For decades, a ginkgo tree stood inside Frank Lloyd Wright’s Home and Studio on Forest Avenue. The architect built his home and studio around the tree, using nature as his guide.
Chicago-based musician Neal O’Hara gave tours of the home as a teenager growing up in Oak Park. Decades later, O’Hara, stage name Neal Francis, is headlining the American Music Festival at Fitzgerald’s on July 5, the fourth and final day of the nightclub’s 43rd annual event.
Giving tours of the home and studio, O’Hara learned to identify Wright’s influences within his architectural style. In the ginkgo tree, he could see the influences of Japanese architecture and the shapes and patterns of nature.
As a young Oak Parker, O’Hara also fell in love with music. When he was four, his parents enrolled him in piano lessons at the Language and Music School on Oak Park Avenue. When he was in middle school he took lessons from jazz and blues musicians.
Attending OPRF, O’Hara grew his hair to his shoulders and wore his dad’s vintage band T-shirts from his time working for Jam Productions during the 1970s. With friends from his neighborhood, O’Hara formed the Whitewater Stills, a classic rock band. O’Hara played the piano and sang in his friend’s basement, covering classic rock songs from The Loop, WLS-FM, and his dad’s record collection, alongside original songs reminiscent of ZZ Top, Led Zeppelin and Electric Light Orchestra.
O’Hara was also in the Reverend Funk Connection, where O’Hara played with James Krivchenia, now drummer for Big Thief. With the jazz ensemble, O’Hara also had the chance to play at Fitzgerald’s multiple times. Coming back to headline at Fitzgerald’s after playing there as a teenager, O’Hara feels “this embrace from the community,” he said. “Fitzgerald’s was always such a place that had a reputation for taking care of musicians.”
When he was a teenager, O’Hara wanted to be a professional musician, but his father encouraged him to explore architecture instead. He had been in the rock business during the 1970s, and he had seen people struggle to sustain a career in the industry and ruin their careers with drugs and alcohol.
So the fall after graduating from OPRF, O’Hara enrolled at the University of Illinois at Chicago to study architecture. After enjoying his freshman year, O’Hara lost his academic drive, left school, and struggled with substance abuse.
He played with big-name blues and R&B musicians, including Mud Morganfield and Omar Coleman. O’Hara was almost fired from some of these jobs, and he said the experience of playing alongside experienced musicians “professionalized” him. He even traveled to Switzerland to play at a music festival in Lucerne. “I got to learn the style at a molecular level – really pick apart what the piano player was doing on those old Muddy Waters recordings” he said.
At 27, O’Hara got sober, which fueled his creativity and gave him the chance to reconsider what he wanted to do with his life. While renting a place on Maple Avenue in Oak Park and working at a UPS store in Lincoln Park, he recorded what would become Neal Francis’s first album, Changes, released in 2019 and inspired by rock, funk, and soul from the early 1970s.
Since then, O’Hara has seen success as a solo musician. He has played at Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo and Red Rocks. His music has brought him to places like Japan and the Netherlands, where the Amsterdam streetscapes, designed for people first, reminded him of Forest Avenue in Oak Park.
O’Hara’s music has “blossomed” since Changes, said Brendan O’Connell, O’Hara’s manager. “I think he’s really continued to evolve and chase whatever sounds he’s hearing in his head,” said O’Connell.
O’Hara is currently working on several new albums in his Chicago studio. Over the last few years, he said he has focused on his personal journey of creation and expression. “This should be about awakening. This should be about movement and community. This is about expressing emotion and freedom to be a human being and to express yourself artistically,” he said.
Recently on this journey, O’Hara said his band has taught him to “let go of perfection” and to move away from imitation, allowing him to grow even more into his own style. “I’ve done a lot of imitating over the years,” he said. “That’s a good way to learn, but I think being true to what I’m able to do, test my limits, obliterate my limitations in terms of what I think I’m capable of, and just be free in my creation, and make more, and not be precious – that is my path to salvation.”