026 - Key Notes No. 4: Neal Francis
Not to be confused with "Neil Frances," but they're good, too
Key Notes is a recurring series in which I write
about music I like
The first week of March, 2020 found me in Los Angeles, “taking meetings.” At that point in time I was less than a year removed from hosting my final episode of HQ Trivia (co-hosted with the late, great Gilbert Gottfried on March 24, 2019). I had left the app that I had helped launch into the global viralsphere (before it came crashing down back to earth) to accept an offer from sports streaming service DAZN, becoming one of the flagship hosts of their inaugural live, whip-around baseball highlight show ChangeUp. It was paying me almost twice as much for a work schedule that demanded half as much time, affording me bandwidth to pursue other projects in television and digital media. Hence, this trip to Tinsel Town for “generals” with execs at ABC, E!, TBS/TNT/TruTV, and Quibi.
QUIBI!!!!!!!
I was on top of the world…
…right before the world shut down.
As per my historical track record with Hollywood meetings, not a single thing came from any of them. Ironically, the most promising connection I made that week was sparked in the parking garage elevator at Universal City as we respectively returned to our cars from unproductive meetings: a game show producer with whom I would spend the next two years developing a fun format called Get Off My Lawn (we even had William Shatner attached! I ZOOMED WITH THE SHATMAN!).
Ahead of my LA trip I messaged my old friend and esteemed concert photographer Steph Port who shares my foundational love of/need for live music, asking if there were any good shows on the horizon. She came through as she usually do:
Neal Francis! Moroccan Lounge! I wasn’t familiar with either, but I said yes to the address and met Steph in DTLA on March 4, 2020.
It would be my last indoor show for the next two years.
And holy hell, was it a good one!
As soon as plans were finalized and tickets were secured, I immediately put Neal into heavy rotation. There was precisely one record to spin at the time, his September 2019 debut LP Changes. From the opening organ wash on the opening track, I was hooked. When the trumpets brightly blasted eleven seconds later, I was sunk. When Neal’s relaxed, unaffected vocals hit my ears ten seconds after that, I was belly up on the boat, blissfully willing to be butterfly-filleted and consumed sashimi-style by this terrific band.
Neal Francis plays exactly the kind of music I want to hear. It’s flagrantly funky. It’s fresh and flavorful despite feeling familiar. It’s ALIVE with the soul and spirit of the the golden age of R&B, as if immaculately conceived following an all-night orgy among Leon Russell, Dr. John, Shuggie Otis, Alan Toussaint, Little Feat, The Meters, The Band and a bevy of Bourbon Street babes backstage at Tipitina’s.
Having mentally downloaded all eight tracks available on Spotify, I could not have been more amped to embark on a maiden voyage with a newfound artist in an uncharted venue as I was walking into the jam-packed, 275-cap Moroccan Lounge that night. Based on the genius and artistry the band was able to capture on vinyl, I was anticipating a rollicking live performance — a hunch sublimely confirmed not one full song into the set.1
Decked out in a purple velour bell-bottomed suit and sporting a shoulder-length shag ripped from the pages of a late 70s issue Tiger Beat, Neal and Co. kicked out the jams and turned up the heat. If you were in the audience and not already feeling fluish, say, from exposure to the novel coronavirus that had just started making the rounds, your body temp was surely rising with the crescendo of Neal’s boogie-woogie piano, the thunderous percussion rinse of Collin O’Brien, the crunchy shreds and wah-wah swells of Kellen Boersma2, and the heartbeat bouncing bass of Mike Starr, whose funktastic flair is matched only by his tonsorial talents.
The band played Changes in its shuffled entirety, a new song “Can’t Live Without Your Love,” an old song from Neal’s first band The Heard, “Gimme Gimme,” and two covers that rank among my all-time faves: the Shuggie Otis-penned/Quincy Jones-improved (via The Brothers Johnson) “Strawberry Letter 23” and John Lennon’s “Cold Turkey” which kicked off an encore deserving of another ten encores. Neal told the crowd he had a prize for anyone who could name that final cover; I took particular pride when I approached him at the merch table and provided the answer. My reward? A Neal Francis sticker... and it was in that moment that I empathized with every victorious HQtie who walked away from the winner’s circle with 12 cents.
It would be a few years until I saw Neal live again, because you know, pandemic. But the stars aligned for me in July 2023 when I was sent to Seattle to launch Fanatics Live on field at the MLB All-Star Game. By this point I had learned of a second-degree connection to Neal: my friend Jesse Lauter who had been mixing and mastering the band’s live shows for nugs.net. Jesse saw I was in the Emerald City and shot me a text to say Neal was playing in town that night. SIGN ME UP!
This time around, Neal had a horn section with him, and let me tell you: the kitchen was cooking at The Crocodile that night, serving up a Puget Sound’s worth of soul stew. The band had added a second full-length album to their repertoire by then, 2021’s In Plain Sight, and with more material to work with they were able to weave a wondrous tapestry of wicked segues, playing the final eight songs of their 11-song set without a break.
Picking a favorite Neal Francis composition is no easy task, considering everything I’ve heard from the guy “does it for me,” but In Plain Sight’s opening track "Alameda Apartments" had shot to the top of my list. The first 3 minutes and 20 seconds of this song are good enough to earn its place in the pantheon, but something extraordinarily beautiful happens at the 3:21 mark that puts it over the edge for me: a piano-driven breakdown that layers and builds before peacefully exiting with a Page McConnell-esque flourish.
Hearing “Alameda” live for the first time that night in Seattle with an augmented horn arrangement and an extra saucy jam cemented the Neal Francis experience for me. It wasn’t merely “a fun show” I happened to catch one random night in LA; it was my new obsession. I’ve since seen him twice more (The Music Hall of Williamsburg, December 2023 and The Rooftop at Pier 17, June 2024) and I’m eagerly awaiting his return to a stage near me on his recently announced 2025 tour to promote his soon-to-be-released third album, Return to Zero.
If I ever get the chance to chat with Neal again, besides further impressing him with my knowledge of John Lennon’s post-Beatles oeuvre, I’d like to talk the walk of the spiritual path. From what I’ve gathered from his biography, Neal might very well have gone the way of Quibi had he not reckoned with his substance abuse issues and gotten clean following an alcohol-induced seizure in 2015 that sent him to the hospital. He clearly had talent, having been the creative force of his previous band, but his darkside was preventing him back from reaching his full potential (and ultimately led to his firing from said band). As he explained it: “Drinking held my music in a half-cocked slingshot. I was always so consumed by drugs and alcohol that I didn’t have the time, money, or creative energy to do it. Sobriety let it loose.”
Since returning from a personal transformation retreat last summer, I can relate to that feeling. While never battling with drugs or alcohol, I had long wrestled with my own darkside that had been keeping my light dimmed. My demons were psychological and took the form of self-hate, self-criticism, insecurity, doubt, shame, and fear. But in identifying and confronting my patterns head on, expressing my emotions around their hold on me, and finally forgiving myself for feeling how I did, I was able to “get clean” from negativity.
Neal and I may have manifested our self-destructive behavior in different ways, but our sobriety feels cut from the same cloth, and our present states of mind as “born-again creatives” feels of a piece with spiritual awakening. As he has said of his prodigious output and heavy touring habit: “I’m doing this to fulfill a drive within myself, but also to pay tribute to the gifts I’ve been given. And it comes from a place of immense gratitude.”
If you find yourself in one of the 48 cities of the nine countries across the four continents where Neal Francis and his phenomenal band are bringing their electric live show this year, first make sure it’s Neal Francis, not Neil Frances… and then make the effort to see them.
Kellen left the band last fall and was replaced with guitarist Andy Gabbard (The Black Keys)