How does a skinny, lanky limbed redhead have so much soul? Peter Nevland and the Neverland Band will take you on a journey through a fresh funk, juicy jazz, electrically acoustic landscape of lyrical flow like nothing you've heard before.

14 MP3 Songs
SPOKEN WORD: With Music, URBAN/R&B: Funk



Details:
Peter Nevland didn't even think of writing anything until he came to the University of Texas in 1993 to study Mechanical Engineering. When he did start writing, what came out ended up being somewhere between a song and spoken word, not tied to a particular beat, but improvising around the rhythms that are generated by his exploding imagery and creative word choice. When asked to describe his style, Peter refers to it as spoken groove, saying that you could probably characterize his writing by imagining "Dr. Seuss taking a walk through the ghetto and deciding to become the white, jive king."

His performance style and message is so wild and untamed, it gets unleashed just about anywhere he is, from the engineering cleanrooms of Motorola or the floor of the New York Stock Exchange to nightclubs, street corners, open mikes, or the Austin Poetry Slam. Peter's work somehow combines innocence and joy with a realization of and compassion for the tremendous hurt and division in the world around him. It's the kind of thing that inspires your brain and soul at the same time

As entertaining as he is by himself, Peter also lives with music churning inside him. In February, 2001, a keyboardist (David Nevland), bassist (Jason Peavey), drummer (Eric Allen) and the prodigious talents of guitarist Paul Finley joined to form the Neverland Band. The music's driven by Peter's writing, causing each piece to take on its own nature, producing a style that's a cross between funk, jazz, Pink Floyd, acoustic guitar, and spoken groove.

Since packing out their first show at Café Mundi in July, 2001, Peter Nevland and the Neverland Band have been playing regularly in local Austin clubs including Steamboat, Flamingo Cantina, and Café Mundi. They've been featured at arts festivals around the state, and Peter and Paul have been touring the U.S. and Canada, igniting the creative fuel of audiences all over the U.S. since Peter left his job at Motorola in September, 2002. Any music historian will tell you that they're simply continuing the tradition of Gil Scott Heron, the Last Poets, Jack Kerouac, and other numerous spoken word artists. Peter would say that he wants to elevate the verbalized sounds of normal speech into the higher language of music and rhythm. So if you really want to capture the essence of what they're all about, just take what's spoken and add some groove to it.