The Felice Brothers
Sunday, July 28, 2013
“When your band forms in the shadow of Woodstock, N.Y, people tend to have certain preconceived notions about your childhood. One is that you idolized Bob Dylan and The Band. Though The Felice Brothers live in Upstate New York and have played Levon Helm’s Midnight Rambles, the members came are not your typical new-school hippies embracing the region’s past ethos.
‘Somewhere along the line, people built a story about us,’ Ian Felice, the band’s lead singer and primary songwriter, told me shortly after the release of 2011’s Celebration, Florida. ‘We grew up near Woodstock, but we came from a fairly different social-economic environment. I listened to Nirvana and hip-hop music as much as I listened to roots music, Skip James, older blues and Appalachian music.’
In 2005, when he was still in his early 20s, Ian recorded a solo album under the name The Felice Brothers. Around the same time, he also put together a band with his brothers Simone and James. ‘A lot of what we talked about as kids was lyrical and poetic music—very literary stuff,’ says Ian, who typically plays guitar and sings but also plays keys on occasion. He added. ‘We each grew up with our mom, and music was how we bonded.’
Along with friends Greg Farley and Christmas Clapton, The Felice Brothers will once again arrive in Newport with a batch of new songs; the most recent of which were tracked in Omaha for a new studio album, and tested onstage while opening for Mumford & Sons, The Killers and Josh Ritter over the last few months. Like many of the Newport Folk bands who came of age well after Dylan plugged in, The Felice Brothers have helped define roots and Americana music for the indie generation, and it is my pleasure to introduce them to the 2013 line-up.”
– Mike Greenhaus
Executive Editor of Relix Magazine and Jambands.com. He first attended Newport Folk in 2008.
www.thefelicebrothers.com
Artists and schedule are subject to change.
