Neighbor is in the midst of a winter tour. I’m excited to see them at the Pickle Barrel in Killington, VT on Thursday, March 26th. I saw them for the first time last February, and they rip. Set 1 was good, but set 2 was off the charts amazing. Neighbor gave us all a bonus by adding Rob Compa on guitar. That was his first show, and he was great. Here we are a year later. I can’t imagine it being better, but guessing it will be. They have a few more shows on this tour, and this summer will be playing many festivals including StrangeCreek and moe.down.
Neighbor on occasion does something called the “High Five Gauntlet” where they recognize fans who are at their very first show. The crowd is parted like the red sea, with new fans in the middle, high fiving older fans. The show I was at was Compa’s first, so they did the “High Rob Gauntlet.” Compa went through the entire bar, high fiving everyone, It was wild.
If it is your first show, you might be part of that gauntlet. Even if not, all the band wants is for you to go with no expectations. James said, “All we ask is for you to immerse yourself in the music. We’re going to craft something for you, no matter where it is. We take a lot of time thinking about the set list, and how it’s going to be a musical ride for you.”
Neighbor is Richard James (vocals, keys) Rob Compa (guitar), Dan Kelly (bass) and Dean Johnston (drums). I had the pleasure of speaking with James to learn more about Neighbor. He and I last spoke in 2018 for an article on his other band Pink Talking Phish, who he tours with as well.
Neighbor has been around for 7 years. James started the band and said, “I called a couple buddies of mine and started the group. The first person I called was my next-door neighbor growing up, Lyle Brewer. Fantastic guitar player. After high school we never really played too much together. I figured no better time than now, when I was looking to start something fresh. He was down with it. We recently switched to Rob, but Lyle was the guy for years and we wrote a lot of music together. It was a wonderful experience getting to play, write, and travel with Lyle who’s a close friend, and next-door neighbor to me.”
They started with a residency in Boston, every Tuesday night in 2019 at Thunder Road. James said, “We grew it into something very fresh and original. The Neighbor community was amazing, and still is. The beginnings, the core of those fans that showed up every week, to this day are very important to the history of this band. They’re the ones who really helped this group blossom. They’re the reason for so many people across the country to discover this band. The home base in Boston that was created, is very important to this band.”
Having a residency to start your band with was very important to James, but also he encourages others to try it. He said, “Having a residency to develop your sound and core fan base, is such an important thing to a group. You can put something together and then go play clubs but nobody knows you, or has a deep connection with you. If you can get that residency and have a weekly thing, for the beginnings of a group that has ambition, and wants to tour, and do things regionally and nationally, I feel there’s no better way than a residency. I don’t know what Neighbor would’ve been had we just got together and went out and toured.”
We all know what happened a year later, during Covid, when the world stopped moving, and the music industry came to a crashing halt. This band was able to thrive during that time. James said, “There was this core group that was like a vein system in a human body. They were reaching out to others, across the country, during Covid. That was the opposite of most bands. Every band I know just shut down. That sucked. Nobody likes just sitting on their ass, wondering if this virus is going to wipe out the rest of the world.”
Neighbor’s residency was a good thing for everyone involved, James said, “Our residency was like a getaway for everybody. They could forget everything that was happening in the world, and on Tuesday nights it was a place for people to let their guard down and just do whatever they wanted. We created an atmosphere. It was so goofy and fun. Nobody ever knew what to expect. Sometimes for the first hour, we’d have a pizza party or an ice cream social and just get to know the fans, and people would talk to each other. Then we’d play for the next 2.5 hours straight. On Halloween we told everyone to dress up. A few hours before the show, we totally revamped the room into Christmas with a tree on stage, decorations, and presents. We played Christmas carols. Everyone was like what the f*ck? I feel it’s stuff like that that makes people excited about the unknown. If you’re just going in to play the same show, people know what to expect.”
During Covid, James wrote a lot. They didn’t play until it was safe again. They played some drive-in shows at Northlands in Swanzey, NH before it was the big Northlands Music Festival they have now. Things shut down when it was too cold to party outside. James said, “We couldn’t just stop.” That’s when James came up with a great idea for the band. He contacted the brothers who own Soundcheck Studios in Pembroke, MA. They had a big warehouse space and he wanted to bring back their Tuesday night residency. This was before Soundcheck Studios became a music venue. James added, “I asked them if we could use it on New Year’s Eve. My idea was to hire one videographer, one audio engineer, and one lighting director, and space them out in the room because there was still a lot of fear about Covid. I wanted to do live shows every Tuesday, keep it going and that’s when things started to really expand for the band. Every Tuesday we’d get in there, and throw a show. We’d debut songs, do new cover tunes, still do goofy fun stuff.”
One of those fun things was their livestream “Live from Planet Silver”. One week would be their show in Pembroke, and the other a zoom they called “Planet Silver”. James said, “It was kind of eerie, because it felt like you were on a different planet during Covid.” That would consist of them talking about the set the week before, doing fun skits for the fans to watch, Brewer would play a solo tune, James would talk about the meaning of lyrics to a song, or Johnston would break down a tune. James added, “It was an hour and a half. So we’d play a week, and then do a 90 min thing. We did this for 5 months straight until May 13th when things were finally starting to open up and you could do outdoor shows, so we did one outside at Soundcheck Studios. It sold out in minutes.
All this worked out well for the band. They were able to branch out to playing a festival in Pennsylvania. James said, “There was a lot of hype around the band. That whole “Live from Planet Silver” thing took us from being a local, regional act to now all those rabid Neighbor fans who saw us every Tuesday, they could reach out to their friends and family across the country, across the world and tell them to watch our streaming series. It expanded the band exponentially. Later we did the Peach Festival, and some of our fans flew an airplane over the festival with our set times, and not to miss it. That night we had 4,000 people in front of us. Then the band really started cranking.”
Neighbor is mostly an original band but loves to bring new covers in constantly. They cover many artists including The Beatles, David Grisman, Morphine, Kiss, Bela Fleck,Black Sabbath, and even Taylor Swift. James laughed after he mentioned her. They were in Cincinnati at the J Brady Music Center opening for Greensky Bluegrass, and Swift was across the street at Paycor Stadium. James said, “It was bedlam. The streets were packed, 100 people deep, and that’s outside the stadium, inside was like 60,000 people. The last song of our set, before Greensky, we broke into “Blank Space.”
There’s a site to check out www.neighbortunes.net, which was created by the fans. It has everything they’ve ever done. It has every show, every song, the lengths of every song. You can look at statistics of how long it’s been in between the same song played. It’s a really cool site. The band’s website is www.neighbortunes.com, and that will take you to all their social media sites. They just released a live recording from their show at Levon Helm’s barn in Woodstock, NY. It’s a special performance they’re very proud of.
I’ve seen Neighbor, and looking forward to this show but I really want to see their side project Neighbor 9, which is the full band, plus Matt Wayne (saxophone), James Cronin (trumpet), Rob Krahn (trombone), with Renee DuPuis and Joanne Cassidy as backup vocalists. It has a New Orleans feel to it. James said, “That’s a really fun show. We’ve done some really funky stuff with the Neighbor 9. It’s a huge sound and it’s really exciting to hear our songs in a new light.” Besides the 9, they also on occasion will do an acoustic show.
The band just recently announced a return to Soundcheck Studios, which will be their first time there in 4 years. They’ve graduated from that small venue (550) to the Paradise and Wilbur Theatre in Boston, which are much larger. They’ll be there two nights, with one being with the Neighbor 9. James said, “We wanted to do it for our hometown fans. We’re very excited about it.”
Neighbor is a band you definitely want to check out if they play near you. James said, “I love the way Neighbor has grown because we have all that stuff we’ve done in the past with Lyle, and now have this whole new energy with Rob. There’s a lot we can pull from every night. It’s exciting.”
James’ approach to every show is the same, He said, “Not everyone who is coming out to see the show is having the same day. Somebody may have just got a promotion but somebody may have lost their job, somebody might be dealing with some heavy sht. You have to figure out a way to reach these people in a musical sense, and make them feel things. Make it exciting and make them forget all that other sht they have to deal with in the real world. It doesn’t mean we’re going to play all high energy rock and funk, or play all ballads but I think the lyrics and music come first and second and the jamming is tertiary to everything. I think we make a true fan when they can connect with the music and lyrics. Every night is a chance for us to do something special for someone.”
TOUR DATES
Mar 26 Pickle Barrel, Killington VT
Mar 27 Liquid State Brewing, Ithaca NY
Mar 28 Putnam Place, Saratoga Springs NY
May 8-9 Soundcheck Studios, Pembroke MA
May 22-25 StrangeCreek Campout, Greenfield MA
Jun 20 Zootown Music Festival, Missoula MT
Jul 16-18 Moe.Down, Gilbert PA
Aug 01 JamPacked, Richmond VA
Sep 25-27 Camp Deep End, Navarro CA
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