Brian Stoltz

A parlour guitar and the Ed Sullivan initiation

Stoltz was born and raised in New Orleans and started playing at nine or ten on a Regal parlour guitar. He has named the Beatles' 1964 appearance on the Ed Sullivan show as the moment that set the course, and lists John Lennon, George Harrison, Jimi Hendrix and James Brown's guitarist Jimmy Nolen as the players he took apart and rebuilt. The Hendrix strand in particular never went away; it still supplies a whole night of repertoire when he wants one.

The city itself did the rest of the teaching. Stoltz has described growing up inside marching bands and a street tradition where African, Caribbean, European and Latin material sits on top of each other, and credits that overlap rather than any conservatory training for what he calls street virtuosity. His stated working rule has stayed the same for forty years: serve the song and play what the song needs.

The path was nearly closed before it opened. In 1981 he developed carpal tunnel syndrome badly enough to need surgery and roughly six months of recovery, an episode he has since described as the hardship that tested whether he actually wanted the job.

Nine years with the Nevilles

He joined the Neville Brothers in September 1981 and stayed until January 1990. It was a working band in the hardest sense: the Nevilles opened shows on the Rolling Stones' Tattoo You tour, and over the decade Stoltz played the Tonight Show, Saturday Night Live, Late Night with David Letterman and Austin City Limits with them.

The 1986 Conspiracy of Hope tour for Amnesty International put him on a stage with U2, Peter Gabriel, Lou Reed and the Police, and on the closing all-hands reading of Bob Dylan's 'I Shall Be Released'. Stoltz has told the story against himself — there was confusion over which musicians were meant to be up there, and a disagreement with promoter Bill Graham that he resolved by staying put.

Dylan turned out to matter more than a single finale. Stoltz played on the 1989 Daniel Lanois production Oh Mercy, cut in New Orleans, and Dylan later described his contribution as funky and blistering, with licks thought out like piano patterns. Lanois and Brian Eno both sit on Stoltz's short list of mentors, alongside Art Neville and the meditation teacher Swami Rama, whom he met in 1983.

The guitar chair in the Meters' lineage

In 1994 Stoltz took over from Leo Nocentelli in the funky Meters, the Art Neville and George Porter Jr. continuation of the band that wrote the grammar of New Orleans funk. He held the chair until 2007, stood down while Art Neville's son Ian took it, and returned in 2011 for the group's remaining years; the run ended with Art Neville's retirement and death. Rejoining, Stoltz has said, was what finally showed him how deep Neville's influence on his own playing had gone.

In parallel he ran Porter Batiste Stoltz from 2001 to 2009 with Porter and drummer Russell Batiste Jr., a trio that pushed the same rhythmic material into longer, rockier improvisation and made him a familiar name on the American jam circuit.

The session and production list runs wider than the funk lineage suggests: Dr. John, Linda Ronstadt, Aaron Neville, Zachary Richard, and Edie Brickell on a record produced by Paul Simon. He also produced a live Wild Magnolias session that other producers had warned him was too loose to capture. A Grammy nomination followed in 2004 in the traditional blues category, and CMJ and the New Music Corporation gave him a lifetime achievement award.

New World Rising, and the gap before it

Under his own name Stoltz released Starving Buddha in 1999, now out of print, then East of Rampart Street in 2003, God, Guns & Money in 2005 and the concert set Up All Night/Live in 2007. Then the solo catalogue stopped for the best part of two decades while the Meters work and sideman dates took the calendar.

New World Rising arrived in April 2024: twelve self-written songs built around loss, hope, love and loyalty, and his first studio album in nearly twenty years. It is a long record by his standards — 'All That Binds' runs past seven minutes, 'Mirror Mirror' and 'Reach for the Sky' past six — and it leans on singing and structure rather than on solos. Writing about the release, OffBeat noted that Stoltz does not think of himself as a hotshot guitar player, which the magazine flagged as news to anyone who has watched him work.

The record-release show at Chickie Wah Wah in Mid-City brought in Luther Dickinson and a rotating cast of guests, which is close to Stoltz's default format when he headlines: his own material as the spine, friends added as the night goes on.

Where he stands in 2026

The touring picture now is deliberately small and almost entirely local. On 26 September 2026 he played Tipitina's as one of the guests on 'All Hail The Big Chief! A Tribute to Big Chief Monk Boudreaux', a NOLAxNOLA and New Orleans Traditional Culture Festival billing hosted by Paul Sanchez, with the Dirty Dozen Horns, Papa Mali, Johnny Sansone, Joseph Boudreaux Jr., Bo Dollis Jr., Jwan Boudreaux, Marwan Boudreaux and the Golden Eagles Mardi Gras Indian Band. Doors were at 7.30pm, the show at 8.30pm, tickets $34.41, over-18s only.

The next confirmed date is 31 October 2026, back at Chickie Wah Wah, where he appears as special guest with George Porter Jr. and the Runnin' Pardners — announced on 19 August 2026 — reuniting the rhythm partnership that ran through the funky Meters years.

Earlier in the year, on 28 April 2026, he played a thirteen-song Chickie Wah Wah set built on Hendrix material, including 'Are You Experienced' and 'Spanish Castle Magic'. That show has become an annual fixture in the Fest-o-Matic series that runs alongside Jazz Fest; versions of it were staged at the same venue in April 2024 and April 2025. Listings services currently show him with a single country and a handful of dates on sale, all of them in New Orleans.

What the playing actually is

The through-line across the Nevilles, the Meters and the solo records is restraint applied to a very loud instrument. Stoltz works across a wide dynamic range — his own description runs from delicate ambient sounds to full-range screams — but the tone-first approach means the flashy bar is usually the one he leaves out.

He has said the best advice he ever received was to stop playing professionally and play it as if for the first time, which is the tell in his live work: the repertoire is fixed, the readings are not. Asked about happiness, his answer was that happiness is proper breathing, which is roughly how he talks about guitar playing too.