Tonight At The Arizona

The sound that emerges from The Felice Brothers’ instruments is seeped with an instinctive authenticity that’s rooted in tradition, but comes from playing exactly as they want to play, unbound by formulaic pressures. While busking and impromptu subway performances filled their bellies, their recordings and live performances brings their backwoods spirit to the cities and concert Halls of America and Europe. Simone, Ian and James Felice are the three eldest boys from a family of seven, born carpenter’s sons in the wilds of New York’s Catskill Mountains. Less than a year ago, they adopted a runaway dicethrower and chancer, a 19 year old called Christmas. They convinced him to quit his job and the motley quartet forsook all else but song and moved their Sunday BBQ sing-alongs from their dad’s upstate house out onto the streets and subways of NYC.

After months of toil, living in a 1987 special education bus, with arrests, and genuine panhandler fun, a free-lance music writer named Gabe Soria (Mojo, Vice) stumbled upon the boys singing and barking their wares at a farmers market in Brooklyn and one thing led to another. Now the Felice Brothers and blood brother Christmas all live, tour, sing, write and gamble together on their little bus. Their distinct brand of songwriting and the lawless sound they’ve forged has earned them comparisons to Woodie Guthrie, a young Springsteen to the Scorsese film Gangs of New York. The boys now travel the world performing homegrown and gritty Americana on the city stages as if they were hosting a sing-along on their own front porch surrounded by family and friends or playing the backroom of a dusty tavern.

1. Roll On Arte
2. Ballad Of Lou The Welterweight
3. Hey Hey Revolver
4. Your Belly In My Arms
5. Lady Day
6. T For Texas
7. Rockefeller Druglaw Blues
8. Mercy
9. Christmas Song
10. Going Going Gone
11. Take This Hammer