Their final encore slams to a close and the Neville Brothers do a casual group bow. As they begin to file offstage, Aaron Neville grabs a mic and starts into the keynote bass line of the doo-wop classic “Goodnight Sweetheart.” The other three brothers — Art, Charles, and Cyril — stop, smile knowingly, and join in, as does most of the audience. It's the perfect final touch to another bravura performance by the legendary New Orleans group.

For Aaron, doo-wop is a throwback to his earliest days, those hot summer nights long ago when he would prowl the tough projects of the Big Easy, slinging dead-ringer slices of the hits that revolutionized early '50s radio. It's his oldest musical memory — “just walking down the street singing with my friends, this little group of guys in the neighborhood,” he recalls.

Aaron Neville owns one of the most distinctive voices in popular music. In addition to his work with his brothers, he has released numerous solo albums, sung duets with country queens Trisha Yearwood and Tammy Wynette, had a late-'80s worldwide hit with Linda Ronstadt (“Don't Know Much”), and appeared routinely on television. Even so, Aaron says, his favorite group to hang with is still a bunch of guys from the neighborhood — his brothers, Art, Charles, and Cyril. “It's a part of life, just the four of us,” he says.

For more than two decades the Neville Brothers have toured the world as funky ambassadors of the good-time, soulful New Orleans sound they helped create. The Nevilles play close to a hundred dates a year — everything from festivals to theaters, as well as trips to Japan and Europe. The brothers embody the spirit and soul of New Orleans music, both past and present, and their collective résumé reads like a history lesson in swamp boogie and early American rock. Other prominent New Orleans groups, such as Galactic, Swampdelica, and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, acknowledge the Neville Brothers as a major inspiration.

TRACING THE ROOTS

The four Nevilles were born in New Orleans to a merchant sailor's family. They lived in the hardscrabble Calliope projects until the family moved to Valence Street. “There was always music around the house — our dad liked music and brought home records that he got from all over,” Aaron says. Show business ran in the family — the brothers' uncle George Landry was known in New Orleans as “Big Chief Jolly,” fabled leader of a boisterous band of Mardi Gras Indians who led parades during the city's pre-Lenten carnival. Years later, Landry's insistence that the four brothers join forces was the catalyst for the first incarnation of the Neville Brothers band.

Art and Charles, the first- and second-born sons, formed their first band together around 1953. Called the Turquoise, the group soon included number-three son Aaron on vocals. Art, who plays keyboards, had already had a hit, “Mardi Gras Mambo,” with the Hawketts. Charles, a sax player, remembers all three of them playing in Larry Williams's band for a time, backing hits like “Bony Maroney.” It wasn't long before Aaron was fronting a vocal group — the Avalons — while 15-year-old Charles cut school to tour with Gene Franklin and the Houserockers. Before long, youngest brother Cyril was playing drums and singing. It seemed as though a Neville was playing or singing on everything coming out of New Orleans. Then in 1965, Aaron scored a massive soul hit with “Tell It Like It Is,” indelibly imprinting his trademark falsetto and sweet tenor on the consciousness of the nation's pop audience.

BROTHER HELPING BROTHER

Aaron went on the road, backed by brother Art and his band, the Neville Sounds, working the hit for all it was worth. Shortly after that, Art formed the Meters, the New Orleans proto-funk band, considered the granddaddies of modern funk. The band toured with the Rolling Stones in 1974 with Cyril fronting. The modern era of the Neville legend started in 1976, when Big Chief Jolly brought the brothers together to make Wild Tchoupitoulas, a record that would virtually set the tone for a generation of New Orleans groups. Featuring Jolly, members of the Meters, and all four Nevilles, the sessions yielded classics such as “Hey Mama” and “Hey Pocky A-Way.”

The Nevilles became more or less the house band at Tipitina's, the famed New Orleans club, and their 1977 self-titled album earned them a nationwide following with its smooth, studio-album groove. Records from the mid-'80s include Fiyo on the Bayou and the live album Nevillization. In 1989, the band's upward rise brought them a Grammy for “Healing Chant” from their album Yellow Moon. Such '90s efforts as Brother's Keeper (A&M), Family Groove (A&M), and Valence Street (Columbia) have maintained the Nevilles' unique niche in pop.

FOUR-WAY SPLIT

Neville Brothers concerts have an easygoing intensity born of the deeply concentrated pool of talent onstage. Every show is different — one night will feature New Orleans gems such as “Junk Man” and “Congo Square,” whereas the next show might lean heavily on covers such as “Love the One You're With” and “Old Time Rock and Roll.” The brothers know so many songs that they rarely follow a set list. “The one who's going to sing the songs decides,” Charles says. “Sometimes what we write on the set list is just our name — like Art's choice or Cyril's choice. Or we'll have a list of songs, but I'll say, ‘I don't want to do that; do something else.’”

Art Neville, known by his fans as “Poppa Funk,” always starts the show. First he talks to the crowd like a cool old uncle, revealing a sincere interest in his audience. By the time his left hand pounds out the opening piano boogie of “Mardi Gras Mambo” or the bayou rocker “Brother John/Iko Iko,” he's got the crowd in his pocket. With Cyril's percussion setting the mood, Art lays out a few classics with Aaron and Charles singing backup before Aaron — the unmistakable crowd favorite — takes the helm; his portion of the show always puts a hush on the audience.

Aaron, 60, is a study in contrasts — a soft-spoken man with a pro weightlifter's body and a tattoo of a buccaneer's cutlass on his cheek (the latter a reminder of his rebellious teen years). He rarely says more than a few words between songs, simply letting his voice communicate for him on songs such as “Over You,” “Waiting at the Station,” and “Mojo Hannah.” On special occasions he'll toss in “Tell It Like It Is.” He doesn't do the hit every night, however. “I just think of it as another song, and we have so many songs,” he says.

Aaron might grab a tambourine when he's not singing, but more often than not he just stands quietly and smiles as his brothers play. Aaron never took up an instrument. “God gave me my own instrument: my voice,” he says. Through the years, Aaron has developed an incredible microphone technique that's integral to his sound. Because he often splits his voice between falsetto and straight tone, he's constantly moving his mic in and out. Aaron's sophisticated mic technique is necessary to capture his heavily nuanced voice, especially his yodel-based song endings — a trademark style he first encountered as a kid listening to the radio. “There was country on the radio. I liked cowboy songs and singers and started yodeling. I always wanted to sing the high parts.”

Sax-playing Charles, a bebopper at heart, always brings a jazzy tilt to the show during his part of the set, doing songs such as the original “Song for Jenny” or the blazing Latin-jazz “Cubano.” The energy level of the Nevilles is mercurial; even the side players — guitarist Shane Theriot, pianist Michael Goods, drummer Willie Green, bassist David Johnson, and backup singer Earl Smith — get in on the act. Green constantly challenges Cyril Neville to play harder, as the others pull off tightly choreographed moves that they could have lifted straight from Morris Day. Smith's ham-bone dancing and Mardi Gras umbrella routine harks back to the old-school New Orleans street players; he pantomimes being caught in a hurricane, moon-walking, and tumbling like a midway clown. When Smith mimics keeling over dead, Cyril jumps in with a few voodoo incantations, howling like a witch doctor, waving his arms and whipping up the rhythm section until Smith suddenly leaps up, revived, and the crowd is ecstatic.

By the time Cyril (vocals and percussion) takes the spotlight for the home stretch, the band has touched on nearly every area of its huge song list. With Cyril in the driver's seat, that final segment often turns into a marathon funk jam.

TELL IT LIKE IT WAS

The Neville Brothers' current state-of-the-art P.A. setup (see the sidebar “Neville Gear”) is a far cry from what they had to deal with in early days. “You didn't have sound systems. I remember plugging a microphone into a Fender amp. That was my sound system,” Art recalls. “I remember one gig [where] Larry Williams put a hole through a paper cup, made [it] like a megaphone, and sang through the paper cup. It got over, you know. When I first played theaters in 1957, that's when I started seeing P.A. systems, and they weren't that great — weren't nowhere near the stuff they have now.”

At 63, Art still lives on Valence Street in New Orleans, across from the original family home. He tells a story about the early days: “In the Rosenwald Gymnasium's baseball field, there was a flatbed truck and they did a talent show. I asked them to let me and my buddies go on.” His buddies, however, let him down. “My buddies kind of froze up. They didn't want to go on, so I went on with a piano. It was a song called ‘Is It a Dream,’ an old doo-wop song,” Art remembers. “I sang that and won the talent show.” Art was hooked, and started hanging out in barrooms, hearing the New Orleans boogie close-up.

Art loves to reminisce about his early gigging days — like the time the Hawketts came to his house to hire him. “The piano player left, so they came and asked me — really they came and asked my mother and father — if I could do it,” he says. “From then on it was history.” Art toured constantly; he became familiar with every house piano on the chitlin circuit. “You were lucky if you got a grand piano that was in tune,” he says. “Once in a while you'd run into a piano that was tuned two steps down or two steps up. You had to transpose what you were playing so the horns could play with them. You just used whatever you had, made it work.”

MR. RUMBA, MEET MR. BLUES

The Neville Brothers are highly visible purveyors of the New Orleans sound, but what actually defines the genre? “I don't even know how to put that; there's guys all over the world that try to sound like New Orleans,” Art says. The city has a deep history of blending influences, according to Charles. “A lot of sons of the slave masters got sent to France,” he says. “They studied at the conservatories and came back, and for a while, there were two separate New Orleans sounds: the cultured European sound, mostly Creole — they were light-skinned cats, hired to play for the quadroon balls and for the cotillions, those events. The African cats uptown played for the black people. After slavery, those cats got together, and it was a sound that combined the European tone system and the African tone system with the African and Caribbean rhythms.”

The first stirrings of jazz occurred during that period. By the late 1800s, New Orleans had over a hundred brass bands. The quintessential second-line rhythm became a fixture of the sound, so named because of the city's funeral parades. Bands would march to the cemetery with the coffin, playing sad, lonesome tunes, but on the way back, they'd fire up the parade music, attracting passersby who would dance in a second line behind the band.

As Charles notes, another factor in the city's musical development was that before Castro controlled Cuba, New Orleans and Havana were sister cities. Musicians from both places traded ideas; they created a new sound that melded the jumpy Latin bass lines of the rumba with blues, gospel, and Cajun licks. Professor Longhair, patron saint of New Orleans-style pianists, personifies that melting-pot sound for Art, who says, “I got a chance to hang with him for a long while before he died. He is one of the body-and-souls of New Orleans music.”

A lot of other great players inspired Art in his youth: “Fess [Professor Longhair] got a chance to record more records than these other guys did, but there was so many great piano players. A lot of places had pianos and there was always a guy playing. Nobody knew who they were; they didn't know they were great; they were just playing in a bar or in a house.”

Soon enough, white musicians caught on to the New Orleans sound and started making hits. Dr. John was one of the most visible. “He was in the right place at the right time and he got some good stuff,” says Art. “The Meters played on a bunch of his albums, ‘Right Place Wrong Time’ — that's me and Leo Nocentelli, George Porter, and Zigaboo [the original Meters] on there.” Art worked many sessions in those days, often uncredited, and grouses good-naturedly about the lack of recognition. “We did things with Robert Palmer, the album Sneakin' Sally Through the Alley. I saw an article saying nobody knows for sure who was playing keyboards, if it was Robert or me. It was me! I know it was me. We didn't get any credit on that at all, but after a while people started figuring out, ‘Wait a minute, this stuff sounds familiar.’”

BLAZING TRAILS

Charles, now 62, was 15 when he lit out for the road, a move that led to stints with B. B. King, Ray Charles, James Brown, and others. “I would stay with this or that band, then hang out in a town, let the band leave, and stay somewhere,” he says. “Maybe where I'd met a girl I liked or I liked the club and would play in the house band, not have to ride in the back of that damn station wagon.” Charles has always been the wanderer of the family, spending years in Oregon, on the East Coast, and abroad.

It used to be a lot harder in some parts of his own country, he says. During the brothers' early years as performers, Jim Crow laws still ruled the South. Charles recalls that African-American musicians were often not allowed to stay in hotels near the gig. “Sometimes someone would put us up in their house, or we'd stay with the guy who owned the place we were playing. Sometimes we slept in the club we were going to play in, and sometimes we slept in the car,” he says.

Ironically, Charles notes, it was segregation that frequently brought great musicians together. “In most big cities in the South there was at least one black nightclub that had a hotel attached, where any of the musicians coming through town would stay,” he says. “In New Orleans the main one was the Dew Drop Inn. In Memphis it was Sunbeam's Hotel. I was in the house band and stayed in the hotel. When Etta James, Roscoe Gordon, or Louis Jordan came in town, their bands stayed at that hotel, and when the jam session happened at night, all of the cats who were in town were there. It was the place to be.”

Charles wishes today's black musicians would reflect on the struggle their predecessors faced in the Jim Crow days. Back then, black bands played a huge role in the invention of rock 'n' roll, yet had to watch as white bands got the acclaim. Does he think today's young black players know of the difficulties? “No, I don't think so, and it does matter,” he says. “What makes the music what it is? Life experiences, the pressures we worked under, the things we had to overcome to do it.” For black musicians, it's an important message. Says Charles: “What you are able to do now, you would not be able to do were it not for the pioneers, like Satchmo [Louis Armstrong] and all the other guys who performed under the worst conditions of racism and nonacceptance by mainstream America.”

THESE DAYS

Although he likes to reflect on times in the past, Art is also firmly plugged into the modern musical reality. He's currently composing and recording a solo album at his computer-based home studio, which is known as the Treehouse. Art is an Internet aficionado to boot and has an opinion on the its effect on the music business — take Napster, for instance. “If they're going to pay for it, I don't see anything wrong,” Art says. “But if it's going to make it where anybody can download it for free if they don't have to send in royalties, then I don't like it. Why keep perpetuating something that's been going on for years, where the artist gets ripped off, makes no money off his music?” Making a living playing music is hard enough already. “I've made most of my money by playing gigs, traveling up and down the road, flying to this and that country,” he says. “I can't say I've made money on royalties — maybe some, but very little. The one song I made royalties on was ‘Cissy Strut’ with the Meters.”

Poppa Funk has a message for upcoming musicians: “Stay in school. You're going to need an education if you expect to get paid. You gotta know how to get paid.” A knowledge of business is essential, he adds. “If you don't understand what a contract means — there's a lot of little tricks in them — you'll wind up with someone else owning all of your material; you will own none of it. If you want to be a musician, study the music business. It's 1 percent music. The rest is business, and the business is not that nice.”

THE LONG VIEW

The Neville Brothers have a loose plan to record a new record this year but no target date, and that suits them just fine. The road work will continue, however, including a summer tour with Ziggy Marley.

Meanwhile, Aaron's solo career keeps thriving; he's preparing to release a follow-up to last year's sacred music album, Devotion (Tell It Records/EMI Gospel). Cyril is busy producing new bands, Art likes working on his house and digging in to his home studio, and Charles — heretofore known as the family wanderer — is finally thinking about slowing down to spend more time with his four-year-old child. Does he foresee leaving the road? “Yes, I'm not sure when, but yes, I'm thinking about that,” he says. For now, though, this family of gifted brothers continues to spread the good news about New Orleans music.

San Francisco bassist Ed Ivey (edivey@rocketmail.com) plays in jam band Faraway Brothers and recently produced the new release by Bay Area pop group the Beanweevils.

Shane Theriot A View from the Sideman

Neville Brothers guitarist Shane Theriot was a school kid when he first heard the Neville sound. “I heard ‘Mardi Gras Mambo’ in the school bus; everybody had the Meters records,” he says. Theriot, who shuttles between New Orleans and Nashville, has been playing lead with the Neville Brothers for close to five years, getting the job on a referral from a departing guitarist. “I went down and did a little mini-audition in New Orleans. I already knew most of the stuff,” he says. Five days later Theriot was in New York doing the David Letterman show with the Neville Brothers. His first few shows were a baptism by fire, he remembers: “They called tunes that weren't even on the list. There was this long medley of a bunch of different songs where I didn't know some. That was how I learned it. The band doesn't rehearse much, so we learn in sound checks or sometimes right onstage.”

For Theriot, playing with the Nevilles is an ongoing musicology course. “A lot of their music isn't very harmonically complicated at all, it's all feel — traditional New Orleans rhythm,” he says. “But you can't really fake it. With Art Neville, there's a certain way he wants to hear Fats Domino. He's really picky about the guitar parts. The average club guy can come in and play it, but sometimes it sounds too right. There's a way to put a certain amount of sloppy finesse into it that makes it more convincing.”

Theriot put out a solo record last year featuring bassist Victor Wooten; Art Neville, Willie Green, and Michael Goods also played on the album. Theriot's currently working on his second release, with New Orleans drummer Johnny Vidacovich. Touring with the Nevilles means he gets to jam with other legends, too. “It's amazing the people they know,” he says. “Recently Steve Cropper was onstage playing cowbell, and Billy Gibbons was sitting on the side of the stage watching. And I'm remembering my uncle giving me ZZ Top's Fandango record; I just wore that out. When we toured with Little Feat, I got to jam with them maybe ten times.”

Neville Gear

The Neville Brothers' equipment is a blend of modern high-tech tools and classic vintage gear. Whether it's a “fly date” where they use rental equipment or a summer festival tour where the band can truck their own gear, production manager Kenny Nestor works more than 60 hours a week — year-round — to keep the Nevilles and their side projects running smoothly.

“We have 38 channels to front of house and split to the monitors,” says Nestor. “There are 15 drum mics, 6 channels of keyboards, 7 vocal mics, and 4 percussion mics.” Nestor and the rest of the crew typically start rigging a stage at midday for an evening show, working straight through the sound check and the gear strike.

The Neville Brothers endorse Shure mics — Aaron sings through a Shure SM87, a supercardioid condenser wireless microphone, and brothers Art and Cyril use wired SM87s. Backup singer Earl Smith and bassist David Johnson also use SM87s, but Charles Neville prefers a standard Shure SM58 for his vocals. His saxophones are fitted with a Shure SM98 running into a Shure wireless belt-pack transmitter.

Aaron uses Future Sonics stereo wireless in-ear monitors, which he mixes himself with a Mackie 1202 mixer on a stand near his stage position. “He's got stereo ears and can turn up his vocal in each ear, reverb return, and a band mix,” says Nestor. “When it gets really subtle, he pumps up the reverb and his vocal mix so he can sing soft. When it's a real kick-up song, he backs it down to go with the volume on the stage.” Charles and backup singer Smith use Shure PSM 600 wireless in-ear monitors mixed by Nestor from the mixing board.

Art's rig spans generations of music technology, starting with his Hammond B-3 organ and Leslie cabinet. On truck dates, Art uses his highly customized chopped B-3, but the rental organs he uses on fly dates can be a crapshoot. “We have a keyboard tech; his main job is the B-3,” Nestor says. “Art Neville is a B-3 player extraordinaire; he uses every aspect, so if even just 2 percent isn't working — normal for rental gear — he'll notice right off. There's been times when we've made them bring another one.” Art also uses a Yamaha SY-77 keyboard and a Korg M1. Second keyboardist Michael Goods plays Roland XP-30 and XP-80 keyboards.

Charles has a diverse collection of saxophones, including instruments by Selmer, Yanagisawa, and Yamaha. He's currently stoked on a tenor that he's evaluating for a relatively unknown Taiwanese company called Unison. “It's comparable,” he says. “I've been recording with the Selmer, the Unison, and the Yamaha. Comparing the sound and letting other people hear them, no one can tell the difference.” In-ear monitors are a blessing for Charles. “With wedge monitors, the frequencies of the guitar and bass seem to swallow up the saxophone, but with the in-ear monitors, I have my horn, voices, and a little of the keyboards, all right there,” he says.

Cyril — who endorses LP percussion — uses two timbales, three congas, bongos, wind chimes, and an assortment of shakers and bells. Between Cyril's drums and Willie Green's 15-piece Remo set, drum tech Jason Portera stays busy. “Willie Green is a monster. He hits extremely hard. I have to change heads all the time; he breaks cymbals and sticks by the dozen,” Portera says. Green uses Zildjian cymbals and his own Vader signature sticks.

Willie Green's wired Shure headphone monitor system helps overcome hearing loss suffered in an onstage mishap, Nestor says. “Willie is deaf in one ear because a guy didn't have a handle on the monitors at a show one time, and he ruptured an eardrum. Monitor engineers have to take things very seriously — systems today can re-create the sound pressure of a jet engine. That's why Willie's wearing headphones.” Green also uses a Guitammer ButtKicker shaker (thumper), mounted to his drum throne. “It's a piston that you drive with an amp,” says Nestor. “It uses psychoacoustics, makes you feel like there's a big old speaker blowing on you.”

Bassist David Johnson carries a number of basses on tour, including a Peavey Cirrus 5-string, a Peavey Millennium 5-string, and a Fender 5-string Jazz Bass. His amp rig consists of an Eden Highwayman Head with an Eden 410XLT cabinet. On fly dates when he must use rental gear and can't get an Eden, he'll use a Gallien-Krueger RB800 head with a Peavey 410 TVX cabinet.

Guitarist Shane Theriot plays a semihollowbody Hamer Artist, a Yamaha Pacifica, and a Telecaster-shaped custom-built instrument from Melancon Guitars. His preferred amp rig is a 1966 Fender Bassman head powering a Mesa Boogie 2×12 cabinet. “It's loaded with a Celestion and JBL speakers. We mic both and use the Celestion for leads and the JBL for the clean stuff,” says Theriot. Sometimes he adds a 1966 Fender Twin Reverb with an A/B box to maximize his clean tone. On fly dates he will often use a Marshall JCM 800 amp with a 4×12 Marshall cabinet. Theriot uses an effects board built by Dave Friedman at Rack Systems in L.A., featuring a Dunlop wah-wah. “I've had that pedal since sixth grade. It's heavily modified and does everything from a Vox [wah] to an envelope filter,” he says. Other effects include an Ibanez Tube Screamer, a Sans Amp XXL pedal, a Boss CE-1 chorus, a Boss CS-3 compressor, and two delay pedals: a Boss DD-5 digital model and an old Ibanez analog delay.

Nestor says although high-tech tools like in-ear monitors and wireless mics usually simplify things, occasionally they have the opposite effect: “Recently at a casino show, they gave me a list of frequencies to lock out so we wouldn't get any interference on our wireless mics [from casino staff radios]. Sure enough, about the first song there's something squawking over every channel. It kept happening and there wasn't anything we could do.”

onstage•hotlinks

www.nevillebrothers.com
The Nevilles' Sony-maintained Web site.

www.nevillebrotherstickets.com
Tour dates and ticket info.

www.nevilles.com
The Nevilles' massive official band site, featuring MP3s, bios, message boards, and more.