Jim Neversink (born Michael James Whitehead; 16 June 1969) is a South African musician, singer and songwriter. His musical style spans indie rock, country, americana and punk.
He is best known as a solo artist who performs with changing line-ups. As such, he has released three albums to critical acclaim. Despite being released on independent labels, two of them were included in lists of best album of the year in South African magazines as well as in Billboard. Three South African newspapers also listed Neversink albums among their albums of the decade.
Before he went solo, Neversink was the co-founder and lead guitarist of Famous Curtain Trick, a country/pop/rock band which rose to mainstream popularity in South Africa in the 1990s and was nominated for a SAMA Award.
His most notable instrument is the guitar, including a home-built lap steel guitar.
Childhood and early youth
Neversink was born in Durban on 16 June 1969. Growing up in Durban, he would listen to jazz, blues and country at home. He took up the guitar at the age of eighteen.
1990's: Early career
Famous Curtain Trick
In the early nineties, Neversink and Nadine Raal founded the pop-rock-country band Famous Curtain Trick, which performed songs written mainly by Neversink and Raal. The band consisted of lead singer/guitarist Raal, Neversink on guitar, lap steel and backing vocals, Garth Johnstone, later Duncan Smith on bass, and in the early stages Kevin O'Grady, then Warren Peddie, later Craig Nash on drums.
They released Famous Curtain Trick (EMI, 1995; produced by Neill Solomon) and Land of no Cadillacs (Universal, 1996; produced by Dave Birch, front man of Squeal, previously guitarist in The Camera Club), nominated for a South African Music Award in the category "Best Pop Album".
Live performances included the music festivals Splashy Fen (1995, 1997, 1999), Wingerdstok (1997), Oppikoppi (1997), Southern Cross Folk & Rock Festival (2000) as well as opening for Roxette in Durban (1995) and touring South Africa with Bryan Adams (1999). In 2000, the band split up.
Other collaborations
For a while, Neversink formed part of the alternative country/lo-fi rock band Lilo. He appears on bass on the band's first album Light me up a Lucifer (2002). Other members were, at the time, Alexander Sudheim, Graeme Barnes and Dean Henning.
He appears on lap steel on "Calling" off Syd Kitchen's album Africa's not for sissies (2001).
2000–2009
In 2001, Neversink moved to Johannesburg and began using the artistic name Jim Neversink.
Jim Neversink (Ent Entertainment 2005) Neversink's self-titled solo debut album was produced by Matthew Fink. Recorded partly under primitive circumstances in Neversink's bedroom, it was nominated "Album of the Year" by The Star, pronouncing it "a masterpiece that will no doubt stand the test of time". Beeld listed it among the "Top-Ten Albums" of the year, and, at the turn of the decade, included it in a list of South African albums of the decade. Channel24.co.za had it on their five-item list of "South African releases of the year", giving it five stars out of five. Their review, which likewise referred to the album as a "South African masterpiece", awarded it five stars out of five, remarking that "Neversink and Matthew Fink have produced a benchmark album, seemingly out of nowhere."
The CD has Jim Neversink on voice, guitar, lap steel, piano and harmonica, Matthew Fink on accordion and guitar and Katherine Hunt on bass, violin and backing vocals. Two tracks feature Paul "Roach" Cochrane on bass and Ashton Nyte on lead guitar.
Shakey is Good (Radio Lava, 2008)
A second album, with Fink, Hunt and now Warrick Poultney on drums, and produced by Fink, likewise earned critics' acclaim: it came in as No. 2 on The Times' international "Top 20 albums" of 2008; Billboard'''s South African correspondent placed it as no 6 on her international list of "2008 Billboard Critics Top 10s"; Isolation.tv placed it as no 1 on their top-10 "South African albums of the year". The Times and Mail & Guardian included it in its listings of "albums of the decade". Channel24.co.za awarded it five out of five stars.
Live performances
Live appearances with the Fink/Hunt/Poultney line-up included performing at the London Forum as support act for Sixto Rodriguez (2005) and at the Oppikoppi festival (2006), the White Mountain Folk Festival (2006) and the Splashy Fen (2007).