If you were at the Felice Brothers show at Webster Hall a couple weeks ago, you need not read the following for you experienced it. Unless you put too much whiskey in your whiskey before the show. Having heard three of the band's albums (Tonight At The Arizona, The Felice Brothers & Yonder Is The Clock) I immediately recognized this band as something special. Beautiful lyrics combined with engaging music transport the listener to a place that doesn't exist, but should. Tales of cabaret singers, boxers, baseball, love, prison, death, friendship and more - all through lyrics that tell stories which can only be displayed through one's imagination.
I had very high expectations walking into Webster Hall as I had been on a serious bender of Felice Brothers music and somehow they managed to blow me away. Beginning with a perfect, piece-by-piece, introduction morphing into "The Big Surprise" the show carried the audience into that world of imagination. Going into the show I was hoping to hear "Roll On Arte", "Christmas Song", "Ruby Mae", "Ambulance Man", "Murder By Mistletoe" or "Helen Fry". None of these were played, yet there was no moment throughout that I wanted to hear anything other than what was being performed at that particular moment. The fact that every Felice Brothers song hits on such a perfect level (and is perfomed to a different, unexplainable extreme) made this show so beautiful. A few people who went with me had never heard The Felice Brothers and were immediately transformed into raging fans - asking when and where we could see them again. My good friend saw them the week before and spent time drinking whiskey with the band and helping them to fix up their bus. If you are a fan of Bob Dylan (they've been described as "a drunken Bob Dylan at a hootenanny), The Band (often compared to The Basement Tapes), love, hate, murder, mayhem, family, kinship, death or life itself I find it hard to believe you won't enjoy what you hear out of these fellas. Buy the records, watch them perform - you won't be disappointed. Be well.
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