Neal Francis: Need You Again
Photo: Jack Karnatz
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Neal Francis has always dreamt of recording an album like Return to Zero, a sprawling choose-your-own-adventure statement that feels like it could blossom into any style, at any second. The project synthesizes all of the music swimming through his brain—the beloved funk and New Orleans R&B that dominated his 2019 debut, Changes, the psych-soul and classic-rock flavors of his follow-up, 2021’s In Plain Sight, plus an arsenal of new sounds, including synth-slathered disco and heavy rock and orchestral art-pop.
But this is the first time he’s felt confident enough to effectively “communicate” these ambitious ideas. “I feel like there’s been a lot of personal things in the way,” he says, pointing to his decision several years ago to ditch destructive habits and get sober.
“Basically, I’ve held on to this toxic idea of what a rock-and-roll career is supposed to be like for the past 20 years of my life. I cringe at saying this now because I’m not one of those guys who has seen the mountaintop, but I desperately wanted to be that sort of figure. I wrote my junior thesis on Jim Morrison. And as my spiritual path blossomed, I knew that was a false path. But I continued to hold on to that, even if it was subconscious. I had these material trappings of success as my idols and my goals, and it was getting in the way of the process of making the best music I could create, which is the most fulfilling and sustainable high I know of.”
It’s been a winding road to that Zen like state. Francis, raised in the Chicago suburbs, began his touring career straight out of high school, notably playing keys in the backing band of blues singer Larry “Mud” Morganfield, son of Muddy Waters. Then, in 2012, he linked up with instrumental funk outfit The Heard, but his addictions intervened, and he was kicked out a few years later. Getting clean f lipped a switch of creativity in his brain, and he started a new chapter as a solo artist with Changes and In Plain Sight—the latter recorded, following a head-spinning breakup, in a makeshift studio at a now defunct Chicago church, where he briefly lived in the parsonage and worked as a music minister. Even if he never reached the “mountaintop” of rock stardom, he still did pretty well for himself—playing major festivals (Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza), headlining around the world, touring with giants like My Morning Jacket and Wilco.
Which brings us to Return to Zero, which seems to distill all of these influences and all of this life experience into a sonic collage that’s thrillingly tough to pigeonhole. “I always had an affinity for classic-rock growing up, among other styles—too many to name,” he reflects. “But classic-rock was this monolithic influence, along with funk and soul and dance music. There are things I’m passionate about—not like overtly politically ideas but things I’ve been interested in that I want to imbue my music with. I also get off on that super heavy groove stuff, and I feel like the best bands of the golden age, if you will, were Sly & the Family Stone, Funkadelic, Jimi Hendrix— bands that straddled the line somewhere between funk and rock.”
But Francis’ taste has been expanding over the last decade-plus, particularly as he’s delved further into house music. In making his latest LP, he wanted to push himself further into a “synthesis,” asking: “How do I put everything I like into this stew?”
“I feel like Return to Zero is a bridge to something where I’m even more adept at [blending] those styles and infusing more of an ethos into my work,” he says. “I was really in the throes of some sort of personal shift in consciousness as I made this record, so it was pretty difficult for me to make, and I’m really grateful for the people around me.”
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Indeed, an expanded cast of collaborators was crucial in helping Francis take that extra step. He recruited hypnotic backing vocals from the Brooklyn psych-soul trio She She She, transcription assists from composer and close friend Dominic Frigo (who helped Francis with his lush string arrangements) and a number of invigorating co-writers, including Elliot Bergman (Wild Belle) and Michael Shuman (Queens of the Stone Age bassist)—the latter of whom injected some swaggering heavy-funk juice into “Broken Glass,” a centerpiece banger that builds from a stark groove into a trippy synth solo and a chorus of backing vocals that nod to Heart’s “Magic Man.”
“I’ve always been a fan of Queens— talk about super heavy, groovy shit,” Francis says. “It was a totally cold meeting. I just went to his house, and within 30 minutes, we were jamming. I was playing bass, and he was playing drums. I was a little shy to be playing bass in front of him, but we started messing around with that riff and laid it down. A lot of times with these ‘play dates,’ you don’t finish something on the f irst day at all. We got a whole song out, and part of it was that he held me to it. I’d really love to collaborate with him again.”
Album opener “Need You Again” lands somewhere between ‘90s dance-rock and ‘70s funk, filled with cushy synth contrails and sassy backing vocals and a pulsating groove inspired by a DJ set from Chicago house icon Derrick Carter. The song was “shelved for a while” and nearly didn’t make the cut, as Francis got struck with a case of “demo-itis” and thought the track “lacked something.” Realizing he “needed a ringer,” he first reached out to Fender Strat phenom, and all-around “sweet guy,” Cory Wong, but the Vulfpeck guitarist wasn’t able to meet the deadline. Instead, Francis hit up another heavy-hitter—Soulive guitarist Eric Krasno.
“I was like, ‘Yo, dude, I need you to help this groove along.’ He was so gracious and did exactly what I asked him to do,” he says. “I had something very specific I was asking him to do, and I know Eric is capable of so much. It was really fun talking to him too because we nerded out about The Headhunters and Wah Wah Watson. He actually told a story in which he was playing with an iteration of The Headhunters. He’s just a great guy. We’ve interacted a few times on the road, but I’d love to go out and hang with him.”
Another key contributor was co-producer Sergio Rios, who first collaborated with Francis during sessions for The Heard’s self-titled 2015 debut.
“A long-running history of Chicago musicians put together that band, so it was a pretty tight-knit crew,” Rios says. “Really excellent dudes. We hit it off mainly just having a lot of shared passion for all things New Orleans—The Meters and Allen Toussaint and Dr. John. That kind of sparked out connection, and there was an instant bond. I consider him my brother. A few years later, after The Heard had disbanded and Neal had been working on his songwriting and singing, he approached me about really gunning for that Allen Toussaint/New Orleans thing. That first album, Changes, was a lot of fun and just an amazing batch of [ideas]. It just developed from there, watching this dude’s genius blossom to untethered heights. It’s kind of incredible.”
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For Return To Zero, Rios says he took his usual “co-pilot” seat and just tried to facilitate in any way he could. “He definitely approached me with some pretty realized demos, very fleshed-out songs,” Rios says, detailing their work at his LA studio, Killion Sound. “The band is pretty much at the peak of their tightness. The mileage has been put in, and they’ve been road-dogging. That’s how a band gets great. I’m a supporter, a cheerleader. I just help Neal realize his vision and do my best to get some great tones and get the setting so that the fellas feel comfortable. With Neal, it’s really all there in his head.”
And Francis says that vision, when he’s “in a really good place,” often operates on musical what-if’s—pondering a collision between artists or ideas that you probably wouldn’t expect. (In the album’s press materials, he talks about conjuring Thin Lizzy on a disco kick.) That kind of mash up sensibility runs throughout Return to Zero. “Back It Up” sounds like Jamiroquai collaborating with Tame Impala; “What’s Left of Me” pairs the piano swagger of vintage Elton John with the snappiness of a ‘70s sitcom theme and the symphonic-synth grandiosity of Electric Light Orchestra.
“The ELO thing is really dear to me because my dad had all these cassettes that he ripped from our records, and that’s dating me for sure, but he had an ELO mix,” Francis says. “It was a greatest hits or anthology or something. I was always requesting that one on car trips because it just has everything. I love classical music, and I love early rock-and-roll. More and more, I realize that the ‘70s guys I love were trying to harken back to [an earlier] iteration of rock-and-roll. Their version of going back to truth or whatever was only going back like 15 years prior—always having that as this really pleasurable and warm memory. That was about really just trying to pull out all the stops. I’d love to experiment even further with the Jeff Lynne-arrangement style. I’m trying to write for strings more, and for that particular piece, I actually wrote it all out. I learned how to read music in the past few years, and I actually wrote out my parts on the synthesizer so I could get better arrangements. I’m excited to be breaking into that area.”
Ultimately, Francis says, these songs are like “vignettes,” briefly touching on particular styles before switching gears. “I’d love to do a record that expands on each of these directions,” he says. “It’s like the table of contents—select any one of these songs and hear nine more like it.”
Rios says it’s “funny to hear” Francis use that description—mostly because the album hangs together so well, feeling like the product of one human being’s imagination. Still, he thinks that writing concept is fascinating. “[The album] spans so much influence—whether it’s a straight disco thing or a more Peter Townshend songwriter-based thing,” he says. “Even with all these different avenues or directions, what I love about it is that there’s such a strong thread. He’s able to dig into his influences—a lot of ‘70s singer-songwriters and productions and bands. There’s always a different spotlight, and it’s amazing how he absorbs and interprets all these elements and creates an amalgamation, but there’s so much personality in there. Even his mastery of synths, how that’s developed and grown, is kind of mind-boggling.”
Whatever adventure he chooses next, the key for Francis is that he himself keeps exploring. And as AI continues to encroach on music creation, the act of going through that struggle—of brainstorming strange grooves, of finding the right player to elevate a song—feels even more vital and powerful.
“There’s this concept in philosophy that Kant and Schopenhauer and others talked about—art being a great redeemer of life’s suffering,” he says. “I think the reason for that is that so much suffering goes into the creation of art, and that’s relatable. I don’t want to sound like a downer because I think this is a beautiful aspect of life, but, to quote the Buddha, life is suffering. Art creation is—as much as I love being an artist— often very painful. That’s something that disconnects me from computer-generated art. Using computers to make art is another thing, but I don’t have the connection to an AI-generated image, as opposed to a painting, despite how beautiful it may be. It just lacks something. Maybe that will shift. Maybe I’m naive. I don’t even know if I have any hopes or vision of the future attached to it. There have been those nights where I lie awake thinking about the future of what I do and the security of what I do, and I’ve grown more and more to adopt this mentality of, ‘None of that matters.’ I need to just keep creating. That’s what I do. That’s my path to redemption.
“I was just talking to [Khruangbin bassist] Laura Lee about this,” he continues. “Her performing at the Grammys with Khraungbin was like, ‘Hey, we’re a fucking band. We’re the only band at the Grammys.’ I hope that, if my music reaches a broader group of people, it’s like, ‘You can do this. You don’t have to give a shit about technological trends or the dalliances of cultural trends—it’s just, ‘This is what makes me happy, so I do it.’”
