Life in The Dark: An Interview with James Felice of The Felice Brothers

The Felice Brothers’ latest album, Life in the Dark, is a great way to start your summer. It comes out June 24, and features an array of songs that are both introspective and open, lyrically and musically.

 

In “Jack At The Asylum,” the second song on the album, America gives both “nightmares” and “dreams,” an experience so many of us feel right now; in a complementary fashion, the music shifts back and forth from anthemic to stripped down, reinforcing the dislocated emotion of the song. It’s a pretty incredible trick to be able to communicate that musically but have

The title track strikes a similar sense of paradox. With a gently strummed guitar, Ian Felice sings, “They’re burning the heretics again / It’s softly bright, on the infamous night / Down in the street, down in the square. / I dream of a world without war. / The lonely crowd, singing together out loud / Verses of love, verses of peace.” I love so much about these lyrics, especially the subtle oppositions like a “lonely” crowd and the idea that such a violent scene could be “softly bright.” Greg Farley’s fiddle playing on the song is perfect, expressing all the sorrow and uncertainty that the song communicates.

The first single, “Plunder,” reminds me for some reason of The Velvet Underground, with its rough, slightly distorted guitar and the slightly silly lyrics (“I saw my girl at the roller rink / Lip locked with Henry Fink / He did a graceful spin in the air / He looked just like Fred Astaire.”) that give way to the very real implications of plundering the world and the “machines that make machines / And those machines make more machines.”

Many of the songs feature characters, and “Diamond Bell” is a bit of a throwback to country and even old Irish storytelling songs, sung from the perspective of “kid from Arkansas” who fell in with Diamond Bell, “the reigning terror of the west.” (Things don’t end well.) Other songs only reference people by name (“Betty,” “Country Jim”) but they always seem to provide a groundedness and lived experience to the more expansive ideas the songs convey.

We got a chance to chat with James Felice, who play accordion, piano, and organ and sings backing vocals in the band.

RLR: Listening to this album, there’s a very live energy to it. What was the process like for this new album and how was that similar or different to your past records?

JF: This record, we made ourselves and I engineered it; none of us really knew what we were doing. We have this place where we practice, it’s a garage on the farm where we live. We got a bunch of packing blankets to make baffles and played every song live. We weren’t sure at the time if we were making demos or making an album, but when we heard it, we thought it sounded right.

RLR: It seems like there are many oppositions between nature and the developed world on this album. Your band is often referred to as being from New York City, but you and Ian are from upstate. How do you navigate that tension between the city and nature?

JF: It’s funny, because we never lived in the city. We did play in the city, but I’ve lived in the same county since I was seven. But because we played in the subway, it was just assumed that we’re from Brooklyn and that made its way onto Wikipedia.

We’re country boys and when we go to the city, it does feel like it’s “machines that make more machines.” It’s this amazing place too, of course. But every time I’m there, I feel confused and isolated; and I also wish I was more a part of it. We have friends in bands who live in the city and it always feels like they have something going on. We go to bed at 9:00.

RLR: The final song, Sell the House, really interests me because of its two very distinct sections that are separated by twelve or thirteen seconds of silence. Can you talk about the relationship between those two sections of the song?

JF: [laughs] You know, to be totally honest, they were actually supposed to be two songs. The second song was a hidden track, and we haven’t even really named it, but you’re not the only person who has said that and assumed it’s one song with this really long break. I think of “Sell the House” as companion to “Triumph ‘73” but there’s clearly a good connection there [between “Sell The House” and the hidden track], based on what you and other folks have said, and it’s cool that they work together.

RLR: There are some pretty strong themes standing in sort of a critical cultural stance through this album – looking at greed, superficiality, violence, and war. What role do you see for your songs for pushing listeners to take a step back from our culture and look at it in a new way?

JF: Ian writes the lyrics so he can probably speak to those themes better than me. The album was made and finished before Trump and everything happened, so it might have been prescient in a way. But, you know, folk music is a view from the ground. We grew up middle class, and still are, and we still live where we grew up. Our perspective is that from that folk, from the ground perspective.

It’s important to have a clear conscience and observe how the world should work, but it’s difficult to do that and not be preachy or oversimplify things. Ian’s really good at finding nuance and deep shades of color. And I think writers like him have an ability and an maybe even an obligation to do that.

 

The Felice Brothers are playing at The Green River Festival on July 9 and in Portsmouth, NH on August 3 (click here for tour dates). You can pre-order Life in the Dark here.