Last month, Chicago's Neal Francis released "," his third record in five years. Francis is an artist who almost exclusively lives on the road. Between 2021 and 2024 he played more than 400 shows. His new record is an irresistible combination of blues, funk, and disco that has the pianist and songwriter sounding more confident and polished than ever.
Francis is touring "Return To Zero" now and caught up with 瓜神app music reporter Brian Burns to talk about the record before his show at Lincoln Theatre in Raleigh on April 1.
This is an excerpt of an edited transcript of that conversation. You can hear the full interview by clicking the LISTEN button at the top of this post.
I know you're a Chicago native. How does the music of that city influence you as an artist?
I grew up playing all different types of styles in blues clubs in my teens and twenties as a side man. We played anything from Chicago blues, like Otis Rush to funk, like Syl Johnson.
When I think of Chicago I think of house music. I know that's not your sound, but has that scene influenced you?
Yeah, totally. My fianc茅 and I have many times gone to Smart Bar on Sunday nights to see Derrick Carter DJ and a bunch of others. I love that type of music.
The opening track, "Need You Again" is one of the most infectious songs I've heard in a while. Tell us a little bit about that one.
I was beating my head against the wall in the studio between tours last year. It was actually a night after being out seeing Derrick Carter spin, so a late night/early morning kind of thing. I think between asleep and awake, I just started getting an idea for that groove, and laid that down first, and then the lyrics came to me. So that was one of the easiest songs to write on the record, in terms of it presenting itself in full form, in pretty short order.
One of my favorites on the record has you teaming up with Say She She. Tell us about "Broken Glass."
Yeah, that one I wrote with Michael Shuman, bass player for Queens Of The Stone Age. We kind of had a songwriting session set up by our publisher. I'd never met him before and sometimes those go great. Sometimes they go not so great. Michael and I really got to where we were able to get vulnerable with each other quickly. And we had a jam session in his basement where he was on drums and I was on bass and we came up with that groove. And then a couple hours later, we had that whole song written and complete, which is, I gotta say, for me, pretty rare.
