The illness and then the passing of Charles Neville in April 2018 affected me a lot. I supppose that Charles’ music, his history and images, his LUMINESCENCE, reached many that way. On April 28, 2018—two days after Charles left his body—I wrote the poem that Alex and Hamid and I recorded at the very close of our session in Rick G. Nelson’s Marigny Studio on June 6, 2018.
An earlier posting about Charles is over on the WeAreRevolutions website. It includes photos from his life with wife Kristin in western Massachusetts and links to tributes.
(Just keep scrolling down through the ‘Spiritual As Music’ Hours on the wearerev website and you’ll come to ‘Charles’.) https://donpaulwearerev.com/charles
Here is the poem essentially as Hamid, Alex and I recorded it on June 6, 2018. Over the past two weeks I’ve remastered our GALLOP Trio Tracks of that evening. Now I can hear a great deal more of what the Drummer and Guitarist put into this tribute.
A reworked poem about Charles is part of my 2026 THANKS and PRAISES / Poems, Portraits and Songs / Book One. You may see how my appreciation for him, the Neville Brothers and their New Orleans, has grown.
