To say that Ivan Neville grew up surrounded by music would be a huge understatement. His father, Aaron, scored a national Top 10 hit with the soulful ballad “Tell It Like It Is” when Ivan was just a young boy, and by the time Ivan was in his teens his dad and uncles—Art, Charles and Cyril—had formed the world-famous Neville Brothers, New Orleans’ First Family of Funk.

It was a given that Ivan, too, would enter the family business—a given to everyone, that is, except Ivan Neville!

“I didn’t really know that that’s what I wanted to do,” Ivan says. “I felt like I was musically inclined and I could sing a little bit, and obviously I knew that all of those guys were musicians. And being in New Orleans, music was all over. But I was interested in regular kids’ stuff until I was 15 years old and started playing a little bit of piano.”

Once he dove in and made the commitment to pursue music, there was no stopping him. Today, with more than 35 years of experience behind him, Ivan Neville is one of the most celebrated Crescent City artists in his own right -  a singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who leads the acclaimed band Dumpstaphunk, has performed and recorded under his own name and has loaned his talents to the likes of the Rolling Stones, Bonnie Raitt and of course, the Neville Brothers.

On Thursday, May 2, 2019 a few months shy of his 60th birthday—on the same day he and Dumpstaphunk performed on the main stage at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival—Ivan received the inaugural Songbook Award from the nonprofit organization 30Amp Circuit. The award honors Neville’s ongoing contributions to contemporary music that was presented at an intimate dinner event in the French Quarter following the Jazz Fest gig, with a career-spanning solo piano performance for dessert.

Although Aaron Neville had taught the young Ivan a few basic concepts on the piano, it wasn’t until Ivan was in the 11th grade that his interest truly took hold. While his classmates indulged in formal music lessons, Ivan snuck off to another room where a piano sat waiting, teaching himself to play Professor Longhair’s New Orleans classic “Big Chief.” When Ivan performed the song in front of the entire school at an assembly—“and everybody went wild”—he suddenly understood why the older members of his family enjoyed what they did so much. The next time there was a school concert, he tried his hand at Earth, Wind & Fire’s “All About Love” and girls screamed in approval.

Ivan Neville, professional musician, was born that day. Neville formed a band called the Renegades, which played its first gig at New Orleans’ still-new (and later to become a landmark) club Tipitina’s. It was a fertile time for music in NOLA—“There were bands playing everywhere,” Ivan remembers—and he continued to make his ascent within the local scene.