<\/p>\n
By the time Ivan Neville rolls into Sebastopol on Dec. 7, then glides over the hill into Mill Valley on Dec. 8, the man will have effectively turned the Bay Area into an annex of New Orleans.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Not that he\u2019d put it that way\u2014Neville is far too grounded for grandstanding\u2014but spend five minutes on the phone with him, and it becomes clear: He carries The Big Easy in his bones.<\/p>\n
Neville is hitting HopMonk Sebastopol first, appearing with Dragon Smoke, before joining an all-star lineup at Mill Valley\u2019s Sweetwater Music Hall for Music Heals International\u2019s \u201cNew Orleans Meets Haiti\u201d benefit, a fundraiser bringing music education to kids in Haiti, India and Venezuela. The Sweetwater show pairs Neville with Jackie Greene, Jay Lane, Paul Beaubrun, Dan \u201cLebo\u201d Lebowitz, Elliot Peck and others, plus a pop-up New Orleans dinner courtesy of the Brothers Rosenthal.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a lot of energy in two nights for anyone\u2014except, apparently, Ivan Neville.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only hard part is the traveling,\u201d he tells me with a laugh. \u201cThe work is the planes and vans and buses. Then you go play music for a couple hours\u2014that\u2019s the easy part.\u201d<\/p>\n
That ease is earned. Neville\u2019s r\u00e9sum\u00e9 is a syllabus in American music: generations of Neville bloodlines, ferocious funk with Dumpstaphunk and high-profile stints with everyone from Keith Richards to Bonnie Raitt. He\u2019s also just released Touch My Soul<\/em>, his first solo album in nearly 20 years\u2014a record that reveals a man who\u2019s lived long enough, and hard enough, to mean what he sings.<\/p>\n And what he sings, this time, is clarity.<\/p>\n \u201cI was experiencing life,\u201d he says. \u201cAccepting where you are, trying to make the best of what your day could be, enjoying the moments along the way.\u201d<\/p>\n Those moments bloom across the album\u2019s tracks\u2014the social plea of \u201cStand for Something,\u201d the buoyant uplift of \u201cDance Music Love\u201d and the Talking Heads cover, \u201cThis Must Be the Place,\u201d which lands like a long exhale. Neville\u2019s messages are unvarnished: Stay teachable; find purpose; act one\u2019s way into right thinking. He\u2019s reflective, the way people are after life has knocked a few metaphors into them.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I\u2019m thinking about myself too long, I start walking into negativity,\u201d he notes. \u201cIf I try to be of help, it puts me in a positive place.\u201d<\/p>\n That ethos threads into the Sweetwater benefit. Music Heals International has been working for more than a decade to bring music education\u2014and its corresponding resilience\u2014to young people in Haiti and beyond.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m always down for helping out as best I can,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m really glad to be part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n As for his song, \u201cGreatest Place on Earth,\u201d which unabashedly crowns New Orleans as the global champion, I ask whether Sebastopol or Mill Valley might crack the top three, even temporarily.<\/p>\n He laughs. \u201cUp there in the Bay Area, doing those two days? Absolutely. The Bay Area will be the place to be\u2014and maybe the greatest place on Earth\u2014for that time.\u201d<\/p>\n Ivan Neville performs at 4pm, Sunday, Dec. 7, at HopMonk Tavern, 230 Petaluma Ave., Sebastopol (for tix and prices, visit hopmonk.com<\/a>), and as part of the Music Heals International annual benefit concert at 7pm, Monday, Dec. 8, at Sweetwater Music Hall, 19 Corte Madera Ave., Mill Valley (for tix and prices, visit sweetwatermusichall.org<\/a>).<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source pacificsun.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By the time Ivan Neville rolls into Sebastopol on Dec. 7, then glides over the hill into Mill Valley on Dec. 8, the man will have effectively turned the Bay Area into an annex of New Orleans.\u00a0 Not that he\u2019d put it that way\u2014Neville is far too grounded for grandstanding\u2014but spend five minutes on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2184826,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[421275,342519,421276],"class_list":["post-2184825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-hopmonk","tag-ivan-neville","tag-sweetwater-music-hall"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Healing-Music-Ivan-Neville-Brings-New-Orleans-to-the-North.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2184825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2184825"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2184825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2184827,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2184825\/revisions\/2184827"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2184826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2184825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2184825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2184825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}