy. He mixed nine of the eleven songs on the record, and they have a studio in their house in New Orleans. They have a studio in their living room. The majority of this record was mixed there. She was at the house while he was mixing, we were nowhere around, and she heard something and she went and put some vocals on a song that was pretty much meant to be an instrumental. Mike said, “Hey, man, Ani did this thing on this song.” So we heard it and I was like, “Damn, that kid is bad! Sure!” And what she sang on it, if we would’ve said something on this song, maybe we would’ve wanted to say what she was saying. We get it to where it still comes off as an instrumental and she doesn’t come in until after a couple of rounds and then the bridge and then she comes in with this vocal riff. We love it. That’s how it came on, though. It wasn’t like we planned to have Ani on the record. We love Ani, and we have played with Ani before, she’s sat in with us and I played on Ani’s record as well. So it was just so natural for it to happen the way it happened. Now Ani’s on the record. What a cool thing.

MR: You’ve got a new drummer and singer, Nikki.

IN: Yes indeed, Nikki is amazing. We’ve been playing with Nikki in the band for like two years now. We met Nikki through some friends of ours, a band called Soulive. We met her through those guys, Eric Krasno and the band. Nikki was friends with them. She’d gone to Berkeley college and studied music and whatnot there and she was friends with them. We met her through them. They would all come out to Jazzfest every year. We met Nikki in 2004 and we would play with her here and there in different configurations and she sat in with us a couple of times and ended up being in the band. She’s a great addition and the fact that she sings her ass off as well as plays, just killing it, we got to add the female voice element to the mix which is something that we really have been trying to take advantage of. I think on this record, we incorporate that a great deal. The sound’s evolving into what it’s become and we’re pretty pleased with that.

MR: You mentioned earlier all sorts of styles from the sixties and the seventies, and I want to say that you’re not only a good student of that stuff, but also that you employed various styles when you were working on records that ranged from Don Henley, Bonnie Raitt, Robbie Robertson, Paula Abdul, and Spin Doctors, and you were even a member of Spin Doctors for a while.

IN: I played on a couple of Stones albums as well. Yeah, it’s been a fun thing to do over the years, playing on different stuff and to kind of just go where the music wants you to go with it. That’s kind of where I like to come from, I’m a student of listening. I like to listen. When you’re in there doing it, usually the music tells you what to do. That’s kind of what I do in this band especially. I’ve got some great musicians that I get to listen to on a daily basis. I get to listen to them play and I get to come up with this cool s**t to play alongside everything that’s going on. It kind of does its own thing.

MR: Yeah. I have to ask you, have you ever heard of a musician named, I think it’s Fats Domino?

IN: Oh yes, I have! [laughs]

MR: I love that you did that tribute recording to him. I feel like he ought to be sainted or knighted. What a sweet guy. Is that your impression of him too?

IN: Absolutely, absolutely. We were absolutely honored to do his song in tribute to him and B.B. King was on the track with us, which was totally amazing and thrilling and all that. But I got to play with Fats maybe one time. I got to play on stage with him once for a benefit in New York, and it was a band we put together and Fats showed up and he actually played a few songs and I think he stayed up longer than they expected him to. I’ve heard stories that he would come and play a few songs and then walk off–he’s finished. But he actually played a couple more songs than they were planning on him playing and it was amazing. What a thrill. Like you said, he’s the sweetest guy, he is like a king. Like you said, he should be sainted. He’s one of those guys, he’s one of our heroes, he’s a living legend.

MR: Well, I also want to throw out there, you’re a hero, too, Ivan. You should be knighted as well. You worked with Tipitina’s Foundation after Katrina hit, you were with other musicians trying to organize for charities, et cetera. What are your thoughts on the Katrina disaster? Has New Orleans truly recovered from it?

IN: It was absolutely a devastating thing. A lot of people lost lives, and then people lost a lot of other things. People lost family members, people lost their homes, a lot of people left New Orleans never to return, which was a huge tragedy. You’ve got this great city, it’s all about community, and it’s about the people. The people are what make New Orleans what it is. The resilience of the people here and the determination, people were determined enough to come back here to try to make New Orleans what it once was. You can’t take the soul away from anyone, and that’s what New Orleans is all about. The soul of the people, the culture, it’s about music, it’s about food and when we talk about music and food, it’s about people. Basically, the only positive to this whole tragedy was that a light was shined on New Orleans, people maybe took for granted what a special, great place New Orleans is, and then when Katrina happened, we almost lost this amazing city, this amazing place. It’s like no other city in our country, no other city in the world! So the fact that a light was shined on New Orleans and people paid attention to New Orleans music for a while after that, a lot of New Orleans musicians got a little bit more recognition because of the light that shined on New Orleans, that was the one positive that came out of that tragedy. In the aftermath, I would say that yeah, New Orleans is back, it’s back to what it normally does, making music and cooking some good food for everybody. It’s a good place to come and visit, it’s a place to do anything. A lot of people come down here with their companies and do conventions and all that sort of thing because New Orleans is a great place to hang out. You can walk to a gazillion restaurants, you can see stuff that’s historic. That being said, New Orleans is healing. The loss that happened, you can never replace that, but like I said, you can’t mess with the soul of New Orleans. That will always be there.

MR: Wow. And I also love this quote about your version of “Fortunate Son,” on the benefit album, Sing Me Back Home, the critic goes something like, “Catharsis never sounded cooler.”

IN: [laughs] I think I remember reading that, yeah. That was a good piece of music. That was born out of Katrina as well. As musicians, we were kind of in exile. We were all stranded in Austin, Texas, temporarily living there, holed up in a studio somewhere making that record.

MR: What do you think of the state of funk these days?

IN: I think it’s alive and well. Not only are we trying to do what we’re doing, there are a lot of bands that are alive and doing it and you’ve got some of the heroes that are still around doing it. Bootsy Collins is out there doing his thing, George Clinton is still out there with the P-Funk cast. It’s not a lot of the original guys still around, but that spirit is still there. Everything that’s done now has borrowed some way from that. Everything that’s out there, all that s**t that’s going on has borrowed some kind of way from that music. All of the hip-hop music has borrowed from funk, so it’s still alive and well.

MR: I imagine Christmas must be an expensive time of year for your family. You have so many family members and they’re all musical. Do you all just buy each other musical instruments?

IN: [laughs] No, not really, no. There were times when we had a lot of us living on the same street in a two block radius, and that’s not like it anymore, but my uncle Art still lives on that same street, in that same block. It was mostly about food, though, and telling stories and stuff, more than actual gifts. There was always a piano somewhere nearby, so maybe singing together and whatnot. Things of that nature.

MR: Nice. What advice do you have for new artists?

IN: I guess work at it. Spend a lot of time doing it. Spend as much time as you can doing music and honing your craft and remember the reason that you’re doing it is probably because you love it. And the fact that you get to play it is a gift and a blessing, so never forget that. I would say, remain a music lover first.

MR: I also want to thank you for one of my favorite songs from Pump Up The Volume.

IN: Oh, you liked, “Why Can’t I Fall In Love?”

MR: That’s my favorite song from the soundtrack.

IN: That was a cool track, yeah. I had a lot of fun doing that back in the day.

MR: Okay, with the new album from Dumpstaphunk, there’s going to be touring, right?

IN: Yes, there will be, yes, yes. We’ll start barnstorming; we’re going to do a few things and then closer to the end of the summer, we’re going to go out for long periods of time.

MR: Anything else you’re going to be working on, side projects or a solo album or whatever?

IN: We’re always working on something. Everybody’s got something that they’re doing, little songwriting things with different people and whatnot. I don’t have anything in particular that I want to talk about just yet, but the way Dumpsta’s been playing lately, we’ve played each groove sometimes where we got certain songs that we play that kind of lend themselves to making up a new groove in the song, and I’m looking forward to us evolving yet more and writing some new stuff very soon. I’m looking forward to that.

MR: What does Dumpstaphunk do for you that you’re not able to do with other projects?

IN: Dumpstaphunk allows me to be involved in a group of people that take turns driving. I can just be a player, you know what I’m saying? I don’t have to be the lead guy all the time. We’ve got other people that sing, we all accompany one another and to me, that was the beauty of being in a band like this. You don’t have to be the focal point all the time, focus can turn to another member at any given time and you can just be the accompanist. I love that dynamic. I get to listen to people that I really love and admire pretty much every day. You can’t get much better than that.

MR: Ivan, I love your family and really appreciate your time. So glad we got this together, man.

IN: Thank you very much. I appreciate it as well.

Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne