Joe Henry produced it in just five days at his Garfield House studio in South Pasadena, California. Neville, evacuated to Nashville after hometown New Orleans sank, didn’t write any of the 12 tunes here. Instead he resurrected them under tutelage of Henry with pianists Allen Toussaint and Patrick Warren, upright bassist David Piltch, drummer Jay Bellerose, guitarist Chris Bruce and dobro ace Greg Leisz.
Neville is also indebted to his new disc – not just for therapy – but fitness. At his new home in New York, he starts most mornings in the small gym listening to I Know I’ve Been Changed while on an elliptical machine. “It’s 47 minutes of music, so I know I’ve done 47 minutes of cardio,” the singer jokes. “I don’t think about it, because the music’s got me going.”
It’s also an uplifting paean to survival from entree Stand By Me – not the late Sam Cooke hit – but an obscure prayer. It ends with Odetta’s Meetin’ At The Building, and Cooke classic I’m So Glad (Trouble Don’t Last) and spiritual There’s A God Somewhere.Neville performs country-soul nuptials with his cut of Cooke tune I Am A Pilgrim. He also chose a song popularised by the Staple Singers as the title-track for an album whose crumbling church CD slick shot was taken by wife Sarah Friedman near Thibodaux.
Most noticeably, Neville is true to the spirit of gospel – with joyous themes of deliverance, redemption, salvation and hope. A rollicking Don’t Let Him (the Devil) Ride segues into uplifting You’ve Got To Move and balladic hymn Oh Freedom – with a quartet driving the studio choir. “Before I’d be a slave/I’d be buried in my grave/and go home to my Lord/ and be free.” Equally inspired is the loping spiritual Tell Me What Kind Of Man Jesus Is and sibling song I Want To Live So God Can Use Me.
It’s no surprise the Toussaint piano often drives this train – he produced Neville’s first session just 50 years ago when he cut the pianist’s Over You and is own tune Every Day.
It may be trite to say Neville is the master of all roots genres – but here he proves once again there’s nothing false about his falsetto.
Best Track: Tell Me What Kind of Man Jesus Is.
If You Dig These, You’ll Dig This: Nothing’s ImpossibleSOLOMON BURKE
In A Word: Neville finds solace in the arms of a good producer and woman.
