About the show

• Roanoke Symphony Orchestra’s “Picnic at the Pops” concert with special guest Aaron Neville is tonight at 8 p.m. at the Salem Civic Center. Guest conductor is Alfred Savia. Tickets are $14, $34 and $39 and are available at the civic center, online at www.rso.com or by calling 343-9127.

Podcast

Aaron Neville discusses the loss of his wife, the loss of the New Orleans he knew, and the reasons that New Orleans music is such a staple of American culture.

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Sometimes, the only thing you can do to forget how bad things are is to try to remember how good they used to be. That was the motivation for Aaron Neville to get back into the studio and record an album of classic soul that reaches way back.

Back before he and his famous brothers became the signature voices of New Orleans. Before his own solo career took off and earned him adulation and awards. Before his beloved wife fell terminally ill.

Before Katrina.

"Some of these songs became prayers," Neville said of the collection of soul nuggets that became "Bring It On Home."

"They all took a whole new meaning," he said from Nashville, Tenn., where he has resided since Hurricane Katrina flooded him out of his home.

Songs such as "Stand By Me," "Ain't No Sunshine" and "A Change Is Gonna Come" didn't sound as they had before Katrina destroyed Neville's hometown and before cancer took his wife of nearly 48 years. The dual tragedies turned the songs into painful laments and laid bare emotions that even a man known for his emotional style could hardly endure. The death of Joel Roux Neville has been especially and expectedly difficult.

"We met when we were 16 years old," he said. "In May, it would've been 50 years since we fell in love."

He's not sure how he will hold up tonight when he and his quintet perform with the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra at the Salem Civic Center. He's sung at only one other show since Joel died in January after a long fight against lung cancer.

"This will be the test," he said.

It seems like the past two years have been one long, exhausting test. Just as it seemed his wife's condition was improving, Katrina wrecked their home. Joel's cancer returned in Nashville, where she was treated at Vanderbilt University Hospital. After she died, Neville took her to New Orleans for burial. It was his first trip home since the storm.

To him, the city appeared unchanged from the devastation millions saw on television in those first frenzied days following the hurricane.

"People said New Orleans is the 'city that care forgot,' " Neville said, repeating the old refrain about the Crescent City. "I wrote a poem that says that people forgot to care. ... People been waiting for the cavalry. There's no cavalry in New Orleans. It's like it's not even part of the United States."

The port city he remembers from his youth is gone, he said. He speaks lovingly of the place where he worked on the docks as a teen and followed brass bands through the streets during "second line" processions, those jazz funerals where people celebrate life by singing, playing and dancing.

That's where he and his brothers learned to sing and play music. Aaron Neville made it big first, scoring a No. 1 with "Tell It Like It Is" in 1966. He helped form the Neville Brothers a decade later and the band hit the commercial peak in the late 1980s and '90s. He wrote their 1988 hit "Yellow Moon" for Joel.

Much of the city that shaped his life exists only in his memory now.

"The New Orleans I know will never be back," he said. His brother Art still lives in the area, as does a sister, son and daughter.

New Orleans "was a melting pot. People from all walks, all colors, races ... the food, the music ... it was all integrated. Nothing pure, y'know. It was a special place."

Neville carried all this emotional baggage into the studio when he recorded "Bring It On Home." While singing in a booth by himself, he said he experienced several "meltdowns."

If anything gives him solace, it is the hope that somehow New Orleans' musical and cultural traditions will sprout anew from the mud and wreckage of a battered city.

He talks about the funky piano players like voodoo hepcat Dr. John, the drummers and horn players who made New Orleans music what it is. He hopes he and the other famous Nevilles can return for the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival someday, and see improvements in their hometown.

"Music can't die," he said. "I want to see it come back."