S Son of the great soul singer Aaron Neville, Ivan Neville was born in 1959, in New Orleans, Louisiana, and is an accomplished multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and singer. He first started playing in a band in 1977 – Renegade was its name – and still, as a teenager, Ivan joined his father and uncles in the nascent Neville Brothers, serving as the third keyboardist, along with Art Neville and Gerald “Professor Shorthair” Tillman.
Though he has performed often with the Neville Brothers, he established himself as a go-to studio and touring musician. He was a member of Bonnie Raitt’s band between 1985-1987 and guested on other dates by a plethora of artists including the Rolling Stones, Don Henley, Paula Abdul, Robbie Robertson, Rufus, and Delbert McClinton. He was also a member of Keith Richards’ touring X-Pensive Winos outfit on the Talk Is Cheap tour. Neville and his cousin, Ian Neville (son of Art Neville), formed the diverse jam band Dumpstaphunk in the early 2000s.
Throughout Ivan’s solo career, he has released four solo albums and had a Top 30 Billboard hit with the first single “Not Just Another Girl” from his debut solo album If My Ancestors Could See Me Now. His second single “Falling Out of Love” was a duet with singer Bonnie Raitt that reached 91 on the Billboard charts. The song was also featured in the 1989 comedy Skin Deep, starring John Ritter.
Today we stand at another crossroads both in terms of the uncertainty of a worldwide pandemic, the political turmoil surrounding a meaningful social justice movement within a controversial election year, and generally the current climate of our existence. We as human beings are posed with the question once again….’Where do we go from here?’
