We just locked in our New Year’s Eve show, and it’s a good one. Neal Francis headlines Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom on Thursday, December 31, 2026.
If you don’t know Francis yet, here’s the short version: he’s a Chicago piano player who grew up inside the instrument. He started at age 4. By his teens he was already touring as a sideman for blues acts and the instrumental band The Heard. That’s a lot of stage time before most people finish high school.
Now he fronts his own band, and the sound he’s built is hard to pin down on purpose. Funk, psych rock, disco, soul. All of it played on analog gear, no shortcuts. Rolling Stone called him “the piano man for a new generation” last September.
His new record, “Return to Zero,” dropped this year on ATO Records. He wrote it during a stretch of 400 shows across three years, which sounds like a rough way to make an album and also explains why it hits the way it does. Queens of the Stone Age bassist Michael Shuman plays on it. So does Brandi Carlile, on a track called “Dirty Little Secret.” The album title comes from a button on a tape machine, the one Francis kept mashing trying to nail a vocal take.
He’s played Carnegie Hall. He’s played Bonnaroo, Fuji Rock, Lollapalooza. He’s opened for Wilco, Black Pumas, My Morning Jacket. His 2019 debut, “Changes,” got compared to Allen Toussaint by BBC Radio 6. That’s the kind of catalog we’re talking about.
Why NYE, why him? Because Cervantes’ has always been about the intersection: deep musical history, genre-diverse booking, a room that still feels personal even at 1,000 capacity. Francis fits that intersection perfectly. He’s a guy who grew up in the tradition and is doing something new with it, in a building that’s been doing exactly that since the Casino Cabaret days of BB King and Duke Ellington.
Support for the night provided by Gold Leader.
Mark the date, get ready to close out the year loud, and we’ll see you on the dance floor.
