Brand new Team Love-rs the Felice Brothers are about to play their first sold-out New York show at the Mercury Lounge tonight, and I can't help but be pretty dang proud of my area code. The Bros hail from Ulster County, New York, located about 90 miles north of New York City, also home to my alma mater/paradise of a college town, New Paltz. I'd always seen their concert posters around the village, and I may or may not have accidentally stumbled in on a couple of their earlier shows at my favorite haunt, a dive called Snugs. But our boys are all grows up now, and balancing my drink above my head turns into a real challenge as I maneuver my way toward the front of the crowd. Their particular brand of feel-good, backwoods music is made up of drum set, keyboard, accordion, guitar, and a sheet of corrugated metal, all whaled upon by guys who look like someone you would normally chase out of your backyard for riding their ATVs on your property (or maybe that just happened in my family). Besides that, a telltale uniting factor is the absolute lack of arrogance, which keyboard/accordion player James Felice explains on the phone a couple weeks later: "We try not to get drawn into that kind of stuff. You can't get all concerned if you're going to sell out a place now because the next day you could be playing a place where there are four people there and they're all drunk and don't give a shit about you... So you take each show as it comes and don't get excited about anything. But it was a very nice feeling."
After being kowtowed into a bar tab, we muscle up front and situate ourselves near Christmas, the corrugated metal-ist (if there's a technical term in existence that I'm not using here, please clue me in). James takes a swig of whiskey from his cup, one of many, and the ramshackle barn-raiser that commences doesn't let up for the next hour or so. This is the first of sixty shows they're currently playing around the country, so we're getting a first taste of the energy they've stored up. The first standout is "Whiskey in Some Whiskey" (wildly appropriate), one of many Felice Brothers songs that talk of heartbreak and the only remedy many know of. Ian handles most of the main vocals, but the real magic happens when Simone and James harmonize, and I can't help but think of The Last Waltz. This is not entirely unfounded, as the Felice Brothers were chosen to play one of Band member Levon Helm's famous "Rambles" in upstate New York. "That was just a little bit of luck and a little bit of perseverance on our part," says James. "I think Simone had given our number to his manager and basically called her up and sent her a CD and she played it for Levon and Levon dug it. We just got the gig, which was unbelievable. That was one of the most amazing things."
As the boys ready themselves for "Cincinnati Queen," Ian quips, "This is a song about falling in love with a nasty woman." I'm already having problems taking notes because describing the sound of the Felice Brothers is simple: they just feel good. I have half a mind to throw my notebook back into my bag, which almost happens three or four times because the crowd has started dancing around me, and I gotta confess, I'm right there with them. Think about the music your parents would like, and then think about the songs they would have never played around you as kid, and that's what we've got here. The people filling the Mercury Lounge tonight are a mixed bag, all right: "It seems like our kind of music reaches out to a crowd of people that are a little older, that have a little more sway in society sometimes ... the kind of music that our father loves." The 20s and 30s set is still representing tonight, but he's got a point. The Brothers seem nervous at times, hanging onto their whiskey cups for dear life, but the stage presence that lingers beneath the surface makes itself known enough to clue me in on the way they'll be dominating in the future. Drummer Simone does everything but make love to his drum set, sans shirt for the occasion, and though he looks like he can't believe people know the words to their songs, lead vocalist and guitarist Ian has moments of comfort that hint at the frontman he's destined to become.
The Felice brothers close out the set with a Townes Van Zandt cover, "Two Hands," but I get the feeling that they could have kept on for a time. A good night's sleep is in order, though, as they'll soon be setting off cross-country via Winnebago. This is a step up from their old school buses, James notes: "We were gonna take our short bus across the country but - we were driving down the road one day and hit a pothole and almost died, so it wasn't worth it." The band members mingle in the bar after the show, and I notice Simone talking with more than a few admirers, but the air is still one of cheerful disbelief. I chat with their merch guy, who is amazed that I know where New Paltz is, and it indeed feels like two worlds are colliding.
Their new self-titled album is out now on Team Love, and a quick scan of the internet brings in rave live reviews from cities all over the U.S., so I'd have to say my boys are doing the homestead proud. "We always want to be better," says James, when I ask them what they hope to get out of this tour. "We want to explore new things, but not because of a record label. Not because we have a little bit of money now to do it. We want to do it the way we want to do it. Nothing's gonna change -- we're gonna try to find a cool place to record; maybe back in New York or up in Maine or something. We're going to do what we know. Maybe someday we'll go to some fancy recording studio in LA or something, god forbid. But until such a time, we'll just continue to do what we do, and always, always try to make it better than what we did before."
