About.
Nevil Schultz has an extensive background in environment and science teaching and is ideally placed to create lyrics and music that refer to the wonders of the natural environment, its ecosystems and amazing species that cohabit our planet. Numerous field studies with his students and close up encounters recording and observing those species (the plants & animals that is!) has led him on both impulse and reflection to write about local species sometimes with comedic overtones such as his song Skink Funk. He always composed at the end of field trips to remote bush sites and as the bus driver held his student audience "captive" before departure with a rendition of a new tune specially composed for the occasion. Two of such compositions are each recorded twice across his EP productions: Condah Moon & Darlot's Creek. He has also discovered musical talent amongst and recorded with his past students who now are doing advanced studies and working in various environmental management jobs. Such a grouping was the Sonic Swamp Medicine Band which created soundscape music of important remnant Australian wetlands where stunning diverse ecosystems exist. Edward. O. Wilson may be a writer that inspires this awareness.
The epony-mous (a native scrub placental mammal) EP for the band
records sound that reflects the changing energy of the swamp ecosystem across the day . Plankton, birds and frogs are especially referenced. Those sounds are to encourage the listener to be still and contemplate the surface of the pond and other aquatic milieu in the spectrum of freshwater to marine environments and the life therein from all spheres.
Nev and the Blues has been about in the Melbourne indie music
scene predominantly in the late 2000s but has been around a lot earlier as a piano player with an eight year residency at one of Melbourne's largest Hotels. He is also a gospel musician with 35 years at the keys monthly without too much interruption. He launched two albums at the Bella Union in Carlton in 2009 and has played solo and with various bands playing numerous covers including a few of his own songs including Buying Time and Relax & Go Steady.
He has been writing songs for a long time with a stable of dozens of originals, many recorded on EPs & Albums such as Stay Calm, Elvis of Tottenham and River Soul. He is instrumental in many ways and his arrangements in recorded tracks feature acoustic & electric guitar, accordion, Hammond organ, piano . He played piano at the Spotted Cat in Frenchmen St New Orleans in 2006 and at a cafe on the northern shore of Lake Ponchartrain Louisiana USA. Having met some greats in the USA such as George Cables in New York City and Angelique Kidjo in New Orleans and seen Fats Domino on stage following his tough time over Hurricane Katrina has inspired his writing and performing. His other inspirations his fellow band and solo performers and being a part of a thoroughly enjoyable collective drawn together as indie singer songwriters, the zenith of activities being the Tim's Bookshop sessions in the late 00's. The songs of Nev & the Blues around this time were often in a contemporary urban folk idiom with regional flavours, such as the hybrid Mississipi Blues in Old Richmond Town, Elvis of Tottenham, Koala Sam & Nigel the Spider. RRR FM, with host former Daddy Cool member Gary Young played Up-a-down Hurricane Blues to air, a post Katrina composition. PBS, ABC regional radio and other urban stations broadcast quite a few of the tunes including a couple with Yuletide in Oz themes. Eclectisism in approach to making music is his trademark and Jazz interpretation is a natural consequence of that, in playing of jazz standards and writing a few of his own jazzical tunes such as Piano Train and Sweet Sunken Island.
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