“If my one survival song just reminds me of something that happened 20 years ago, then I’m not living my life right, right?”
Meet the lovely Ric Neale and his song choice, ‘The Power of Two’ by The Indigo Girls.
Search ‘Survival Songs’ to find episodes on all your usual podcasting platforms and add to our community playlist over on Spotify.
Ric Neale is a musician and performer whose shows spotlight his expert songwriting. Ric has taken his theatrical, heartfelt and often hilarious performances of his brand of piano song-smithery all over the country. His solo piano albums All That Counts, Pencil and Lullabies for Parents (a song cycle about parenting) show his ability to explore the extremities of the human condition using just his voice and a piano, and the songs on these records are continually requested by his loyal audience. Ric has been invited to perform with Hue and Cry, David Mead, Jason Donovan, Divina De Campo and (weirdly) Tiffany. In 2023 he released the album Parting Ways, inspired by the death of his lifelong friend, to huge acclaim. It was the follow up to 2021’s collaborative album Connected/Disconnected which has already had over 800,000 streams on Spotify.
Outside of his solo work Ric worked as Songwriter, Musical Director and performer in the sell out show Dancing Bear with Jamie Fletcher and Company that toured The Leeds Playhouse and The Palace Theatre in Manchester, and wrote and produced the Christmas album by Drag Queen, and star of BBC’s Ru Paul’s Drag Race, Divina De Campo. Ric continues to curate his piano residency MONOCHROME, a monthly piano night featuring himself and a host of internationally acclaimed performers. Ric toured the UK performing Ric Neale Does Pet Sounds in which he performed all of the Beach Boys album Pet Sounds with just piano and voice to celebrate its 50th anniversary. He followed this up with the ridiculously titled Whenever Ric Neale Somebody, in which he did the same thing for Rick Astley’s first solo album.
Show notes:
Rick’s website: https://www.ricneale.com/
Instagram: @ricneale
‘The Power of Two’ by The Indigo Girls can be found on our community playlist on Spotify along with our listener’s Survival Songs. Check it out and add your own!
Find out more about The Indigo Girls here.
This episode contains small portions of ’The Power of Two’ by The Indigo Girls. Survival Songs claims no copyright of this work. This is included as a form of music review and criticism and as a way to celebrate, promote and encourage the listener to seek out the artist’s work.
Episode 3: Ric Neale