Corvallis songwriter Neal Gladstone dies at 78 (2024)

PEGGY PERDUESpecial to Mid-Valley Media

Neal Gladstone, the Corvallis comedian, songwriter and bandleader who was known for his quirky, funny takes on everyday life and objects, died on April 5, 2024, at the age of 78.

His wife, Barbara, confirmed the death. Gladstone had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2008. He and his band Neal Gladstone and Company gave their final performance together in 2011.

Gladstone had always dreamed of a successful musical career, but after an eye-opening trip to California— where the band signed with Kaleidoscope Records on the album “Sleep Neat” — he adjusted what that success might look like.

Gladstone and his band saw firsthand how music industry leaders like to put artists in a box, then kick you out the moment they stop seeing dollar signs.

“Sometimes, when you know what you don’t want,” said his wife Barbara Gladstone, who was also an accompanying vocalist in the band, “it helps put a light on what you do want.”

The Gladstonesmade their home in Corvallis after they met at the University of Chicago. They had visited the Willamette Valley on a camping trip, which just happened to coincide with the Fall Festival. That sealed the deal: They were going to move to Oregon.

“There was so much beauty, music,” BarbaraGladstone said. “And the people were one factor in wanting to live here.”

They went back home to get married, and instead of place settings, they asked wedding guests for camping gear and money. By the next year, they had what they needed to make the move out west. They initially moved to Philomath before coming to Corvallis.

NealGladstone found work offering piano and guitar lessons, and eventually became an investment adviser. Barbara Gladstone found a job at Oregon State University and then accepted a teaching position at Corvallis High School, where she worked for 22 years.

In 1980, the pair met Audrey Perkins, who had also found her way out west by way of Chicago. Perkins remembers staying up that night talking with Neal Gladstone and listening to his songs.

Perkins returned to the Willamette Valley a year later after saving some money — and having learned all of Neal Gladstone’s songs from his early cassette “You Can’t Stay Here.”

Neal Gladstone and Perkins formed the band Gladly, playing covers at bars along Interstate 5 from Longview, Washington to Roseburg, making the return drive home most nights. After about a year, Perkins persuaded Neal Gladstone to write and perform original songs, and they gave their first performance in 1982 to a crowd of about 50 people.

Barbara Gladstone, who had filled in on vocals on recordings and at concerts, joined the band a few years later.

The trio filled out the band most years, with other musicians and members coming in here and there. They all had regular jobs and, after working their 9-5, would spend evenings practicing, rehearsing or performing.

“One thing I learned from Neal was how to be absolutely prepared for a show,” Perkins said. “And when it’s time to perform, that prep is there, but then shifting into joy, just having fun. He understood both.”

From the start, Neal Gladstone and Perkins said they wanted to perform no more than twice a year locally, to make those performances special.

And those performances became very special to their audiences, selling out year after year at the Majestic, and during summer shows at Tyee Wine Cellar's vineyard, they could open another field as crowds grew.

In 1987, Neal Gladstone teamed up with Perkins and Fred Child, who was working at OPB at the time, to write, choreograph, perform and record 13 weeks of the band’s eponymous variety show.

“It was like ‘Saturday Night Live,’ but a radio show,” Perkins said. “There were even fake commercials.”

It ran for four years, playing on OPB, KLCC and Seattle Public Radio, and the band made cameos on the Sandy Bradley's "Potluck" live show. There was talk of syndication, but it never happened, and Neal Gladstone was starting to get burned out.

Gladstone did “99.95%” of the work, Perkins said. He also famously kept songs to himself until he was sure they were done. Sometimes band members wouldn’t hear a song until the night of a performance.

“What’s the point of not having high standards?” Neal Gladstone said in an Aug. 18, 1986, piece written in the Gazette-Times by Don Allen Hall.

Because of this, no one really got to see how Neal Gladstone worked or how he came up with his songs, ideas, etc. It was all very much in his head, and he had to get it out of his head and into a form he could share with audiences. His wife was the only one who got close to seeing how he worked.

“The sound of him working is the sound of him laughing,” Barbara Gladstone said.

Neal Gladstone’s friend and “tech guy,” Kevin Ahern, who met in 1994, recalled what he believed came down to nothing less than “genius.”

“He’d take an everyday object, like grapefruit, and write the most hilarious song with an interesting perspective,” he said, “something everybody knows but never thinks to write down.”

Ahern and Gladstone tried writing a song together.

How’d that go?

“Not very well,” Ahern laughed.

Neal Gladstone and Company were members of the Oregon Arts Commission’s Bands on Tour, visiting towns around the state, some of them they’d never been to before.

The band released five albums on their own, the last one, “Odd Penny,” in 2009. Neal Gladstone would record the songs at his home, edit them on GarageBand, then send them to Eugene or Portland for mixing and mastering.

After Neal Gladstone’s retirement, the Benton County Cultural Coalition and the Corvallis Arts and Culture Commission awarded him with a Lifetime Contribution to Culture in 2014.

In 2017, more than 850 fans, friends and neighbors honored Gladstone with a sold-out tribute concert at the Whiteside Theatre in Corvallis.

Barbara, Perkins and Ahern each said they’d like to do another tribute show this summer.

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