Music gave Kenny Neal sunshine

• By JOHN WIRT
• Music critic
• Published: Apr 25, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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With an inspired new album about to be released, a summer tour on the horizon and a clean bill of health, Kenny Neal is a blues survivor.

Performing again following the 52 weeks of treatment for hepatitis C that took him off the road for the first time in 30 years, Neal is emerging from the waves of trouble that struck him and his deeply musical family in recent years.

“After a long, long haul, I’m feeling great and excited about being back,” he said.

The eldest of Shirley and the late Raful Neal’s 10 children, Neal’s new album is aptly titled — Let Life Flow. It’s his first recording for the San Francisco-based Blind Pig Records.

Neal wrote many of the disc’s songs at his home in Palo Alto, Calif., during his illness. 

“It came straight from the heart,” he said.

Neal’s diagnosis of hepatitis C followed a series of family tragedies. His brother, Ronnie, died in April 2004. His father, blues musician and family patriarch Raful Neal, died in September 2004. His sister, Jackie, also a singer and recording artist, was killed by her ex-boyfriend in March 2005.

In the liner notes for Let Life Flow, Neal dedicates track 10, “Fly Away” to Ronnie, Jackie and Raful Neal. He’d written the song some years before following the loss of his god sister, Lynette Hebert, a victim of breast cancer at 32. 

“I don’t know where the song came from, man,” Neal said this week in Baton Rouge. “I just wrote down what was coming into my mind the day before her funeral.”

Neal performed “Fly Away” at Hebert’s memorial service but then put the song out of his mind.

“It was almost like a note, it wasn’t like a song for me,” he said. “I just tossed it aside and got away from it. But when Jackie died, immediately, boom, ‘Fly Away’ popped in my head again. So I had to record it.”

Most of the Let Life Flow songs have special meaning for Neal.

“It was what I was feeling during that time I was off,” he said. “I feel good about turning my darkness into light. Let some sun shine for awhile because the last three years have been chaos for the family.