Tuesday January 4, 2022 “Can’t Stop the Rain” Neal Francis
Born in Oak Brook, IL and playing piano since age four, Neal Francis O’Hara had an apprenticeship with a variety of touring bands covering jazz, blues and progressive rock. He unfortunately got caught up in struggles with addiction and as a result was dismissed from his three year gig with the band The Heard.
Clean and sober he released a 2019 album Changes and then was caught like the rest of us by the covid sequestration so he took up in a supposedly haunted Chicago church where he lived while creating his follow up solo album In Plain Sight released this year.
“I’m owning up to all my problems within my relationships and my sobriety,” Francis said. “So much of it is about coming to the understanding that I continue to suffer because of those problems. It’s about acknowledging that and putting it out in the open in order to mitigate the suffering and try to work on it, instead of trying to hide everything.”
Francis says that of the many artists that have inspired him, Stevie Wonder tops his list and if he had only one album to listen on that mythical desert island it would be Innervisions.
Stay safe and well…and here in the norheast we need someone to stop the rain which seems to have taken up a long term residency here.