Keyboardist Ricky James talked about the band’s deep catalog of originals, its studio plans, the addition of guitarist Rob Compa and recent shows with Tom Hamilton
Neighbor, the improvisational rock quartet that got its start in the Boston area back in 2019, is in the midst of a tour that will swing through the Midwest this week, with stops in Covington, Ky. (Wednesday, Oct. 22), Peoria, Ill. (Thursday, Oct. 23), Madison, Wis. (Friday, Oct. 24), Chicago (Saturday, Oct. 25) and then Milwaukee for a Widespread Panic after show Sunday, Oct. 26.
Keyboardist Ricky James chatted with Jam in the Stream editor Javier Serna on Sunday.
Keyboardist Ricky James plays with Pink Talking Fish, the band that blends Pink Floyd, Talking Heads and Phish songs, when he is not busy with Neighbor. His next PTF show is on Nov. 28 (get tickets here) at Soundcheck Studios, the site of Neighbor’s five-week residency back in 2024. PHOTO BY VIC BRAZEN, COURTESY OF NEIGHBOR
The conversation ranged from the addition of guitarist Rob Compa, formerly of Dopapod, and a recent run of shows with Tom Hamilton of Joe Russo’s Almost Dead. He shared the news, which the band has since mentioned via social media, that Neighbor was plotting their second LP and heading to a recording studio early this week in Nashville.
“We figured we might as well make the best of our time and go record some studio music,” James said, mentioning a session with Matty Alger of The Cabin Studio in the East Nashville area.
“We’ve been talking about it a lot this trip,” James said, asked how long the band has been working on the new album. “We have a lot of music. And Rob is fairly new. We’re trying to figure out what’s the best we can do for the band and for the fans? And, with Rob, what’s he most comfortable with?… There’s a lot to choose from. We are going to get them all up on the white board and try to figure it out.”
James said he could not yet give a timeline for the new LP’s release.
Compa joined the band earlier this year following the departure of Lyle Brewer. Compa’s previous band, Dopapod, went on what was called an “indefinite hiatus” at the end of 2024, a few months before Brewer left Neighbor.
“It was very serendipitous, the way it all happened” James said. “But we couldn’t have asked for a better replacement. I mean musically Rob checks all of the boxes as an individual, as a person, as a friend, as a guitarist and as a songwriter. And his preparation for this has been great. It’s a lot to just jump on board you know with this band and, you know, (all of our) tunes. He is a hard-working dude.”
It’s worked out in one other important way as well.
“We are all fathers in this band and we all have families,” he said. “It’s not like there’s one person in the group looking to run and do 120 shows (a year). We all kind of respect each other’s situation and know what we can and can’t do. So that’s been comforting for all of us. We all have our own styles. It’s still Neighbor with Rob. With Rob we go a little bit deeper improvisationally and we take more chances. Improvisation is a large part of our music. It’s different with Rob, but it’s exciting.”
Asked how the band amassed such a deep catalog in such a short time, James mentioned the band’s early days and residency at Thunder Road Music Cafe in Somerville, Mass., back in 2019.
“We wrote a ton,” James said. “And then the pandemic hit and we wrote a lot more. By the time the pandemic was over, we were two and a half years old.”
James said he wouldn’t mind if the band had more published music at this point. But, perhaps more importantly for a jam band, it does have a catalog from which to keep things fresh for a run like this week, with five shows in five days.
“We do have a lot of music,” he said. “We just don’t have it documented in the studio. Finding the money and the time around tour and everything else is tricky. We are going to try and make it a priority.”
James explained how the recent three-night run of shows with JRAD’s Tom Hamilton in late September came to be.
“The plans started rolling with Tom starting his own group (Tom Hamilton Band),” he said. “We just packaged a little run, and it went great. We played a little together on the third night. ... The band was sounding tight. It was a nice one-two punch.”
Hamilton sat in on a cover of Led Zeppelin’s “No Quarter” and on the band’s original song “Mary & Martha” off their first LP.
“We were trying to figure out which tunes would be best suited for Tom,” James said. “It was beautiful. He did a great job on that.”
Neighbor has a few more shorter runs in November and December booked, with a trio of shows in New England in late November, and a pair of notable shows in early December at Levon Helm Studio’s The Barn in Woodstock, N.Y., Dec. 5 before a show with Octave Cat (and Compa’s former bandmate Eli Winderman) at the Ardmore outside Philadelphia Dec. 6.
Check out Neighbor’s full tour schedule here. The band returns to the Midwest in late January, playing Bell’s Eccentric Cafe in Kalamazoo, Mich., on Jan. 29 and Feed the Dog’s Ice Dance Music Festival in Appleton, Wis., on the last weekend of January.