Matt’s Hat Interview – Dumpstaphunk
On Saturday, November 5th, I was honored to sit down and have a conversation with Ivan and Ian Neville of Dumpstaphunk. Occasionally passing through were both Tony Hall and Nick Daniels III as well.
Dumpstaphunk is at the forefront of New Orleans music in general and funk in particular. Dumpstaphunk is Ivan Neville on vocals and keys, Ian Neville on Guitar, Tony Hall on bass and guitar, Nick Daniels III on bass and Alvin Ford, Jr., on drums.
They had just driven into town from New Orleans and were kind enough to provide a few minutes before their show for our interview. We met in a small room attached to the small amphitheater in a public park. It was your typical cinder-block park building room – kind of grubby and clearly only occasionally used for some public event.
Beginning the interview it was just Ivan and Ian Neville. As always, I tossed out a hat full of random questions for anyone to grab anytime they wanted. I also brought my list of my own questions as well.
Ian, upon sitting down and looking around our small meeting room: First thing we should ask is how many spiders you think are in this room?!
HAT QUESTION: What is your greatest challenge?
Ian: Sometimes the greatest challenge is just making it to the gig. The weather, the airlines, whatever trying to mess you up.
Ivan: Trying to make time for everything you want to do creatively while also being on the road with all the trials and problems that come with that. Trying to make time to make new music while also trying to survive and feed your family. Trying to come up with new stuff and keep it fresh. One other thing! To try… to… the challenge… trying to stay true to what you believe is what you want to be doing musically but at the same time you want to please the people who are coming to see you playing. Sometimes there’s a fine line between playing what you wanna play and pleasing the listening public. That’s a challenge.
MFN: So funny you say that, one of the questions in the hat is “Are you playing what you want to play or are you playing to get gigs?”
Ivan: Well, it’s both, it’s both. Sometimes you look at an audience or you think you might have an idea of who’s out there, and you know what you’ve got, and you know the songs you can play and that you like to play, but you say you know they might like such and such song. And we’re gonna put that in the set tonight. Which we did! I won’t tell you what it is. It’s something we threw in – we switched a few things around.
MFN: You have three studio albums – do you have plans for another or are you wanting to focus on live gigs?
Ivan: Yeah, we have another in the can right now. We are about to release a single very soon. Song that we play called “Justice.” It’s kind of a touchy subject – it’s inspired by all the racial injustice and stuff like police killing people and cops getting killed and all that. Then we have another 11 or 12 songs that we’ve developed as well, and we will be unveiling something pretty soon.
MFN: Is it difficult sharing members with other bands?
Ivan: We’re fortunate in that there are some people that we like to play with and that like to play with us as well. It’s not the ideal situation to have when you have to sub because this is not that kind of gig that, for example, any drummer can come along and pick up. We do manage to do it with a few friends. Some aspects of doing that are a little challenging, but they are also a little fresh sometimes. They can have a different feel. Like we had Nikki (Glaspie) playing with us last week, and it was cool. Then someone else is playing with us next week. So, you know, it’s a challenge, but you have to just emphasize the positive aspect of it.
MFN: So what can you say about George Landry?
Ivan: George Landry?!! Big Chief Jolly?! Wow. Well, he was my Great Uncle – my Grandmother’s brother.
MFN: What was the album he did…?
Ian: The Wild Tchoupitoulas
Ivan: Yep, The Wild Tchoupitoulas. That was… in my opinion that is THE best Neville Brothers record. When that was being made, I thought that would have been the ultimate band. I thought it was maybe going to be a band. It was The Meters as the rhythm section and the Neville Brothers. As a kid I thought that would be perfect and that’s what’s on that record along with Allen Toussaint producing and Uncle George Landry – Big Chief Jolly. To me that was the ultimate Neville Brothers collaboration.
MFN: Do you prefer studio work or live gigs?
Ivan: I like all of it. It’s a different vibe when you’re in the studio, because it’s just you and whatever atmosphere you help create in there, that you’re a part of. Live… it’s different… you’re playing for people. You’re playing with people in mind to some degree, but it’s just you and the universe and the energy hanging out.
Ian: It’s two entirely different things. Apples and oranges.
Ivan: Live you’re feeding off the people, and they are just as much a part of it as we are. Some people maybe don’t realize it, but they are just as much a part of it as we are.
MFN: The Jam Cruise sets you have done for years, are those more difficult or different from other gigs?
Ivan: The stage sets are much easier than the playing the piano sets. Stage sets, it’s a band, and everybody is playing. Piano sets, everybody is listening to just you.
Ian: Compare a regular gig like this tonight to a stage gig at Jam Cruise – Jam Cruise is way easier. I mean, you can walk from your room to the stage? Oh yeah, that’s great.
Ivan: The piano sets, though, are way more involved to me. It’s more close. Everyone is listening to you and catching you all vulnerable and shit.
MFN: Funk seems to be having a resurgence in the past couple years.Do you feel the same way?
Ian: Ever since we put out Dirty Word, I would say yeah. It’s like an accidental thing. The Lettuce crew are sneaking it back on to people. With people like Alvin playing with bands like Pretty Lights, it’s like a sneak attack where they are dragging people back over with them back to instrument-based live music.
MFN: There is such a close connection between blues, gospel, hip hop, rock and even disco with funk, but there is no Billboard Top Funk 100. Why do you think that is?
Ivan: There’s no funk genre. You go to buy a song on iTunes, there’s no funk genre.
MFN: So how is Dumpstaphunk listed then?
Ivan: I don’t know! Maybe under Rhythm and Blues or something like that. Back in the day it was Soul Music on the charts before.
Ian: Or soul.
Ivan: It’s been R&B.
Ian: Was James Brown categorized as R&B back in the day? Or Sly?
Ivan: It started to become… it was the Soul Charts. Or R&B or soul. It changed at some point. I don’t know when but it changed.
Ian: Parliament, James Brown and Sly along with The Meters obviously were the basis of all funk, but they all got lumped into R&B.
Ivan: Well they didn’t even know what to call it! Some people said rhythm and blues. You know what? It started from the same guys playing rock and roll, but if they were black it was called Rhythm and Blues. It was the same music Elvis and them was playing, but it wasn’t called Rock and Roll. There are many analogies and opinions about it, but those guys were playing the same music, but they would call it Rock and Roll, or they would call it Rhythm and Blues. It all comes from blues and gospel.
HAT QUESTION: How much do you find you have to focus on the legal/business side of music?
Ivan: Not enough probably!
Ian: As much as we have to but as little as possible.
HAT QUESTION: Do you have any good tour stories?
Ivan: What’s a good story with this band…
Ian: Back in the day when we didn’t realize we couldn’t afford a bus but we had a bus, we had a bus driver who was a gambling fiend. He won…
Ivan: He won more money!!
Ian: He won more money than we made, and he won more money than we paid him.
Ivan: It started in Atlantic City, and we had two days off, and he just kept winning in the casinos. He was a funny guy.
MFN: Do you have any secret shame music loves?
Ivan: I’ve got some, but I ain’t tellin’ you! Oh wait – Tracy Chapman. “Fast Car.” I like that!
Ian: You should do that on your next set
Ivan: I just might. I just might!
Ian: There’s a Panic At The Disco! song I like. Just one!
MFN: How do you walk the line between being an artist with the ability to reach a large number of people and wanting to get some social messages out there but not alienating them either?
Ivan: We don’t wanna preach, and we don’t wanna piss people off who maybe don’t feel the way we do about things, but that’s just the way it is. I mean, like right now we have an election, and a lot of people disagree about this or that. We just have to learn to agree to disagree with some people. We don’t want to alienate people with some of our social commentary. But we feel most of our stuff isn’t pointing fingers at anybody.
Ian: Any songs of ours that have a message aren’t a hard line kind of direction; it’s more of an awareness kind of thing. It’s not trying to direct a certain agenda; it’s just bringing about the idea that this is something to pay attention to.
Ivan: And if something hits you like ‘Damn they’re talking about me!’ well, too bad <laughs>
MFN: Do you have any favorite festivals or gigs you’ve done?
Ivan: With this band? My favorite gig we’ve ever played was Bonnaroo the first time we played there. Late night. That was one of my favorite gigs ever with this band. We were a new band, we didn’t have a whole lot of original material, and we picked the perfect songs to play! We were killing it with some of the stuff we played. We played some Sopranos’ stuff.
Ian: We had nothing to lose at that point.
Ivan: Yeah. We just picked songs to play that we thought we could really play well.
Ian: I think from the crowd perspective there weren’t any expectations on us.
Ivan: There were no expectations, and we crushed it.
MFN: I know you all do a lot of cover sets at Wanee and others…
Ian: Meters, Sly, Earth War and Power, James Brown, P-Funk, Zeppelin…
MFN: Do you like doing those?
Ivan: We would really rather play our own music, but we were solicited to do that. Then we really killed it, so they kept hiring us. Our P-Funk set was killer, and the Zeppelin set was killer. It was fun playing that music.
MFN: How do you feel about streaming?
Ian: You can’t fight it. You’ve got to figure out how to use it your advantage. You just need to resolve to the fact that your music is more advertised now.
At this point Nick Daniels walked in so they asked him to pick a question out of the hat.
HAT QUESTION: Would you rather only be able to whisper or only be able to shout?
Nick: I wanna go in between.
MFN: Just use a microphone!
Nick: I wanna be heard so I’ll go whisper but use a microphone!
HAT QUESTION: What are you most excited about right now?
Nick: This show right here. Kickin’ some ass and makin’ some people dance and knocking their socks off. Hittin’ ’em hard. I’m always excited about the gig. No matter how hard it takes to get there or what we have to go through, I’m always excited about playing.
As we were wrapping up, Ian suddenly remembered the good road stories question and told Nick to tell us about the time he saw Santa Claus bodyslam a little kid. This sounded good, so we pressed Nick for details.
Nick: We were playing a gig out in Joshua Tree, I think it was, and there was a guy dressed up as Santa. Full outfit with the pants, beard, everything. And these kids were just messing with him constantly. All day. Well, eventually I guess he’d had enough, and as one of the kids started messing with him again he just picked that kid up and bodyslammed him to the ground. Broke his nose and everything. Security grabbed him, and you could see he was drunk and just swaying back and forth. It wasn’t cool to do that to the kid, but they were messing with him all day so….
MFN: Thank you all very much for your time.